Intro and Design
Storage has definitely come a long way since the early days of my PC adventures. I'll never forget upgrading in megabytes like 120mb to a 400mb hard drive and being thrilled with all the space. Also, switching from 5400rpm drives to the blazing fast 7200rpms or better yet, 10k WD Blacks. Anywho, we are in a much different age now where speed and capacity are melding into one delicious option after another and the HYPERX PREDATOR is the pinnacle of blazing fast speeds and flexibility. Using the latest NVMe tech, this isn't your grandpappy's (does he even have a computer?) SSD drive. It's much, much faster and you'll see in our tests below..
Whether you want to use the included PCIe adapter or insert the drive into your M.2 slot on your motherboard, you can have it your way. We used the M.2 slot and it was a cinch to install and quickly recognized. The packaging and item are quality, no frills but definitely solid to handle. No issues whatsoever with install or design.
Performance
This is where these types of drives really have to shine as their prices aren't cheap by any means are the GB to $$$ ratio is still quite high. Either way, We quickly loaded up some synthetic benchmarks and man were we blown away. This thing is absolutely blazing fast, nearly doubling our other standard M.2 SSD! We tested the 480GB version so we have plenty of capacity to stretch the limits of empty and near full capacity. No matter what, we came away pleased.
Regardless of what we tested, whether it be synthetic tests, loading apps, and especially loading games, our experience overall improved dramatically. Loading games really shined as we reduced some game load times by over six seconds from our other M.2 SSD. These are results that speak for themselves and we couldn't help but smile every time a game spun up to life in record time.
Value and Conclusion
In the end, we absolutely got spoiled and fell in love with the tight design, extremely responsive and plenty of capacity for even the latest games to boot. While playing DARK SOULS III, loading times were pretty much nonexistent. While the drive is deliciously fast, it will still cost you around $300 USD and that is a serious investment. That being said, we believe it's worth every penny as loading times on even the biggest titles will be cut drastically from even a standard SSD drive. I can't recommend this drive enough and if you want the best storage performance on the market today still a fair price, look no further.
