Kingston Fury Renegade G5 SSD Review – Look, Ma, No Heatsink!

The Kingston Fury Renegade G5 PCIe 5.0 (Gen5) NVMe SSD is my first Gen5 NVMe SSD. If you’ve been following Craving Tech, you’ll see that I’ve reviewed plenty of Gen4 NVMe SSDs (from Kingston and many other brands). At certain point, you can actually see the limit at how much speed you can squeeze out of the chips. However, thanks to the PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2 slot on modern motherboards like my GIGABYTE Z790 AERO G, there is more to be enjoyed.

With this Kingston Fury Renegade G5 for example, you can get up to 14,800MB/s Read and 14,000MB/s Write speed – which breaks through the barrier of “lightning fast” with the Gen4 NVMe SSDs easily.

The Kingston FURY Renegade G5 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD represents the cutting edge of consumer storage technology, delivering blistering speeds that push the boundaries of what’s possible in the M.2 form factor. With read speeds reaching up to 14,800MB/s and write speeds hitting 14,000MB/s on the 4TB capacity, this drive is clearly targeting high-power users, hardware enthusiasts, and gamers who demand the absolute best performance from their systems.

After extensively testing the Renegade G5 across various workloads and gaming scenarios, I can confidently say this drive delivers on its promise of extreme performance, though it comes with considerations that potential buyers should understand.

Unboxing and Packaging Contents

The Kingston FURY Renegade G5 arrives in typical Kingston packaging with clear branding that emphasises its Gen5 credentials. Inside, you’ll find the M.2 2280 SSD itself, which features a sleek black PCB design that looks premium without being flashy. The drive feels solid and well-constructed, and the 12-layer PCB construction is evident in its slightly thicker profile compared to older generation drives.

Surprisingly, you won’t find any heatsink here.

Installation is straightforward if your motherboard supports PCIe 5.0, though the drive maintains backward compatibility with Gen3 and Gen4 systems – albeit at reduced speeds.

Performance That Actually Matters

Let’s address the elephant in the room: those headline speeds of 14,800/14,000MB/s are genuinely impressive, but they only tell part of the story. In real-world usage, the difference between a high-end Gen4 drive and this Gen5 monster isn’t always as dramatic as the numbers suggest.

Where the Renegade G5 truly shines is in sustained workloads. Video editing projects with 4K and 8K footage benefit significantly from the extra bandwidth, with noticeably faster project loading times and smoother scrubbing through timeline previews.

Gaming performance is where things get interesting. Game loading times are undoubtedly faster, but the improvements over a quality Gen4 drive are more incremental than revolutionary. So even when the read speed is double on paper compared to your older Gen4 NVMe SSD, say, that doesn’t mean you’ll see your game loads twice as fast. Just trying to manage your expectations here.

The real benefit comes with DirectStorage-enabled games and future titles that will leverage the full potential of Gen5 speeds. As game assets become larger and more detailed, having this bandwidth headroom will become increasingly valuable. You probably want to check whether your games support DirectStorage but I’m sure this will be fully adopted to lots of games in the near future.

Advanced Engineering Under the Hood

Kingston has clearly put significant thought into the Renegade G5’s design beyond just raw speed numbers. The Silicon Motion SM2508 controller, built on 6nm lithography, runs significantly cooler than previous generations while delivering better performance. This is crucial because Gen5 drives have historically struggled with thermal management.

And I was pretty surprised to find that the unit doesn’t come with a heatsink. But even more surprising is how good the performance is even without one!

The low-power DDR4 DRAM cache is another smart engineering choice. It reduces power consumption while maintaining excellent performance characteristics, and I noticed the drive stayed cooler during extended workloads compared to some competing Gen5 solutions I’ve tested. Using HWMonitor, I can see that the drive runs around 50 degrees on idle and up to 80 degrees maximum on heavy load like running my CrystalDisk Benchmark.

I even tried running the benchmark a few times and in some drives, I’d usually hit the thermal throttling after the second or third consecutive benchmark runs. The drive is still solidly giving me blazing fast speeds.

The independent Buck IC for consistent power draw is particularly noteworthy. This ensures stable performance even under varying system loads, which becomes important when you’re pushing the drive to its limits during intensive tasks.

Obviously, it would even be better if your motherboard has a built-in heatsink like mine to make sure you’ll never get throttled on performance.

File transfer operations are incredibly fast, with large video files and game installations completing in impressively short timeframes. The drive handled simultaneous read/write operations without significant performance degradation, which is crucial for content creators working with large media files.

Kingston FURY Renegade G5 Review Conclusion

The Kingston FURY Renegade G5 represents the current pinnacle of consumer SSD performance, delivering speeds that were unimaginable just a few years ago. The engineering excellence is evident in its thermal management, consistent performance under load, and impressive IOPS figures that complement the headline speed numbers.

For content creators working with large media files, professionals dealing with data-intensive workflows, and enthusiasts who want the absolute best performance available, the Renegade G5 justifies its premium positioning. The drive excels in scenarios where sustained high-speed transfers are crucial, and its future-proofing value cannot be understated.

However, for general gaming and everyday computing tasks, the performance improvements over quality Gen4 drives may not justify the additional cost for all users. The sweet spot for this drive is clearly high-end systems where maximum performance is prioritised over value considerations.

The Kingston FURY Renegade G5 successfully delivers on its promise of extreme Gen5 performance while addressing many of the thermal and efficiency challenges that have plagued early Gen5 drives – without using a heatsink. If you need the fastest consumer storage available and have the budget to match, this drive belongs at the top of your consideration list.

It’s available in capacities of 1TB (retails at A$359), 2TB (retails at A$569), and 4TB (retails at A$1,099).

Disclosure: Kingston FURY Renegade G5 review sample was supplied for reviewing