Update Jan 9, 2023: Added new test for 2 TB Kingston Fury Renegade SSD on page 2.
Original review published March 14, 2022:
Kingston already has one of the fastest SSDs available on the market, but now the company is expanding its high-performance portfolio with the cheaper Fury Renegade, which offers similar performance but higher write endurance. increase. However, the extra durability comes with the trade-off of slightly less storage capacity.
Thanks to a fast Phison E18 controller and PCIe Gen 4 NVMe interface, Kingston’s KC3000 is the performance leader rated at 7 GBps sequential read and 6 GBps write. When he tested and reviewed the KC3000 in late 2021, he was impressed enough to award it an Editors’ Choice award and put it on his list of best SSDs.
The Kingston Fury Renegade promises some improvements over its siblings, but at $164 for 1 TB, it’s now a few bucks cheaper. Renegade offers up to 7.3 GBps bandwidth, an increase of 300 MBps, and up to 1 million IOPS on its PCIe 4.0 interface. It touts 1 petabyte write endurance per TB versus the 800 terabyte write per TB of the KC3000 (but both come with a 5 year warranty). Another key difference between these two very similar drives is that the Fury Renegade is marketed as a gaming SSD and advertised as Playstation 5 Ready (although it doesn’t have a heatsink).
“Gaming” SSDs don’t necessarily offer anything special compared to typical consumer drives. There can certainly be differences, as there is between the KC3000 and the Fury Renegade, but the impact on ordinary users is usually small, if not negligible. All in all, the Fury Renegade performed very similarly to the KC3000 in our tests, making it one of the fastest PCIe Gen 4 SSDs out there.
Kingston Fury Renegade Specifications
| product | 500GB | 1TB | 2TB | 4TB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| price | $102.99 | $164.99 | $359.99 | $1,027.93 |
| Capacity (User / Raw) | 500GB/512GB | 1000GB/1024GB | 2000GB/2048GB | 4000GB/4096GB |
| form factor | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 |
| interface/protocol | PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4 | PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4 | PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4 | PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4 |
| controller | Phison PS5018-E18 | Phison PS5018-E18 | Phison PS5018-E18 | Phison PS5018-E18 |
| DRAM | DDR4 | DDR4 | DDR4 | DDR4 |
| memory | Micron 176L TLC | Micron 176L TLC | Micron 176L TLC | Micron 176L TLC |
| Sequential read | 7,300MBps | 7,300MBps | 7,300MBps | 7,300MBps |
| Sequential write | 3,900MBps | 6,000MBps | 7,000MBps | 7,000MBps |
| random read | 450,000 IOPS | 900,000 IOPS | 1,000,000 IOPS | 1,000,000 IOPS |
| random write | 900,000 IOPS | 1,000,000 IOPS | 1,000,000 IOPS | 1,000,000 IOPS |
| safety | none | none | none | none |
| Endurance (TBW) | 500TB | 1,000TB | 2,000TB | 4,000TB |
| part number | SFYRS/500G | SFYRS/1000G | SFYRD/2000G | SFYRD/4000G |
| guarantee | 5 years | 5 years | 5 years | 5 years |
Fury Renegade is rated for up to 7.3/7.0 GBps read/write sequential speeds and up to 1M/1M random read/write IOPS. Drives are available in 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities. Current pricing ranges from $0.19 to $0.27 per gigabyte with a sweet spot of 1 TB. Nothing new with 4 TB TLC drives, but there is a big premium for maximum capacity. If you’re looking strictly for TLC capacity, we recently recommended the WD Red SN700.
Note that the Fury Renegade is rated for higher peak sequential read performance than the KC3000. Additionally, Fury Renegade has a lot more over-provisioning (OP) going on. Increasing OP tends to improve write performance and device endurance because there are more free and writable blocks.
Write performance is improved because more free blocks are converted into controller readiness for writes, especially random writes. Endurance is improved by reducing write amplification as blocks have more freedom during consolidation and indirectly aids wear leveling. We’ll see what impact this has during testing, but it doesn’t tend to matter for consumer drives.
Kingston Fury Renegade software and accessories
Fury Renegade works with Kingston’s SSD Manager app. This “SSD Toolbox” provides basic information about your drive, including serial and firmware revisions, usage and health statistics. While this is unnecessary for many users, it would be nice to have the option, especially since firmware updates have proven more useful as drives have become more advanced. may be required.
Kingston Fury Renegade details
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The Fury Renegade comes in the popular M.2 2280 form factor, features a graphene aluminum heat spreader and is single-sided with 1 TB capacity. The heat spreader is stylized but doesn’t do much when it comes to cooling. On the other hand, it means it can fit in laptops, consoles, and certain motherboards.
The drive features a controller, two DRAM packages, and two NAND packages along with Phison’s typical PMIC. A rear label displays relevant information such as model, serial, factory firmware revision, and a QR code. Our review of the KC3000 also pointed this out.
The Phison E18 controller is nothing new to our testbed and is one of the top PCIe 4.0 competitors on the market. The Fury Renegade also has a double DRAM layout that Kingston uses in multiple products, in this case with two of his 512GB modules for a total of 1TB. These are 256M x 16b configurations and there are some advantages to using two modules this way. His DRAM of this type in this layout could be more flexible yet cheaper, especially if the board is used for multiple models and capacities. A standard 1GB DRAM per 1TB NAND applies here. This is good enough for consumer use, but it’s nice to see in an era when manufacturers waste money.
The 1TB Fury Renegade features two 512GB NAND packages in an 8DP configuration for interleaving purposes. That means each package has 8 of his 512Gb (64GB) dies, and 2 per channel for an 8-channel Phison E18 is enough. Peak performance is achieved with four dies per channel. This flash is Micron’s 176-layer TLC found in the KC3000 and many others. Most manufacturers have opted to create new models for the E18 when paired with this flash against Micron’s older 96-layer B27B TLC. Both types of flash are 4 planes and come with a nominal 512Gb die, which means that 1TB is very good performance.
Micron’s 176-layer flash (B47R) uses a new architecture that promises improved performance and endurance. Other flash makers such as SK hynix are preparing competing 176-layer generations of flash. However, the majority of flash on display at his ISSCC event this year was of the QLC variety, highlighting the fact that 4-bit flash is destined for a larger market share in the near future. Nevertheless, 3-bit TLC is still the best flash in terms of performance.
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