Kingston FURY, the high-performance division of Kingston Technology has just announced its PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2 SSD.

Kingston FURY Renegade G5 for gaming and high-power users seeking maximum performance. Kingston FURY Renegade G5 allows users to unleash the full capability of their system by leveraging the latest PCIe Gen5 x 4 controller and 3D TLC NAND to reach extreme speeds up to 14,800/14,000MB/s read/write and over 2M IOPS.

Kingston FURY Renegade G5 is optimized for performance PC and workstations to eliminate storage bottlenecks and significantly reduce load times, making it the ideal drive for when you’re deep in high-intensity gaming, editing, or a data-heavy workflow.

With such incredible power, Kingston FURY Renegade G5 was engineered to ensure smooth operation for demanding applications while preserving efficiency, thanks to Silicon Motion SM2508 controller based on 6nm lithography and low-power DDR4 DRAM cache, reducing heat and energy consumption. Whether for high-end applications, content creation, or productivity, this storage solution delivers everything needed to elevate your gaming and professional experience.

“We’re eager to announce this addition to the Kingston FURY family of high-performance solutions,” said Kingston. “Between the power of Kingston FURY Renegade G5 SSD and Kingston FURY memory, high-power users and hardware enthusiasts can create their ultimate system.”

Kingston FURY Renegade G5 is available in 1024GB, 2048GB and 4096GB full capacities and is backed by a limited five-year warranty, free technical support, and legendary Kingston reliability.

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So you’ve built a killer gaming rig, or forked out a tidy sum for a handheld portable PC and you’re good to game… but after a couple of Steam installs your SSD is full.

I hear you. It happens to all of us.

Thankfully Kingston have the NVMe SSD solution with drives starting at 1TB and going up to 4TB.

STG received a 2TB NV3 M.2 NVMe Internal SSD to install and put through it’s read and write paces.

Offering up a t maximum of 6000Mbps read to 5000Mbps write speeds the 2TB NV3 M.2 NVMe SSD sits within the fast lane, although is not the fastest in the market at the time of writing this review.

However, if you’re going to get one of these for gaming, it’s a sure bet you’ll be fine.

For things more mundane and everyday PC use, it’s an overkill (but a worthy one) and if you’re a content creator and need to edit large graphics and videos, it is perfect.

The Kingston 2TB NV3 M.2 NVMe SSD is Gen 4 but backwards compatible, if you have a Gen 3 PCIe slot.

The pricing tier for the 2TB model is very competitive and is actually giving you value for lower cost.

With the review 2TB NV3 M.2 NVMe SSD I placed in to my gaming laptop as the primary (Windows) drive , an upgrade from the factory 1TB.

It was hard to say if speeds were much faster, but of course having that extra 1TB of space for Steam games with huge data footprints was a plus.

Gameplay from the Kingston SSD was super fluid. No jitters or lag and of course content creation buttery smooth rendering.

The Kingston 2TB NV3 M.2 NVMe SSD enables you to install more to play more. Create 4K or 8K content without needing to clear clutter to reserve space, and do all of this with super reliability and top end speeds.

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If you’re after the speed, storage and reliability of an internal SSD that’s going to give you the edge on any virtual battleground, WD_Black is where it’s at.

Western Digital have been the pioneers and forerunners of digital storage for decades and over the past few years have been producing game drives with the knowledge and understanding that a solid drive is needed for solid game time.

Recently Western Digital released their WD_Black SN770 NVME SSD the smaller sibling of their SN850 and SN750.

To kit out your Rig or laptop, first make sure you have PCIe compatibility, otherwise the WD_Black SN series wont fit or run.

It’s also important to check any manufacturer warranty before your crack open your PC gaming powerhouse.

That aside once installed on an already existing setup running Windows 11, Windows will recognise the SN770 right away.

Western Digital also have free software for you to manage and maximise their SSDs. If you’re new to the realm of NVME drives, I’d recommend installing it.

I received the 1TB model and installed in to an existing setup as a game drive to run Steam games from.

But first some basic read / write formalities.

The WD_Black SN770 has a read of up to 5GB/s (5,150MB/s) – but this can be slowed down by a secondary drive if, say you’re copying from data from an older or slower SSD to this one.

The SN770 is PCIe4 but is also compatible to PCIe3. If you have a PCIe3 motherboard, your speed throughput wont be maximum.

To copy a 250GB folder with 4K produced video it was super quick. Less than 2 minutes (copying from another SSD, PCIe3).

To write to the SN770 via rendering out 4K video of 20 minutes in length took less than 4 minutes.

Impressive.

Installing and playing some rather large Steam games on was flawless with game load times virtually zero.

On average the SN770 manages to read at 5.2GB/s but of course slower to write, coming in at 4.8GB/s.

Still, this isn’t exactly slow at all.

The WD_Black SN770 offers up superior data read and write speeds no matter what you’re going to throw at it – and is less costly than say, it’s bigger sibling, the SN850.

It handles well, handles its own, keeps cool under pressure and is a cost effective solution to give you a PC based gaming advantage.

The post WD_BLACK SN770 NVME SSD REVIEW appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Get some Fury into your gaming with Kingston’s newly released turbo charged FURY Renegade 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 SSD.

Gaming on your Rig or high performance laptop doesn’t just need the prowess of a grunty graphics card and top of the line processor, your device’s read and write capabilities come in to play, as does the all important digital storage.

Games from Steam, Epic and more can be have a massive sized footprint, some getting way up there to 50+ GBs.

If you’re like me, you’ll likely have a lengthy games list in your PC library – but have to uninstall one or maybe two in order to install a new one. A vicious cycle of needing to go through the time and patience of picking and choosing.

Kingston’s FURY Renegade 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 SSD provides amply storage for you to install the best of your collection (or entire collection, depending) whilst also giving you the need for speed you’ll need to be at the top of your game.

STG received one of their FURY Renegade 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 SSD’s and I installed in a capable motherboard as a secondary drive.

(Note: Make sure your motherboard or gaming laptop is compatible first and if your device is still under warranty we advise that you get a certified professional to install any new hardware).

With a listed 7,300mbps read and 7,000mbps write I wanted to test out how the Fury Renegade could cope with simple read/write with larger folders.

A 600GB folder with 4K video from an already internal SSD transferred to the FURY Renegade saw speeds of up to 481mbps.

Given that the bottle neck was likely from the internal SSD, this was a surprise as the FURY Renegade syphoned the data.

Then using Adobe Premier to write (output) a test 4K video of 22 minutes, it took no time at all. Export finishing in less than 2 minutes.

This proves to me that the FURY Renegade 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 SSD is just as excellent for serious content creators as it is for gaming.

Now back to games.

Lag, jitters and stutters during gameplay or high action moments can be caused by a few things. Graphics card (GC), RAM (memory) and processor capabilities. Your storage drive can also be a culprit.

Borderlands 3 suffered none of the above and upon initial game load, there was hardly any load to speak of – infact reinstalling the game from Steam was alot faster than I was used to (approx. around 3 minutes), my local telco’s bandwidth being the foot dragger.

Borderlands played beautifully, as hoped.

Forza Horizon 5 from Microsoft Store saw the same bandwidth slowdown, but the FURY Renegade 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 SSD was installing as fast as it could get get the data from the cloud.

This one saw a few graphical stutters – this ended up being due to the GC. Once I’d toned down the graphics settings a bit all was sweet.

Call of Duty Vanguard was flawless.

Whatsmore the FURY Renegade 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 SSD remains cool and calm throughout.

Kingston’s FURY Renegade 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 SSD is absolutely more than capable of handling anything you run on it – likely, as in my case, other hardware may struggle to keep up.

This is the SSD you need to look at for a serious upgrade – but when compared with other PCIe NVMe SSD’s out there, the FURY Renegade is on the pricier side. It’s expensive.

Still even though you’re paying a premium for the FURY Renegade 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 SSD you are getting a piece of premium hardware.

So if you’re building a Rig or looking to upgrade the internal storage of your gaming laptop, and price is not a factor, this is a strong contender to future proof and kit out your weapon of choice.

The post Kingston FURY Renegade 2TB PCIe SSD Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Seagate has announced the Australian launch of its newest PC gaming SSD, the FireCuda 530, along with two new additions to the company’s line of PC gaming storage, the FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive and FireCuda Gaming Hub.

FireCuda 530 offers gamers the latest PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD technology to deliver the fastest and highest performance available in the company’s line of PC gaming storage products.

Delivering sequential read speeds of up to 7300 MB/s, the FireCuda 530 catalyses PCIe Gen4 power with transfer rates up to two times faster than PCIe Gen3 SSDs and 12 times faster than SATA-based SSDs.

The drive is built with a Seagate-validated E18 controller and the latest 3D TLC NAND to provide the most advanced speed and durability for PC gaming.

Seagate also offers a minimalistic heatsink option, specially designed by EKWB that swaps out cooling fins for a more massive, high-grade aluminum block with a finely textured finish, maximising cooling.

Available in capacities up to 4TB, the FireCuda 530 offers long lasting endurance of 1.8M MTBF and up to 5100 TBW, meaning gamers can write and delete 70% of the drive capacity every day for five years.

Seagate’s FireCuda 530 includes a three-year Rescue Data Recovery Service plan and a five-year limited warranty, so gamers have peace of mind knowing their data is secure.

The drive also comes bundled with Seagate’s SeaTools and DiscWizard making it easy for gamers and PC builders to add new drives to their computer and monitor the health and performance of each drive.

FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive features RGB LED lighting that gamers can customise through Seagate’s Toolkit software for an epic gaming atmosphere.

It also features Razer Chroma RGB compatibility to synchronise users’ Chroma-enabled gaming peripherals.

The lightweight FireCuda Hard Drive is designed with USB 3.2 Gen 1 connection for universal compatibility and quick transfer speeds and is USB bus-powered, making it the winning choice for laptop and PC gamers on the go.

FireCuda Gaming Hub features the same customisation options and USB 3.2 Gen 1 connection as the FireCuda Hard Drive, along with dual front-facing USB-C and USB-A ports so gamers can connect and power other gaming peripherals in one place.

Seagate’s FireCuda Gaming Hub will be available from leading retailers later this year.

Both the FireCuda Gaming Drive and FireCuda Gaming Hub include three-years of Rescue Data Recovery Services and a three-year limited warranty so gamers have peace of mind.

FireCuda 530 will be available from leading retailer sin Australia in early August 2021 in 500GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB options. The FireCuda 530 Heatsink will also be available the same month with the same storage options.

FireCuda Gaming Hard Drive will be available from in late August 2021 also in 2TB and 5TB.

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Go hard and go fast with Western Digital and their newly released WD Black SN850 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD.

Western Digital (WD) know their digital storage, they’ve been the kings since decades ago. And as each year brings around new technical initiatives WD are at the forefront of it all.

STG received one of their WD Black SN850 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD‘s to put through it’s paces and sure enough it is able to do everything it claims on it’s box.

First off you’ll need to have either a laptop or motherboard that is PCIe compatible and of course can take a NVMe drive stick. Alternatively you can also pick up an external enclosure that takes NVMe’s too but you may find read and write speeds slowed down by the USB port.

This review was conducted using a test MSI B450 Gaming Plus Max ATX Motherboard.

Adding the SN850 1TB NVMe into the PCIe slot is super easy, if you’re new to installing any PC components, building a RIG or just upgrading / changing hard drives you can’t get it wrong. It will slot in and Windows will auto recognise the drive immediately, in our case the drive was not formatted and showed as unallocated.

Due to the speed of the drive (and motherboard) formatting in to NTFS literally took a few seconds.

Internal write speed of large game files and folders (120GB+) took around 7 to 8 minutes to the freshly formatted SSD. The write speed ramped itself up to 4.6GBps. The WD Black SN850 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD has a write maximum of 5.3GBps. So this was both surprising and pleasing to see it get to near its maximum speed.

Read speeds were again just as epic. After having moved 50GB of 8K video files on to the WD SSD they streamed without a glitch as did gaming from the SSD. No lag, no stutters, not even enough time to go and have a coffee while you’re waiting for stuff to load. Instantaneous.

The purported read speed on the WD Black SN850 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD is 7GBps.

The WD Black SN850 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD is a must have for eSports and hardcore PC gamers.

You can of course replace your current primary Windows drive with one of these too.

Windows setup is not fun for any of us PC users. It can be slow and grinding.

So, how was the WD Black SN850 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD as a primary drive?

Installing a Windows image on to the SSD then replacing the existing operating system (OS) drive with the WD Black SN850 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD saw the same setup of Windows (of course) but a hell of a lot quicker. Around 8 minutes – when generally it can take up to 15+ minutes on a standard SSD.

Your initial OS setup time almost halved. Windows boot up on a general restart was super quick, basically after the BIOS splash screen (MSI) there was the Windows 10 user login. Not a second of load time.

You may also want to make use of the WD_BLACK Dashboard software. Free to download this will keep your SSD in check and monitor both its health, capacity and optimization.

The WD Black SN850 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD is at a fair low pricing tier which all serious PC enthusiasts, RIG builders and novices are going to be able to afford.

Designed for multitaskers, gamers and content creators the small but mighty WD Black SN850 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD has got the space, the speed and the reliability you’ll ever need.

The post WD Black SN850 1TB NVMe PCIe SSD Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Samsung, producers of the top Android based smartphones in the market.

But they don’t stop there – smart TVs, home appliances, PC monitors (including gaming specific) and also SSDs.

A couple of years back the South Korean tech giant released an external small form factor SSD designed to be used with both Android phones and tablets aswell as PC.

Now, Samsung have released an internal high speed PCIe NVMe SSD that will out run the competition. The 980 Pro.

The Samsung 980 Pro PCIe NVMe SSD comes in three storage variations; 250GB, 500GB and 1TB. STG received a 1TB to review.

Firstly before investing in one of these you’ll need to check if your PC or Gaming RIG’s motherboard is PCIe compatible. Installing the Samsung 980 Pro is super easy – if you use as a secondary storage.

Able to run at 7,000MB per second for reading and 5,000MB per second writing data makes the 980 Pro one of the fastest SSDs out there.

For this review, I installed the 980 Pro on to a test Gigabyte Z390 ATX as a secondary storage and installed a few Steam games on to the drive.

Gears 5, Forza 7 and Borderlands 3 – flawless play.

All games were super quick to load – local play saw no lags or stutters even during some fierce action filled moments.

Using the Samsung 980 Pro PCIe NVMe SSD as a main OS drive was neither overwhelming or underwhelming. Windows 10 loaded as quickly as hoped, but there was not a noticeable difference in the load time than what I currently experience on my ASUS Zenbook Duo laptop which has a 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 SSD. This I place down to potentially being the Windows 10 OS itself.

The Samsung 980 Pro is 4.0, but backwards compatible to 3.0 – what this essentially means is that it will perform exceedingly well in a lower end, slower port.

Speed test results for the Samsung 980 Pro PCIe NVME SSD 1TB reflect the speeds that Samsung themselves have stated the drive is capable of – I received on average over 5000MB write and slightly under 4000MB read.

Well impressive.

And you’re not needing to sell off a vital organ to get one of these Samsung 980 Pro PCIe NVMe SSDs either, with the 256GB starting at just over a hundred dollars (NZD).

If you’re a PC gamer then it is a definite recommend to place one of these in to your RIG. If you’re an average mid-range user and have a moderately new PC (again check your motherboard specs first) and need that extra oomph in speed the Samsung 980 Pro PCIe NVMe SSD is the way to go.

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