480GB HyperX Predator M.2 PCIe SSD Review

[Calamar]

Very interesting. I thought I left a comment in the 951 review cause when I read it it clearly shown that 951 is firm-temp-aware! You did the passive and active cooling tests showing some throttling when 80º (79) were hit.

This is actually very interesting because I haven't seen comments in any site I usually read (ssdexperts, techpower, anand and toms) about this issue.


It could be a very very interesting article, and a new topic, to use a couple of benchmarks several drives (from m6e to 750) in passive vs. active cooling behavour.


There very few scenarios of a "consumer" day to day tasks that would be affected by this issue that is:
- Large zip generation
- System backup

Others tasks like game or programs (now apps, god knows why) installation are not performed daily, also it is not usual to move large sets of pictures or music files.
Video editting would also be affected, how macbook pro users will handle a 80º hard drive while edditing their stuff in quicktime?


When it comes to pro, well, that throttling is actually a problem, for sure, because there are lots of scenarios where large volume of data is moved for a long period of time (it looks like reach top tempes in less than 6 minutes average). I wanted to move a couple of workstation to the nvme world (C600 chipset), but disks will have to be actively cooled.

[Apoptosis]

It could be a very very interesting article, and a new topic, to use a couple of benchmarks several drives (from m6e to 750) in passive vs. active cooling behavour.

I looked at temp testing and the M6e and Predator M.2 drives don't appear to throttle even with a continual 128kb sequential write across the entire drive for 30 minutes on an open air test bench with no fans blowing across them. The other problem I ran into is that some drives (Plextor M6e and Intel SSD 750) don't have a temp monitor that works internally.

[Calamar]

Hey!
I wanted to confirm that 480GB HyperX Predator M.2 PCIe SSD works on X58 Rampage II Extreme BIOS 2101 with no mods.
BIOS is set in RAID mode btw (direct AHCI must be tested yet).
Setup of PCIE: Auto. The motherboard will work in 16-8-8 mode.

Very important! Motherboard won't boot if the disk is used in PCIE16_2. Must be inserted in PCIE16_3 (labeled as mobo manual page 2-24).
If inserted in PCIE16_2 it seems to return a graphic card error (bip code: long, short, short, short).

My configuration:
pcie16_1: EVGA 780
pcie16_2: Asus Essence STX
pcie16_3: Predator 480 M.2



In my current configuration, until further tests are performed, BIOS detects the drive as can be seen here: (I left all exif info for validation purposes)



Windows 7 64 bit installation detected the drive without extra drivers requirement:


System information:




Performance tests performed side by side to legit results:
*Note: drive was not system drive while tests were performed. Tests were performed after 3-4 minutes of windows start, and a backup from the RAID0 was being performed to a NAS unit (usually hits 50-70MB/s write speed). Windows of course wasn't a fresh install but rather old, so results must be taken in the lower side in the performance error margin.

(I think this anvil results should be compared to uncompressible data results i noticed that when I saw anvil's default setup)




TRIM Check:


This is the perfect solution for old enthusiasm platforms. Maybe Samsung951 will also be bootable, but its designed for PICE3 buses.
If you want any other information, please let me know.

[Apoptosis]

Thanks for the feedback and the numbers look great. Do you prefer the Microsoft drivers over Intel RST?

[Calamar]

Thanks for the feedback and the numbers look great. Do you prefer the Microsoft drivers over Intel RST?

Not actually, but was a test to see if could install windows with X58 in RAID mode without F6 drivers. I can, in both RAID and AHCI modes.

I used acronis backup to move two partitions from two "hardware (X58) raid0" different volumes to one disk while RST 13.1 was installed in windows, this is not a recommended practice. Acronis let me move the two different disks (raid0-1, raid0-2 volumes, each with its own partition set, see photos) to a single disk (the kingston) without issues and I changed RST RAID driver to MS AHCI in a seamless way. Pretty amazing!

Tests were performed with RST 13.1, but this site recomends use AHCI in general for non RAIDed drives:
http://www.win-raid.com/t2f23-Intel-R-R ... -WHQL.html
(please remove the link if its against forum rules).

Now I'm working with MS AHCI driver, I want to move to RST13.1 again, but I'm waiting for a new bios chip (my bios1 chip died and I'm working with bios2) to install a modified bios for the rampage II extreme based on 2101 with a modified version of the intel RAID ROM. In order to do so I want to have both bios chips active for safety reasons.*

*This is not necessary, but I want the modified bios to allow RAID0 volumes to get trimmed and use my old vertex2 for games until they eventually die.


Hmm I wonder why I get those low 4K QD32 numbers compared to you, may be the driver?

[MacGyverSG1]

Has Kingston come back with a response about the inconsistent performance?

"Kingston let us know that the Boot ROM code is on the HyperX Predator PCIe SSD and that it should be bootable on pretty much any system as look at the BIOS supports a bootable device on the PCIe slot you are wanting to place the card in".

Is that Boot ROM code located on the M.2 drive itself or on the PCI-E riser card?

Thanks