These USB sticks are better than a SATA SSD for gaming

In general, the so-called USB keys are characterized by being extremely portable, but their performance in terms of accessing data leaves much to be desired. However, the Kingston DataTraveler Max UFD promises to give performance to all those who have a USB 3.2 20 Gbps type A port. Which also makes it ideal as a storage unit to not only replace your old hard drive, but also your 2.5-inch SATA drive.

The SATA interface is nothing more than an atavistic element on motherboards that will soon have to disappear. Its 6 Gbps speed has long been surpassed by USB 3.1 and later standards. Which can also feed your peripherals with a single port and allow you to use external devices. Which is crucial in the event that you are using a laptop. However, the market is full of slow USB Pendrives that are still anchored in USB 2.0 and with hardware deficiencies that do not make them suitable for certain applications.

These USB sticks are better than a SATA SSD for gaming

Kingston DataTraveler Max UFD

The USB Pendrive that we are going to talk about comes in two different versions, one for Type A connection and the other for Type C connection. Supporting transfer speeds of up to 20 Gbps and with storage capacities of 256 GB, 512 GB and 1TB . Their bandwidth makes them a better option than mounting a SATA SSD in your laptop bay, and they’re fast enough to run an operating system without a hitch. Which is ideal if you want to tinker with Linux without losing performance. We can even use it as an extra drive to store our games, as long as they don’t require a PCIe SSD, and we can run them from the drive.

Kingston DataTraveler

However, its advantages do not end there. It must be started from the fact that most units of this type do not usually have a flash memory controller at the level of those of SSDs. That is, a chip that can access data stored in flash memory quickly enough. This avoids bottlenecks and retentions in access, allowing data to flow much better and thereby increasing system performance. While an NVMe SSD under PCI Express interface is much better, for gaming the Kingston DataTraveler UFD Max offers much better performance than a SATA drive thanks to its integrated Flash controller and fast USB interface.

It is, therefore, a perfect external storage unit for those who have an ultra-slim laptop or an AiO desktop. Being a USB Pendrive it does not take up space and is highly portable. So we can take it anywhere without problems. So as you can understand, the advantages over a conventional SATA SSD drive outweigh the disadvantages. As for the latter, there is the consumption of the laptop’s battery, since at these speeds, the USB port consumes much more than normal. But it is a small price to pay for all its advantages.