Kingston FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD 2TB Unboxing Review

The Kingston flagship FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD 2TB version is tested in this unboxing. The continuous read/write performance is up to 7300 and 7000 MB/s, and the thin graphene aluminum alloy thermal paste is pre-applied to assist with the main control and die cooling. With 2 GB DRAM cache and Micron 3D TLC chips, the device comes with a 5-year warranty and 2 PBW of data write total bytes.

Kingston FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD 2TB Spec:

Interface: PCI-Express 4.0 x4
NVMe: 1.4
Dimension Interface: M.2 2280
Continuous read speed: 7300 MB/s
Continuous Write Speed: 7000 MB/s
Random read speed: 100000 IOPS
Random Write Speed: 100000 IOPS
Capacity options: 500 GB / 1 TB / 2 TB / 4 TB
Controller: Phison E18 (PS5018-E18-41)
NAND Flash: Micron 176-Layer 3D NADA TLC
Cache: SDRAM - DDR4 2GB (1 GB on each side)
Size: 80 x 22 x 3.5 mm (thin graphene aluminum heat sink)
Warranty: 5-year limited warranty
Total number of bytes of data written (TBW): 2 PBW

Kingston FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD Unboxing

In 2021, Kingston released its flagship FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD (regular version) with thin graphene aluminum alloy heat sinks that are compatible with a wide range of motherboards and devices that have limited mounting space, such as laptops, for easy installation.

Later on, for PS5 and motherboards without heatsinks, a dedicated heatsink version was released to allow the SSDs to come with their own aluminum heatsinks that dissipate heat well.

This unboxing is the FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD 2TB capacity version, with sequential read/write performance of 7300 and 7000 MB/s, depending on the storage capacity, there will be different sequential read/write performance, which the author has unboxed before. Kingston KC3000 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD 2TBThe price difference between the two models is around 300~500 NTD in Taiwan sales channel, but the flagship FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD will have higher continuous read/write performance.

In addition to the M.2 SSD body, the carton package also includes a serial key for the Kingston Acronis® True Image integrated software suite, which is a backup migration software that can back up an entire hard drive or selected partitions, clone an operating system, restore data from a previous backup, and create bootable media, such as a USB flash drive or CD/DVD drive. DVD disks.

∆ Kingston Kingston FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD 2TB capacity version.

∆ Kingston Acronis® True Image integrated software suite serial number, free backup software can be kept to use do not just throw away the box, it is very bad.

 

Kingston FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD 2TB is the mainstream M.2 2280 size specification, this unboxing version is pre-pasted with thin graphene aluminum alloy thermal pads on the front side, which means that consumers don't need to remove the surface thermal pads when they use it because the thin thermal pads have a good thermal conductivity, so they don't have to worry about the thermal performance being affected. The thin heat sink has good thermal conductivity, so there is no need to worry about the thermal performance being affected.

Almost all motherboards nowadays come standard with at least one M.2 SSD heatsink for the first direct-channel expansion slot, so it's no longer necessary to have large heatsinks for M.2 SSDs as standard, and the use of thin graphene-aluminum alloy heatsinks is more in line with the ubiquity of motherboards at this stage - after all, motherboards with a mainstream positioning or higher are now equipped with heatsinks for all of the slots.

Because of its slimness, the body is only 3.5 mm thick, so it is compatible with devices such as laptops in addition to PC motherboards.

∆ Kingston FURY Renegade pre-patched with thin graphene aluminum heat sink.

The ∆2TB and 4TB versions have a double-sided grain layout, while the smaller 500GB and 1TB capacities have a single-sided grain.

 

After the test, let's tear off the heatsink and take a look at the internal materials. The main control solution uses the Phison E18 (PS5018-E18-41) chip from Qunlian, which is NVMe 1.4 compliant on TSMC's 12nm process and uses a triple-core ARM Cortex R5 CPU + dual CoXProcessor™ processors, with a maximum of eight-channel compatibility. It utilizes a triple-core ARM Cortex R5 CPU + dual CoXProcessor™ processors and is compatible with up to eight channels, as well as fourth-generation LDPC, End-to-End Data Protection, SmartECC, and more.

The front and back sides are each equipped with a physical DRAM cache IC: D5116AN9CXGRK (SDRAM - DDR4 2666), with a single capacity of 8 Gbit totaling 512 M x 16, and the front and back sides add up to 16 Gbit = 2 GB.

The NADA Flash memory cells are Micron 176-Layer 3D TLC (Kingston FB25608UCM1-9E) with four cells on one side and eight cells on both sides, and the power management IC is PHISON PS6108-22.

After comparing the unboxing of the 2021 debut with that of 2022 and so on, the one in my hands has not replaced the materials in the main control chip, DRAM cache, NADA Flash chips and power management ICs, but it is not guaranteed to be the same as the one that is being shipped in the market, so we have to rely on everyone to check it out on their own after purchasing it.

∆ After testing with the motherboard heatsink, the thermal pads only eat into the "concave" contact surface, and there is a very small height difference between the main controller and the NADA Flash in the center of the board, which may be about 0.1~0.3 mm.

∆ Front Particle Layout: Phison E18 (PS5018-E18-41) MCU and Power Management IC PHISON PS6108-22.

∆ Micron 176-Layer 3D TLC (Kingston FB25608UCM1-9E) particles.

On the back of ∆ is only NADA Flash and DRAM cache IC: D5116AN9CXGRK (SDRAM - DDR4 2666).

 

Kingston FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD 2TB Performance Testing

The test platform uses an AMD Ryzen 9 7900 processor on an MSI MEG X670E ACE motherboard with a Kingston FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD 2TB installed in the first slot M2_1 of the motherboard, which is provided with full PCIE Gen4 x4 bandwidth by the processor's direct connect channel. Performance may vary depending on the firmware version of the SSD, system hardware configuration, and other factors, so these results are provided for reference only.

Testing Platform

Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 7900 (PBO AUTO)
Cooler: AMD Wraith Prism
Motherboard:MSI MEG X670E ACE(BIOS version: 7D69v1F2)
Memory:Kingston FURY Renegade DDR5 RGB 6000 MT/s 16GBx2
Display card:MSI GeForce GTX 970 GAMING 100ME
Operating System: Windows 11 Professional 23H2
System Drive: Kingston A2000 NVMe PCIe SSD 500GB
Test Drive: Kingston FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD 2TB (formatted empty)
Power supply:FSP Hydro PTM PRO ATX3.0 (PCIe5.0) 1200W
Case: STREACOM BC1 Benchtable V2
Graphics driver: GeForce Game Ready 551.23

 

The first step is to use CrystalDiskInfo software to view the basic information of the Kingston FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD 2TB, which adopts the PCIe 4.0 x4 transfer mode and the NVM Express 1.4 standard, and supports features such as S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analyzing, and Reporting Technology), TRIM, and VolatileWriteCache. S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology), TRIM, and VolatileWriteCache, and the firmware version tested by the author is EIFK31.6.

∆ formatted and converted to different bit system units can use 1.81 TB.

∆ CrystalDiskInfo software view information.

 

The Kingston FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD 2TB was tested in an empty disk using CrystalDiskMark software. With the test file size set to 1GiB in the default mode, the sequential read/write speeds were measured at 7259 MB/s and 6804 MB/s.

The Q8T1 test result in the first column represents a thread with eight queue depths, which means that there are eight 1MB-sized accesses in the worklist waiting to be accessed. This corresponds to a real situation, such as reading or writing eight 1MB files from or to a hard disk at the same time, which is generally less likely to be done in general.

∆ CrystalDiskMark default mode 1GiB profile, continuous read/write test results.

 

After setting CrystalDiskMark to NVMe SSD to enable the Random Access default project, the random read/write scores for the RND4K Q32T16 project are 1891 MB/s and 3926 MB/s.

The RND4K Q32T16 operates with 16 queue depths out of 32 threads, and the file types are random access 4 KB size files written or read into the SSD.

∆ CrystalDiskMark Settings:NVMe SSD / Profile:Default, Random Access Default Mode RND4K Q32T16 test results.

 

ATTO Disk Benchmark was then used to test the sequential read/write performance and stability of different file sizes, with maximum values of 6.42 GB/s for writing and 6.9 GB/s for reading.

∆ ATTO Disk Benchmark.

 

Professional video multimedia file write and read performance test, using the AJA System Test to simulate the test situation, the test set to 5120×2700 5K RED format 64GB and 1GB files, Codec Type with the preset 10bit YUV test, the final results are 1GB mode write 6336 MB/s, read 6268 MB/s, 64GB mode write 6158 MB/s, read 6246 MB/s, and 64GB mode write 6158 MB/s, read 6246 MB/s. The final results were 6336 MB/s written and 6268 MB/s read in 1GB mode, and 6158 MB/s written and 6246 MB/s read in 64GB mode.

∆ AJA System Test 1GB.

∆ AJA System Test 64GB.

 

TxBENCH is now tested in 512MB mode with 7140 MB/s read and 6571 MB/s write in the default test file.

∆ TxBENCH Default test file 512MB mode results.

 

The 3DMark Storage Benchmark test uses game startup loading, game file copying, game archiving, game installation, and OBS game recording for testing. The scenarios mainly use a number of games to conduct actual tests, so that gamers can clearly refer to the performance of the hard disk in terms of gaming usage. The higher the storage benchmark score, the better.

∆ 3DMark Storage Benchmark Test.

 

PCMARK 10 was used to test the performance of both types of storage. The Full System Drive Benchmark uses a range of everyday applications and software, including Windows 10, Adobe software, game launcher, Microsoft Documentation and related applications, to test the performance of the hard drive in real-world usage scenarios. In the test, a bandwidth of 456.4 MB/s with an average access time of 60 µs and a total score of 2824 points were achieved.

Data Drive Benchmark (Data Drive Benchmark), the main test object for data disks used for storing documents, and can also be used to test NAS, UFD and memory cards and other related types of storage devices, in this test, 339 JPEG files (a total of 2.37 GB) will be copied to the SSD, and then create a copy of these JPEG files, and finally copy 2.37 GB of JPEG files to another hard disk to complete the entire write-read-read three-step test, the results in this test are the bandwidth of 2.37 GB JPEG files. In this test, 339 JPEG files (totaling 2.37 GB) were copied to the SSD, then copies of these JPEG files were made, and finally 2.37 GB of JPEG files were copied to another hard drive, completing the entire write-read-write-read three-step test, which resulted in a bandwidth of 707.72 MB/s, an average access time of 33 µs, and a final total test score of 4742 points.

∆ PCMARK 10 Full System Drive Benchmark.

∆ PCMARK 10 Data Drive Benchmark.

 

Finally, AIDA64 was used to conduct the Read Test Suite, Linear Read, and Linear Write tests. The Read Test Suite mainly uses Linear Read, Random Read, and Buffered Read to test the read performance of the hard disk through these three read methods.

∆ AIDA64 Read Test Suite reads the performance combination test.

 

AIDA64's Linear Read and Linear Write full disk read/write tests will read/write large files with MAX capacity of the hard disk for users to observe its read/write stability. In the Linear Read test, the hard disk stays stable at an average read of 5483.3 MB/s until the end of the test.

In the Linear Write test, after the cache is depleted at 42 %, the write speed will drop to a minimum of 856.2 MB/s, and then return to about 3800 MB/s until the end at about 95%, with the overall write speed averaging 3500 MB/s, which means that unless the user writes large files of more than 840 GB at one time. In other words, unless the user writes a large file over 840 GB at one time, the user can enjoy the high-speed performance of sequential writing of about 6100 MB/s.

∆ AIDA64 Linear Read.

∆ AIDA64 Linear Write.

Conclusion

The Kingston FURY Renegade PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD 2TB uses the familiar Qunlian Phison E18 solution, and the overall materials have not changed compared to other unboxings from two to three years ago. Recently, other competitors have begun to use the new brand's solution, but at present, Taiwanese consumers still prefer to buy familiar brands such as Qunlian Phison. However, Taiwanese consumers still prefer to buy familiar brands such as Qunlian Phison, and are not willing to accept new brands of main control solutions. This flagship M.2 PCIe Gen4 x4 SSD, in addition to using a familiar solution in the market as well as Micron's TLC chips, has not replaced the overall solution, which is at least suitable for Taiwanese gamers' requirements of a "non-replacement material and stable solution".

Next, let's talk about the after-sales warranty, the five-year limited warranty is very common and there is nothing to talk about. The author's unboxed 2TB capacity version is labeled with a Total Bit Weight Written (TBW) of 2.0 PBW, which translates to a Daily Write Per Day (DWPD) of 0.548 according to the conversion of 1 PB = 1024 TB = 1048,576 GB, which means that a user would have to write 1095 GB per day to exceed the official TBW of 2.0 PBW within five years. In other words, the DWPD of 54% is multiplied by the hard disk capacity of 2048 GB, which means users have to write 1095 GB per day to exceed the official Total Bit Weight Written (TBW) of 2.0 PBW within five years, and it is unlikely that users will have to transfer or empty half of their hard disks every day before they can write data to them again.

Although the included thin graphene aluminum alloy thermal pads can help dissipate heat, when I tested it with MSI thermal pads, I could see from the thermal pads that the main controller chip could not touch the thermal pads on the motherboard, and the heat dissipation of the main controller chip relies on the thin graphene aluminum alloy thermal pads to conduct the heat dissipation, and the author is not quite sure if the heat sink version has the design of thicker pads in the center of the heat sink. During the testing process, the highest temperature of M.2 SSD was around 67~69 °C. If the height of the controller chip can be the same as the height of NADA Flash, I believe the temperature performance can be better, the height difference between the two types of chips is not that big. I hope that solution brand can optimize this matter, but isn't it a very basic problem of the organization?