Kingston Fury Renegade G5 8TB review: huge capacity at an even faster speed
Table of Contents
The race for speed and capacity never stops – even for Kingston. Despite the Fury Renegade lineup already ranking among the best NVMe SSDs on the market, the company continues to push it forward. When we reviewed the Fury Renegade G5 a few months ago, the range topped out at 4TB. Now, that ceiling has doubled, with an 8TB model that launched back in November 2025.
This upgraded PCIe Gen 5 SSD is designed to eliminate storage concerns without the performance compromises associated with SATA drives. The M.2 NVMe form factor delivers sequential read and write speeds in the 14GB/s range, alongside random performance of up to 2.2 million IOPS.
Naturally, that level of performance comes at a premium. The question is whether the cost justifies the gains. To find out, I tested the Fury Renegade G5 8TB against a range of competing NVMe SSDs to see how it really stacks up.
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- Capacity: 8TB
- Interface: PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 NVMe
- Sequential Read Speed: 14,800MB/s
- Sequential Write Speed: 14,000MB/s
- Random Read Speed: 2,200,000 IOPS
- Random Write Speed: 2,200,000 IOPS
- Endurance: 8,000TBW
- Controller: SM2508
- NAND: 3D TLC Kioxia BiCS8
- MTBF: 2M hours
If you’re lacking space and want the best possible speeds out there, the Kingston Fury Renegade G5 8TB ticks all those boxes. Building on the well-received 4TB model, the 8TB version pushes capacity even more. Doubling up its design – by utilizing the back of the drive – it does create a thicker overall drive that can be a bit inconvenient at times when you’re installing it. But if you have the space and can afford the high price tag, it performs very well – managing to sustain high performance over long test times.
- Top-level performance
- Keeps sustained performance
- Manages thermals well
- Large capacity and cache
- Very high price
- Thicker double-sided design
Specs and design
| Form factor | M.2 2280 |
| Interface | PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe |
| Capacities | 1024GB, 2048GB, 4096GB, 8,192GB |
| Controller | SM2508 |
| NAND | 3D TLC |
| DRAM cache | Yes |
| DirectStorage supported | Yes |
| Sequential read/write | 1024GB – up to 14,200/11,000MB/s 2048GB – up to 14,700/14,000MB/s 4096GB/8,192GB – up to 14,800/14,000MB/s |
| Random 4K read/write | 1024GB – up to 2,200,000/2,150,000 IOPS 2048GB – 8192GB– up to 2,200,000/2,200,000 IOPS |
| Endurance (total bytes written) | 1024GB – 1.0PB 2048GB – 2.0PB 4096GB – 4.0PB 8192GB – 8.0PB |
| Storage temperature | -40°C~85°C |
| Operating temperature | 0°C~70°C |
| Dimensions | 1024GB – 4096GB – 80mm x 22mm x 2.3mm 8192GB – 80mm x 22mm x 3.65mm |
| Weight | 1024GB – 7.3g 2048GB – 4096GB – 7.7g 8192 – 9.2g |
| Vibration operating | 2.17G peak (7-800Hz) |
| Vibration non-operating | 20G peak (20 – 1,000Hz) |
| MTBF | 2,000,000 hours |
| Warranty/Support | Limited 5-year warranty with free technical support |
The newest 8TB addition achieves double the capacity of its predecessor by utilizing a double-sided design, with both the front and back of the chip used. This is a great way to add extra capacity without compromising the size or weight too much, with thermals also remaining relatively unscathed.
Utilizing that second side means the drive is now 3.65mm thick, and an increase of 1.35mm or 58.7% compared to the 2.3mm that the other capacities take up. This is something you should consider when it comes to installation in your PC – when I was installing it on a motherboard with a heatsink and thermal pads on both sides, it did take a bit of pushing to ensure it was properly in place.
Given the Gen 5 connector lets these drives reach incredible speeds, you do definitely need to keep the thermals in check, so it’s a good idea to have strong thermal protection in the form of heatsinks and thermal pads. After testing these SSDs and uninstalling them quite soon after, I can tell you that they do in fact get very hot, even in the top-end mobos. Still, as long as the operating temp stays below 70°C, it will keep up the performance.
Along with the greater capacity and thickness, the 8TB model increases the endurance of the drive to 8PB, following the trend of increasing endurance for each capacity. As for the speed, it matches the 4TB sequential speeds with up to 14.8 and 14GB/s read and writes, respectively. Whereas the random speeds match the rest of the lineup, apart from the 1TB, which is slower, with up to 2.2 million IOPS read and writes.
Kingston Fury Renegade G5 8TB front on, Image by PC Guide
Kingston Fury Renegade G5 8TB back, Image by PC Guide
Kingston Fury Renegade G5 8TB box, Image by PC Guide
Kingston Fury Renegade G5 8TB with box, Image by PC Guide
Price
Now, the biggest sticking point of the G5 8TB is, of course, the price. Being the latest PCIe Gen 5, it already has a premium price tag due to using the newest consumer tech; 8TB of capacity, plus fast read and write speeds, only adds to this. At the time of writing, the drive has been listed on Amazon US but has no price attached to it. In the US, there is a wild listing on CDW that places it at $1,035.99 at a discount from $1,533. Whilst in the UK it can be found at Amazon for £936, Scan for £887.99, or Overclockers for £1,049.99.
That being said, you do save some money on a dollar per Terabyte basis by going for this bigger capacity option, with the 1TB model going for $195.99, the 2TB model going for $401.31, and the 4TB for $624.63 on Amazon at the time of writing.
Kingston Fury Renegade G5 8TB installed, Image by PC Guide
Kingston Fury Renegade G5 8TB connector, Image by PC Guide
Kingston Fury Renegade G5 8TB box name, Image by PC Guide
Tests
In our testing lab, we put the SSD through a range of tests to see how it performs in various scenarios. Along with pitting it against various other drives, including the WD_BLACK SN850X and Corsair MP600 Pro XT on PCIe Gen 4, and the WD_BLACK SN8100 on Gen 5. These were tested on the same bench, which was made up of the following hardware.
- Motherboard: MSI MEG X870E GODLIKE X EDITION
- CPU: Ryzen 7 9800X3D
- RAM: Corsair Dominator Titanium RGB (64GB, 6600MT/s, CL32)
- CPU Cooler: ROG RYUJIN III 360
- PSU: Seasonic TX-16000 Noctua edition
- OS: Windows 11
CrystalDiskMark
Firstly, I put the Fury Renegade through CrystalDiskMark in NVMe mode. Testing both the default and real-world performance modes as a comparison to see how they vary. Running five tests in 1GiB sizes, you can find the results of the four drives in the graphs below.
NVMe SSD benchmarks CrystalDiskMark real world, Image by PCGuide
NVMe SSD benchmarks CrystalDiskMark default, Image by PCGuide
Starting with the default profile, this gives us the full sequential and random speeds the NVMe’s can reach. The first tests the queue of 8 and 32, where the drive surpasses 14,700 MB/s reads and 14,100 MB/s writes. The random queue of 32 and 1 instead drops to 4,300 MB/s and just 95MB/s. The G5 is comparable to the SN8100 in the sequentials, with both being Gen 5.
A similar situation is found in the real-world performance scenario, which tests the sequential speed, but with a queue of just one, and the random IOPS and the time it takes. In these, the G5 gets a sequential 1MB read speed of over 8,700MB/s (the SN8100 gets over 9,100) and the sequential 128KB quickly drops, with three of the 4 below 100MB/s. The random IOPS hit over 23,000, and the access time of around 43 microseconds.
On the write side of things, the G5 gets quite a bit quicker with over 10,600 MB/s SEQ1M, 305MB/s SEQ128K, the RND4K reaches 74,500 IOPS, and the RND4K just over 13 microseconds. The drive holds up well against the other PCIe Gen 5 drives and better than the Gen 4, as you might expect, although they do get a lot closer in real-world performance.
3DMark
Finally, I put the drive through the two storage tests from 3DMark. The first is the general storage benchmark, while the second is the DirectStorage feature test.
NVMe SSD benchmarks 3DMark total score, Image by PCGuide
NVMe SSD benchmarks 3DMark access time, Image by PCGuide
NVMe SSD benchmarks 3DMark average bandwidth, Image by PCGuide
NVMe SSD benchmarks 3DMark DirectStorage improvements, Image by PCGuide
In the 3DMark storage test, the Renegade G5 totals 4,648 compared to the 4,120 of the SN8100 and 3,356 of the SN850X, leading the pack as the best of the lot in this scenario. The drive averages a bandwidth of over 780MB/s and an average access time of 38μs. All this means it’s the quickest drive to actually boot into the games.
The DirectStorage test showed even quicker loading times, G5, with it improving bandwidth by over 220% – increasing from 9.14GB/s up to 29.58GB, bringing it up to par with the SN8100.
- Capacity: 8TB
- Interface: PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 NVMe
- Sequential Read Speed: 14,800MB/s
- Sequential Write Speed: 14,000MB/s
- Random Read Speed: 2,200,000 IOPS
- Random Write Speed: 2,200,000 IOPS
- Endurance: 8,000TBW
- Controller: SM2508
- NAND: 3D TLC Kioxia BiCS8
- MTBF: 2M hours
Conclusion
The Kingston Fury Renegade G5 8TB expands very nicely on what the previous iterations of the drive already excelled at. With enormous capacity and even higher top speeds, it is a one-stop solution for never having to worry about your storage ever again, and getting excellent performance.
The sequential speeds of the drive have rocketed up, maxing out its potential in this area, though we would have liked to have seen better random speed performance, which just about matches many other NVMes. With the high price, this drive can be an expensive investment, but for those looking for premium performance, its very much worth considering.
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