Overview
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We’ll cut to the chase: in 2022, the Kingston Fury Renegade SSD is one of the best SSDs for gaming that you can install in your motherboard’s M.2 port. At a time when the potential of Gen 4.0 NVMe drives continues to outperform expectations as the market enters its third year, Kingston has demonstrated that it knows how to deliver consistently brilliant performance and outcomes.
The Kingston Fury Renegade SSD employs a Phison E18 Gen 4×4 controller to deliver some impressive numbers that aren’t always seen in drives of this generation of NVMe.
For all the difference that looks make, there isn’t much to talk about in terms of aesthetics. The Kingston Fury Renegade prioritizes efficiency over flashiness, as evidenced by its simple black and white visual design. When it comes to the physical design, there’s a constructed low-profile graphene aluminum heat spreader to keep the core temperatures low.
During our testing, we found that the Kingston Fury Renegade SSD maintained a temperature well below its operating temperature of 70 degrees (it peaked at 68 degrees), which is truly remarkable for something this thin and lightweight. Heat metrics like this are typical of our thicker, dedicated motherboard heat spewers, so it’s obviously doing its job here.
Performance
The Kingston Fury Renegade SSD is without a doubt one of the fastest Gen 4.0 models on the market right now, as the company’s specifications have been met. It was claimed that the drive could accomplish up to 7,300 reads and 7,000 write MB/s. Our testing confirmed this level of performance, as evidenced by CrystalDiskMark scores of 7,344.99 read and 6,874.21 write. The overall Anvil score was also commendable: 21,649.35.
Consider CyberPunk 2077 (and its 64.88 GB file), which was transferred in 22.66 seconds from another NVMe SSD to the Kingston Fury Renegade. Destiny 2 (which has a staggering 73.5 GB of DLC) made the transition to the Renegade in a similarly impressive 28 seconds. If you really want to have all of your games in one place and ready to take edge of DirectStorage, which will use Gen 4.0 SSD performance in the latest titles, you can relax knowing that the handover process should be quick.
Should you buy the Kingston Fury Renegade SSD?
The Kingston Fury Renegade SSD is unquestionably one of the best gaming SSDs. It’s also important to note that, thanks to its form factor and built-in heat spreader, it’s a strong contender for one of the best PS5 SSDs on the market – though you could add your own extra heat spreader to be sure.
Be warned, as with other quicker drive systems of its ilk, it can get high-priced at 2TB and up, but if you want amazingly fast and reliable performance, the Kingston Fury Renegade SSD can do it all.