Kingston HyperX SH100S3B/240G 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (HyperX Upgrade Kit)

Pros: Quiet, very fast,and great boot time. Newegg delivers great and fast service, I enjoy buying from them. Also their 12 month no cost financing doesn't hurt your wallet either.

Cons: Drive worked great for exactly 8 months, then it had a stroke, totally brain dead. I tried to resusitate, but had absolutly no responce. I had no S.M.A.R.T drive warning, so the data since my last backup is history. Now I have to try to get this thing replaced, I hope they speak english as a first language.

Other Thoughts: Yes, I checked for loose cables, I changed controllers, and then changed power cable. No responce, I then installed an older Seagate notebook drive, with all the same cabling, presto! Computer online. Just a not so trustworthy drive! I have never had a drive die on me this soon, they have all lasted 2 years or better. I will get back to let everybody know how Kinston treats it's customers.

Manufacturer Response:

We apologize for the issue you are having. Please call our Support Staff at 1-800-435-0640 (USA and Canada only) M - F 6am - 6pm PT and one of our Technical Support Representatives will assist you. Please be sure to have the part on hand if you call in.

Thank you for selecting Kingston as your upgrade partner.

Pros: Fast and easy to install with the bundled material. WEI score now at 7.9 and a total boot time from pushing the on button to being ready to go of perhaps fifteen seconds. I remember my first PC clone...a Leading Edge, and a great machine for the time; I would insert the five and a quarter inch DOS floppy disk, go outside to smoke a cigarette, walk around the entire house to check on the various greenery, and then come back inside only to find that the OS still had not finished loading. Trust me, youngsters, this is way better. I held off for a long time waiting for the price to fall on SSDs; then Newegg, bless em, did the Godfather thing and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Like I said, between the bundled software, and the hardware, including the drive, the converter and the USB device, the thing is almost painless to get installed.

Cons: The instructions could be a little easier to follow, but common sense will out. I have a mental habit of making things more complicated than they actually are, so I had some initial (and minor) problems of my own creation. This is really a snap guy. I promise.

Other Thoughts: If you read my review in the motherboards section detailing the problems I've had (and continue to have with ASUS Customer Satisfaction) over the P8P67 debacle, you will know that I expect good service and performance for money paid and raise a stink when I am not treated right. At this point, I do not feel that there will be a problem with this purchase. I sometimes wish Newegg would keep a running tally of the companies who build well and do well by their customers and those who don't. Such a roster would be subjective as blazes, but when you see the same things...good and bad...cropping up again and again, the patterns tell you something. My hat is off to Kingston, Corsair, Lian Li, Cooler Master, Ultra, Intel, AMD, Polk Audio, EVGA, and MSI (mostly)...all these guys and some others too have treated me right over the years. Those other guys...the A_ _ S guys and some others too...no longer get my trade. Thanks Newegg; you are as good as it gets at what you do

Pros: Tossed this as my main HD in my new gaming rig and it loaded win 7 no problems, boot time is roughly 14 seconds and I only keep around 30 gigs free on it. I am never going back to using a regular spinning disc HD. Everything loads extremely fast (but there is still load time in most games) and this drive is 6-8 times faster then my 7200 rpm Seagate.

Cons: Sata cable it comes with is very flimsy and depending on how tight the fit is it may bend/break but cables are cheap.

Other Thoughts: It all comes down to do you want to pay for speed or not, you can get a 7200 rpm drive of the same size for about a quarter of the cost of this if not less.

Pros: Fast, stable, reliable.

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: Have used this SSD for over 5 months now without any problem. Upgraded from VelociRaptor. Worth every penny.

Pros: Have an intel 160gb ssd drive and it fits nice and snug. Setup was like under a minute.

Cons: 1 less star because the included screwdriver is magnetic.

Other Thoughts: Nice compact enclosure.

Pros: Everything...boots Windows 7 in 8 seconds. No problem going into or out of sleep mode. Never had a BSOD. Screaming fast for every game I have thrown at it. And its so quiet!

Cons: There are no cons to this piece of awesome.

Other Thoughts: After hearing of problems with the latest Sandforce SSDs I hesitated about buying one but this Kingston has no problems what so ever. It can't seem to do anything wrong. It even installed so easily you don't even need instructions lol.

Pros: This thing is super fast. Boots Windows 7 in 15 seconds. Games run much faster. I have had no problems with BSODs, sleep mode ( going in or coming out ). It installed with the kit easily, exactly as described in the instructions.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: I am very impressed with Kingston. I recommend this model with no reservation.

Pros: Fast- Boots Windows 7 before the splash screen animation completes.

Cons: Would like to buy a second one for RAID 1, but just too expensive for now.

Other Thoughts: Installed as boot disk with Windows 7 in "RAID-ready" mode on ASRock Z68M-ITX/HD motherboard. Did not have to update the SSD firmware. No BSODs, and goes to sleep and wakes up just fine.

Pros: Relatively fast
Price ok w/rebate

Cons: Not much of an improvement (especially in writes) over
Intel X2 160gb SSD

Other Thoughts: So this is supposed to be the fastest SSD available,
I disagree. It is great for large sequential compressible reads,
but who does that all day long. I noticed a HUGE difference
going from a WD Velociraptor to an Intel X2 160gb SSD.
Going from the Intel SSD to this drive, there is NO noticeable
difference. It benchmarks faster on the reads, but not usually
on the small ones or the writes. Sandforce drives aren't all
they are cracked up to be. I would wait for the next generation,
or even a Marvell controlled, which means more consistant performance,
not the highs and lows of the smoke and mirrors sandforce compression.

Pros: •Fast: I got two of these running in RAID0. It is spoiling me. Load times in games are virtually non-existent. Dirt3 never shows “Loading”. I get first pick of vehicles/aircraft in BF3. ATTO benchmark reports reads up to 1100 MB/s read speeds and writes over 1000 MB/s. This makes the whole computing experience super smooth.

•Reliable: I loaded the new 332 firmware on these as soon as I got them in preparation for my new build. Keep in mind your SATA configuration must be in ACHI mode according the manual. I just loaded a copy of XP on one in a few minutes and then did the update. I have had no problem at all with these drives.

• Silent
• Nice extras included with kit
• Best-looking SSD on the market

Cons: • Expensive
• Included mounting bracket not well-designed (see below)
• Makes all the mechanical storage based PCs I have to use feel frustratingly slow

Other Thoughts: If you end up using the included 2.5” bracket you may find that the case screws that hold the bracket in will pass through the bracket and the few mm gap between it and your SSD and into your drives. This is because Kingston had to make room for their logo, thus offsetting the position of the drive. I had to deal with this for a few weeks until my P280 arrived.
Kingston: The drives look beautiful themselves; the logo on the bracket adds nothing.

My only concern at this point is the lack of TRIM support in RAID0. Intel has stated that the feature is coming on their next set of RST drivers however, so that issue should be eliminated soon. Until then I have just been relying on the drives’ internal garbage collection (which is supposedly rather good) by logging out of windows when I’m not using the machine.
Even just one of these may very well be the best overall performance upgrade you can get in a modern machine.