HyperX Predator 240GB M.2 PCIe SSD Review

In this review I looked at the new HyperX Predator M.2 PCIe SSD drive.  This is an enterprise level SSD based on the M.2 standard.  Our review sample came with a HyperX branded PCI Express expansion card which allows the drive to be installed in a variety of different machines.

Typically the number of M.2 drives is limited to available connectors on the motherboard however, with the included adaptor card you are given the opportunity to create software based RAID arrays and run a multitude of drives in a single system.  Likewise is also allows you to run PCI Express based storage in older machines that may not have an available M.2 connector basically giving you the best of both worlds.

Overall performance was very impressive and yet a bit of a surprise.  On the surface the PCI Express drive is extremely fast when it comes to Sequential Reads allowing the drive to max out the controller bandwidth.  According to the documentation the drive should also have Write speeds near 1GB/s however, the benchmark numbers only showed close to 700MB/s making the drive still faster than our SATA6 reference drive.

Unfortunately the Predator drive was a bit slower when it came to Random Read/Write performance using multiple queues and threads.  In these situations our reference SATA6 SSD proved to be faster and is likely the reason behind the relativity flat Real-World performance.

Given that the Predator drive is designed for enterprise systems the superior Read performance will be very important for serving up data from servers when faster is better.  When it comes to desktop use I noticed that basic windows performance was noticeably faster and more responsive with near instant access to the desktop while loading applications was about the same across both drives.

Performance aside I see a bright future for M.2 based expansion cards allowing MiniITX systems more options for expansion and even allowing system builders and casemodders more room in their builds for important stuff like watercooling loops and extra video cards.

PCI Express Expansion Card
M.2 PCI Express SSD
1.4GB/s Reads
Compact Form Factor
Enterprise Technology at an Enthusiast Price Level
Variety of Sizes Available
Good Price per GB

Slow writes
Random performance slower than expected