Until a couple of years ago disk storage was a pretty tame market, with two big players and a couple of smaller HDD makers. The differences in performance between comparable models weren't that big, and many computer enthusiasts felt that the HDD was one of the components in a computer that didn't really evolve at the same rate as other parts like CPUs or GPUs.

This changed with the large-scale commercialization of solid state disks, suddenly storage became exciting again and we saw an onrush of dozens of companies trying to gain marketshare in this relatively new market. After becoming one of the largest players in the DRAM memory and USB flash drive markets, Kingston joined the consumer SSD market in January 2009 by entering a partnership with Intel.

The HyperX 3K is one of Kingston's newer SATA 6Gbps solid state disks, it features the popular second-generation LSI SandForce SF-2281 controller and 25nm MLC NAND synchronous flash memory rated for 3000 program/erase cycles, hence the 3K in the product's name. Kingston's regular HyperX SSDs have higher-quality NAND flash memory with a p/e rating of 5000 cycles, so the HyperX 3K should be seen as a more budget-friendly version of the HyperX. A NAND memory cell wears out when it's written to and deleted and the p/e rating provides a guideline for how many cycles a disk can go through before it becomes incapable of holding data. The endurance of the HyperX 3K isn't too bad though, it has the same p/e cycle rating as most other consumer SSDs. Using very conservative numbers, the disk should easily last over eight years in the hands of most enthusiasts.