Kingston Fury Renegade SSD Review
The ultimate PS5 SSD
Verdict
The Kingston Fury Renegade SSD is a phenomenal piece of kit. Despite its somewhat aged TLC, in real-world scenarios it absolutely dominates in both raw copy tests and game loading times. It may be a PCIe 4.0 drive, but this might just be the best PS5 SSD out there right now. Both for value and performance.
Pros
- Reasonably priced
- Master of all trades
- Top-tier endurance rating
Cons
- Some similar drives slightly cheaper
- Older 176-Layer TLC NAND
Key Features
- PCIe 4.0 StandardKingston’s Fury Renegade SSD is built around the PCIe 4.0 standard. It might not be as fast as a PCIe 5.0 SSD, but it still pushes the absolute limit of the bandwidth available to it.
- PS5 CompatibleThe Fury Renegade has been designed from the ground up specifically for use in the PS5. It’s low profile heatsink ensures it’ll fit in every Playstation 5 around, bringing impressive thermal efficiency, and a refined
- Full-fat DDR4 CacheUnlike some of its competitors, Kingston’s taking advantage of a full-sized, fully powered, DDR4 cache to help drive some impressive performance numbers.
Introduction
Kingston’s Fury Renegade SSD is absolutely one of the very best PS5 SSDs on the market and very easy to recommend.
Unlike most of its competitors, the company has used a more interesting combination of componentry on the PCIe 4.0 platform to build something unique.
Instead of just relying on the latest PCIe 5.0 NAND in a 4.0 package like Crucial, or jumping ship to PCIe 5.0, the Fury Renegade is an intriguing mix of full-fat DDR4, combined with older 176-Layer NAND, and Phison’s PS5018-E18 controller, with some killer firmware instead.
What does that mean? Simply put, some incredible performance across both sequential and random 4K figures, that translates to serious real-world prowess. It might not be a PCIe 5.0 drive, but it doesn’t hold any punches when you compare it to them.
Specs
- DDR4 cache not LPDDR4
- 176-Layer TLC NAND
- Incredible endurance rating
Predominantly Kingston’s Fury Renegade has been designed with one purpose in mind, to be installed in a PlayStation 5. It’s a PCIe 4.0 unit, matching the PS5’s M.2 slot, and also features a potent low-profile aluminium heatsink, to help encourage those excess temps to fall.
What’s really interesting however is that mix of hardware, and how that relates to real-world performance. On the surface, if you were to look at what Kingston has included here; four year old, 176-Layer TLC, high-powered less efficient DDR4 cache, and a Phison PS5018-E18 controller (a 32-bit ARM Cortex R5 built off the back of TSMC’s 12nm process), you’d assume that it’s going to perform perhaps as well as Crucial’s P5 Plus, or Western Digital’s SN580. Basically, a budget drive, trying to place itself as a perfect value solution for upgrading your console’s storage.
But the thing is it doesn’t, what Kingston has achieved here, is just incredible, as it directly challenges some of the fastest and most expensive PCIe 5.0 drives currently available for purchase. Although more on that later.
Aside from odd hardware combos, and low profile heatsinks, the Kingston Fury Renegade also features some impressive warranty and endurance ratings, with the drive rated for up to 2000 TBW (TeraBytes written) on endurance alone, of course it comes with the now standard 5-year warranty too.
There are no data recovery services like you’d find with something like Seagate’s FireCuda 540 or similar, but it’s still a good 600 TBW more than its closest competitors.
Test Setup
When it comes to testing any amount of SSDs, the first place you need to start is with a good solid stable test bench or test PC.
I’ve been testing the Kingston Fury Renegade and a number of its competitors over the last few weeks and knew from the outset I’d need some top-tier hardware to ensure the only bottleneck was the drive itself.
Each SSD is tested in the PCIe 5.0 slot, closest to the CPU, on an Asus ROG Z790 Dark Hero motherboard. I’ve also paired that with an Intel Core i7-14700K to ensure file transfers remain smooth and consistent and that there’s more than enough cores to go around. All drives are removed from their heatsinks and placed underneath the included M.2 aluminium heatsink on the board itself to ensure a level playing field.
You can find the full system spec below:
- CPU: Intel Core i7-14700K
- Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero
- GPU: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4080 16GB Aero OC
- RAM: 32GB (2x16GB) Corsair Dominator Titanium DDR5 @ 7200
- Cooler: Corsair iCUE Link H150i LCD Liquid CPU Cooler
- PSU: 1200W Corsair RMx Shift 80+ Gold PSU
- Case: Hyte Y70 Touch
When it came to deciding on what tests to use during my time benchmarking these drives, I opted for a mix of synthetic and real-world benchmarks. Crystal Disk Mark 8 is our test of choice for pure synthetic results, looking very specifically at Sequential speeds at a queue depth of 8 and 1, and then Random 4K speeds at Q32 and Q1 as well.
The former is more useful to understand how these drives perform in rapidly copying and retrieving similar file types, whereas Random 4K is more indicative of game loading, or transferring odd file sets. PC Mark 10’s Quick System Drive and Data Drive benchmarks have also been included, so we can see exactly how each drive performs overall on an index basis too.
For our real-world tests, we’re taking advantage of Final Fantasy XIV’s 4K game benchmark test. You can place it directly onto the drive itself, and then load it from the drive. When complete it’ll give you an average load time in seconds for all scenes. Finally, I’ve also included a 120GB file copy test, whereby we take a copy of Red Dead Redemption II (119GB technically), copy it onto the drive, and then time how long it takes to create a second copy on the drive itself.
I’ve also included several indices, created by dividing the price in USD by various metrics including max sequential and 4K speeds, along with a GB per $ metric, to give us a good understanding of how these drives perform from a pure value perspective at time of writing.
Performance
- Seriously impressive performance
- Beats numerous other drives I have tested
Let’s not beat around the bush here, Kingston’s Fury Renegade, is seriously impressive when it comes to benchmark performance.
Sequentials registered at 7,002 MB/s and 6,627 MB/s respectively. Compared to the Crucial T500 (featuring 232-Layer TLC NAND plus Phison’s E25 controller), it was 106 MB/s slower on read, yet nearly 400 MB/s faster on the writes alone.
Keep scrolling down the results and random 4K clocks in at 89 and 354 MB/s, compared to the T500’s 94 and 326 MB/s, again slower on read but faster on write.
What’s more interesting however is taking a look at the 4K Q32 results. Although admittedly a somewhat niche scenario, the Fury beat every single drive we have on test, by some margin, even the top-tier PCIe 5.0 drives.
Into the real-world results, and those synthetic figures really start to show where exactly the performance on this drive lies. Final Fantasy XIV managed an impressive load time of 7.69, slightly slower than the T500, T700, and Aorus Gen5, but still more than respectable.
The biggest shock however came in the form of the 120GB file copy test, where the Fury slid in with a 36.51 second copy time, again quicker than any drive I’ve tested, including the Aorus Gen5 12000.
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Should you buy it?
If you want an absolutely stellar PS5 drive
Kingston’s Fury Renegade 2TB might be pricier than most PCIe 4.0 drives, but it makes up for it in raw real-world performance, game load times and file transfers are phenomenally quick, and its sequential speeds are not exactly bad either.
If you’re a professional photographer or videographer
Sequentials are still on the slow side relatively. Although they’re great for PCIe 4.0, you’ll really benefit from picking up a faster PCIe 5.0 drive instead, such as Crucial’s T700, or Gigabyte’s Aorus Gen5 12000 (if you can find one in stock).
Final Thoughts
Kingston’s Fury Renegade is an impressively well-rounded drive, delivering some epic performance. Combine that with a solid low-profile heatsink, and not only is it well suited to the PS5 that it was designed for, but any gaming PC out there too.
It might just be one of the best SSDs around. Kingston’s built something unique with this drive and shown that there’s alternative ways to drive performance, perhaps in more meaningful ways outside of pure sequential numbers alone. The Fury’s closest rival is by far Crucial’s T500. Similarly priced with similar performance, but what the Fury lacks in value it makes up for in endurance.
How we test
Each SSD we test utilizes a mix of both synthetic and real-world benchmark tests. On top of that, we also use a number of price-to-performance metrics, and monitor temperature and power-draw to determine the long-term stability and cost-effectiveness of the drive.
Each and every SSD is tested in our dedicated test bed
Power and temperature readings are monitored throughout testing
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FAQs
Yes, the Kingston Fury Renegade is specifically designed for installing into the Playstation 5’s M.2 expansion slot.
No, the Kingston Fury Renegade is based on the PCIe 4.0 connection standard.
Full specs
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
