New items are presented in four sizes from 250 GB to 2 TB and all of them are made in the M.2 2280 form factor, equipped with a PCI Express 3.0 x4 connection interface with NVMe 1.3 protocol and support end-to-end data protection using 256-bit AES hardware encryption. Encryption is applicable in a corporate environment, with support for TCG Opal 2.0 and Microsoft eDrive. Speeds depend on SSD size:
- 250 GB - read up to 3500 MB / s, write up to 1200 MB / s;
- 500 GB - read up to 3500 MB / s, write up to 2900 MB / s;
- 1 TB - read up to 3500 MB / s, write up to 2900 MB / s;
- 2 TB - Read up to 3500 MB / s, write up to 2900 MB / s.
The stated warranty service period is 5 years.
The core of any NVMe drive is the controller and Kingston continues to use the well-known Silicon Motion SM2262ENG processor. Naturally, all 8 channels available to the controller are involved. And the main difference from the KC2000 is the improved firmware, which allows you to use all the reserves of NAND memory. And, in my own words, overclocked NAND memory chips.
The package includes the KC 2500 SSD itself and a key for activating the Acronis True Image HD utility. It will make it easier to migrate to a new drive by making an image of your old drive. The drive is designed in the popular M.2 2280 form factor and is suitable for installation in PCs and laptops. Standard Windows formatting leaves 931 gigabytes of free space for the user. The layout of the NAND memory is double-sided, and the SSD itself allows you to install additional cooling on it, but as it turns out later, it is not a prerequisite.
Testing technique
The topology of the structure of SSD drives provides for the use of a write and read buffer, as well as multithreading. DRAM cache size is usually either static or dynamic. In today's typical SSDs, Silicon Motion controllers often have a "tricky" dynamic DRAM cache, and the firmware manages it. The main trick lies in the controller and firmware. The better and more progressive the controller is used and the more adaptable the firmware for different scenarios of use, the faster the SSD works, provided there is high-speed NAND memory.
The test bench included an Intel platform with an ASUS ROG Maximus XI Hero (Wi-Fi) motherboard, an Intel Core i7 9900K processor, an ASUS Radeon RX 5700 video card, 16GB DDR4-4000 memory, and Windows 10 X64 (build 19041) operating system.
Test results
AS SSD Benchmark
- 10 ;
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- / 4 ( 64);
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- Copy Benchmark (ISO , , ).
CrystalDiskMark
- 5 , 16 1 .
- / 8.
- / 1.
- / 4 32 16 .
- / 4 1.
HD Tune Pro 5.75
- 64 .
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- , 16 .
PCMark 10 Storage
- Quick System Drive Benchmark: , . , ;
- Data Drive Benchmark: NAS, ( ).
The standard write procedure for the KC2500 SSD allows you to assess how hot the device is without active cooling. You won't be surprised if we tell you that heating high-performance SSDs is a cornerstone. Engineers are fighting about this problem and trying not to put the SSD into critical modes. The simplest approach implies the installation of a heatsink (purchased separately, or the motherboard cooling system is used), or a mode of skipping write queues is introduced to unload the controller. This will reduce performance, but the SSD will not overheat. The same scheme works on processors, when it skips clockwise when it gets too hot. But in the case of a processor, the gaps will not be as noticeable to the user as with an SSD. After heating up above the temperature set by the designers,The SSD will skip too many clock cycles. This, in turn, will cause freezes in the operating system. Fortunately, the firmware in Kingston KC2500 is adapted in such a way that during recording the controller rests at the moment when the DRAM cache is exhausted. For any write task, the buffer ends first, the controller is unloaded, then the data goes back to the buffer and the recording continues at the same speed without a long stop. The temperature at 72C is close to critical, but the test itself took place in unfavorable conditions: the SSD was located close to the video card and lacked a motherboard heatsink. Installing a radiator that comes with the motherboard allowed to reduce the temperature to 53-55C. The SSD sticker was not removed, and the thermal pad of the motherboard was used as a heat-conducting material.In addition, the size of the heatsink in ASUS ROG Maximus XI Hero is not so large, and therefore has only average heat dissipation efficiency. It is worth considering that by taking the Kingston KC2500 to a separate PCIe adapter board and adding a heatsink to it, you can completely forget about temperature conditions.
Dynamic cache
Traditionally, any review of a drive includes a test to fill the DRAM cache with the subsequent announcement of its size, but this is fundamentally wrong. In the Kingston KC2500 model, the fast buffer is dynamically allocated not only as a percentage of free space, but also of the type of data being written.
For example, let's try to fill the entire disk with a file with random data. This file contains compressible and non-compressible data in various blocks. Theoretically, a fast buffer should be enough for 100-200 GB, but as you can see, the result is different. A significant drop in linear recording was drawn only at the 400+ GB mark, which tells us about a complex firmware write control algorithm. At this stage, it becomes clear where the man-hours were spent creating the KC2500. Thus, the SLC cache on the KC2500 drive is indeed dynamically allocated and depends on many factors, but is definitely not limited to 150-160 GB.
Types of SSD accesses in Windows 10
The second common mistake is not to let the reader understand what calls are going to the disk if you use it as a system one. Here again, the correct approach to assessment is important. I will try to repeat the usual work in the operating system by the user. To do this, we will delete something in the trash, open a dozen files in Photoshop, run disk cleanup in parallel, export from Excel, having previously opened several tables and continue writing this text. There is not enough parallel installation of updates, well, nothing, let's launch updates from Steam.
For almost 10 minutes of work, more than 90% of requests were associated with reading files in 4K blocks, and almost half of the records in the same blocks. Note that the paging file in the Windows environment was at the discretion of the system. In general, the picture shows that it is not so much speed that is important for work, as the response time for small-block operations. Moreover, the volume of these operations is not so great. Naturally, you should think about purchasing a fast SSD for games (downloading the games themselves and the speed of writing updates are also important). And as another remark, it's nice to get a high linear read / write speed when it comes to frequent copying or writing of data.
conclusions
Kingston KC2500 is the continuation of the popular KC2000 series, on accelerated memory with firmware adapted for desktop computers. Improvements have affected both linear read and write speeds. The approach to SLC-cache has been revised, it has more degrees of freedom and adjustment for different scenarios. As a bonus, Kingston continues to provide customers with a 5-year warranty and support for 256-bit XTS-AES encryption.
For more information on Kingston Technology products, visit the company's official website .