Introduction
Today we’re revisiting a product we tested in 2021 with Kingston’s release of the FURY Renegade SSD heatsink version. Kingston released the FURY Renegade SSD back in 2021 and we reviewed it to very positive results. It was one of the fastest of the 7000MB/s generation Gen4 SSDs we’ve tested to date. That said, upon release, Kingston did not immediately make a heatsink option available. We’ve reviewed numerous other SSDs like the Seagate FireCUDA 530 SSD which is one of the launch partners for the Playstation 5’s announcement of the M.2 activation update from Sony. Sony does have certain guidelines in making compatible SSDs namely a fixed height and width as well as a minimum speed. You can read more about Sony’s M.2 guidelines here.
Back to the FURY Renegade SSD, this may not have made it one of the ideal options for a PS5 as Gen4 SSDs tend to get warm and a thin graphene heatspreader will not be enough to dissipate heat especially in cases like that on PS5 that has restrictive and limited airflow. This also a similar issue on motherboards with no built-in M.2 SSD shrouds which is more prone to heating despite more active airflow due to more heat sources in the environment like the GPU or a large tower heatsink. Today we’ll be reviewing the Kingston FURY Renegade SSD heatsink model which features a PS5-compatible heatsink which helps dissipates heat of the FURY Renegade SSD.
As the Kingston FURY Renegade SSD heatsink is the exact same unit from the one we reviewed before, I’d like to give a special focus on performance on the Playstation 5 for this model as it is the most heavily touted feature of this SSD. We’ll still include benchmark results for the testing, which without surprise, is identical tot he one we reviewed before. Sorry to spoil that “unexpected” result but in all seriousness, in this review we’ll take add some tests we’ve not previous included as well as the thermal ramp for the Kingston FURY SSD and see just how good it cools our SSD inside our Playstation 5.
Features & Specification
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| Kingston FURY Renegade SSD / with Heatsink | Kingston KC3000 SSD | |
| Form Factor | M.2 | M.2 |
| Interface | PCIe 4.0 NVMe x4 | PCIe 4.0 NVMe x4 |
| Size/Capacity | 512GB, 1024GB, 2048GB, 4096GB | 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB |
| Controller | Phison E18 | Phison E18 |
| NAND Type | 3D TLC | 3D TLC |
| Sequential R/W | 512GB – 7,000/3,900MB/s 1024GB – 7,000/6,000MB/s 2048GB – 7,000/7,000MB/s 4096GB – 7,000/7,000MB/s |
500GB – 7,300/3,900MB/s 1TB – 7,300/6,000MB/s 2TB – 7,300/7,000MB/s 4TB – 7,300/7,000MB/s |
| Random 4K R/W | 512GB – up to 450,000/900,000 IOPS 1024GB – up to 900,000/1,000,000 IOPS 2048GB – up to 1,000,000/1,000,000 IOPS 4096GB – up to 1,000,000/1,000,000 IOPS |
500GB – up to 450,000/900,000 IOPS 1TB – up to 900,000/1,000,000 IOPS 2TB – up to 1,000,000/1,000,000 IOPS 4TB – up to 1,000,000/1,000,000 IOPS |
| Total Bytes Written | 512GB – 400TBW 1024GB – 800TBW 2048GB – 1.6PBW 4096GB – 3.2PBW |
500GB – 500TBW 1TB – 1.0PBW 2TB – 2.0PBW 4TB – 4.0PBW |
| MTBF | 1.8 Million Hours | 1.8 Million Hours |
| Warranty | 5-year | 5-year |
- Incredible PCIe Gen 4×4 NVMe performance at speeds up to 7300MB/s read and 7000MB/s write
- Low profile graphene aluminum heat spreader
- Slim M.2 2280 form factor for enhanced gaming experience on your rig and laptop
- High capacity options up to 4TB to store your games and media
- Compatible with Playstation 5
Closer Look – Kingston FURY Renegade SSD Heatsink
Kingston ships the FURY Renegade SSD heatsink model in a full-colored carboard box which features Kingston’s signature FURY box design. The back has a hero shot of the product alongside a Playstation 5, heavily hinting at the intent. Of course you can use this on any application, as long as you can accomodate the dimentions of this SSD.
The Kingston FURY Renegade SSD heatsink model still retains the same M.2_2280 length of the standard FURY Renegade SSD. Adhering to Sony’s specification, Kingston’s heatsink is a 2-sided cover which sits in place with screws and thermal pads (photos below). The Kingston FURY branded is printed on the top of the heatsink along with the Renegade name.
The heatsink is very well-made and the coating doesn’t scratch off easily. Unlike the Seagate FireCUDA 530, the heatsink on the Kingston is not a full block of aluminum but rather cut with an intricate design.
In our Patriot Viper VP4300, that SSD recommended using the graphene heatpsreader before applying the metal heatsink. In the case of the Kingston FURY Renegade SSD heatsink, Kingston does not include the original graphene heatspreader, opting to go directly with a thermal pad to mount both backplate and heatsink.
For those snooping around for bait-and-switch, here are shots of the components used by Kingston. Parts are:
- Controller: Phison PS5018-E18-41
- DRAM: Kingston D5116AN9CXGRK
- Flash: Kingston FB25608UCM1-9E
Below are images from the non-heatsink model I reviewed in late 2021:
Performance Testing – Kingston FURY Renegade SSD Heatsink
Test Setup
Processor: Intel Core i9-13900K
Motherboard: ROG Maximus Z690 EXTREME
Memory: Kingston FURY Renegade DDR5-6400 32GB (2×16)
Storage: Kingston FURY Renegade SSD (OS), tested drive as listed
PSU: FSP Hydro GT Pro 1000W
Cooling: NZXT Kraken X72 RGB
Monitor: ROG PG27UQ
VGA: MSI RTX 3050 Gaming X
Our sample for this test is the Kingston FURY Renegade 2TB SSD Heatsink
Playstation 5 Testing
The Sony Playstation 5 supports storage expansion thru M.2 devices and many SSD makers are advertising their drives as supporting the Playstation 5. That said, we’ve included PS5 bandwidth testing in our reviews. We use the Playstation 5’s internal read speed test for the primary initialization. Due to how Sony designed this benchmark, our testing averages at least 5 reads with the drive formatted after a rest period for best thermal results.
Thermal Behavior
We show the thermal ramp here from cold boot to actual gaming with Horizon Forbidden West. I initially voted to use a full copy test as we had 800GB of data storage in an exterenal SSD as a backup of my PS5 games but I voted against it won’t be representative of actaul PS5 use or its SSD. Still, if you need a reference, most SSDs without heatsinks will throttle once used in such scenarios, which could see their speed take a bump. Depending on the SSD, the performance penalty may be down to 300MB/s all the way to as harsh as 800MB/s,
And here are he performance results for the Playstation 5 tests:
Crystal DiskMark
CrystalDIskMark has been the most actively updated disk benchmark amongst all the ones we use and is effectively the most reliable. Unfortunately, version to version results are not comparable which limits the ability to extrapolate comparative data. Still its a reliable and direct benchmark. Like the previous, it allows control over test data pattern, the test data size, amount of passes and individual benchmark control.
PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark
PCMark 10 introduces a set of four storage benchmarks that use relevant real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to fully test the performance of the latest modern drives.
3DMark Storage Benchmark
The 3DMark Storage Benchmark uses traces recorded from popular games and gaming-related activities to measure real-world gaming performance, such as:
- Loading Battlefield V from launch to the main menu.
- Loading Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 from launch to the main menu.
- Loading Overwatch® from launch to the main menu.
- Recording a 1080p gameplay video at 60 FPS with OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) while playing Overwatch.
- Installing The Outer Worlds from the Epic Games Launcher.
- Saving game progress in The Outer Worlds.
- Copying the Steam folder for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive from an external SSD to the system drive.
Final Fantasy XIV Benchmark
Final Fantasy XIV has a standalone benchmark application for PC, always updated to the latest game expansion with the latest Endwalker benchmark delivering some very nice graphical updates. A long-standing feature of the Final Fantasy XIV standalone benchmark is the loading data is captures which is a summary of all the load times between scenes in the benchmark.
User Experience & Conclusion
If you’ve seen other reviews for the Kingston FURY Renegade SSD heatsink or non-heatsink, you’d probably seen most of them praising this SSD. Its nothing revolutionary and it has plenty of competition but as this one of the most reasonably-priced heatsink models around, its definitely an easy pick-up. While it does have a slight premium from the non-heatsink Kingston FURY Renegade SSD, if you have a PS5 or a motherboard without an M.2 heatsink cover, then it make sense that you go this route. Because despite M.2 heatsinks only going for $5 from Chinese makers, you don’t get the full warranty cover from Kingston especially if you’re not the fiddly kind of person.
As mentioned, it peforms exactly like its initial launch version without the heatsink but the one thing I have to mention is that in write-intensive situations like copying 200GB or more files like Steam games, or anything similar to that scale, the heatsink helps improve performance by keeping throttling to a minimum which reduces performance on the SSD. But perhaps Kingston really just wants you to use their drive on your PS5 which is a dark and lonely spot for an SSD.
The Kingston FURY Renegade SSD heatsink version is still one of the fastest Gen4 SSDs we’ve tested and it retains that notion to this day. Given that we use the previous drive we tested rigorously, endurance is also a plus for Kingston. The Kingston FURY Renegade SSD heatsink is now available from major dealers and retailers. Check with your favorite shop for pricing and availability.
