Hello, Habr! It would seem that not so much time has passed since CES 2021 , and now ... the time of the first announcements has crept up. Today we will talk about additions to the Kingston family of solid-state solutions. More specifically, about the NVMe-drive NV1 and the new mSATA form factor devices from the KC600 series .
In January 2021, Kingston promised that in addition to the flagship SSD, codenamed Ghost Tree, there will be a range of mid-range devices that combine high performance and low cost. This solution was the Kingston NV1 series of drives. : from March 29, 2021, new devices released in the m.2 2280 form factor became available for upgrading personal computers and laptops.
Please note that at the time of publication, only the announcement of the Kingston NV1 series took place , so our material was prepared in the format of a first glance at the presented hardware and implies a discussion of the latest in theory. As soon as they appear with us, we will conduct full-fledged tests and tell you all the details, backed up by practical measurements.
Kingston NV1: fight for the title of the best lightweight champion
The drives are made in the form of a printed circuit board with a one-sided arrangement of the element base and are offered in capacities of 500, 1000 and 2000 GB. The Kingston NV1 product line can be compared to the SATA SSD from the A400 series, as it is likely that NV1 models will compete for the title of the most affordable NVMe solutions from a recognized brand.
Depending on market situations, the component base of drives can change: in particular, we can see a combination of controllers (such as Phison E13T and Silicon Motion SM2263XT) without DRAM paired with TLC NAND for devices with a lower capacity (500 GB), and the use of QLC NAND for a maximum capacity of 2 TB. This means that the NV1 may be more budget-friendly than the current one. Kingston A2000 , which cuts a niche between flagship solutions and mass storage devices by using TLC NAND and a four-channel SM2263 controller with DRAM cache.
What do we know for sure about the Kingston NV1? And the fact that the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface used here guarantees sequential reading of information at a maximum speed of 2.1 Gb / s, and writing at a level of 1.7 Gb / s. In addition, a capacious SLC cache is used to speed up writing. And also, according to the manufacturer, drives labeled NV1 consume only 5 milliwatts of electricity in standby mode (and with activated power saving mode). The maximum power consumption can reach values โโof 1.1 watts when reading and 3.3 watts when writing information.
Thanks to the compact design of new products due to the standard size of 2280 (2.2x8 cm with a thickness of 2.1 mm), Kingston focuses mostly on notebook and ultrabook owners who can improve the capabilities of their mobile solutions without resorting to buying a new device. The manufacturer provides a three-year warranty for NV1 devices. It should be noted that the declared parameters of TBW (Total Byte Written) are quite modest: 120, 240 and 480 TB - corresponding to the indicated capacities. However, it is not yet known for certain whether this is a sign of using cheap and less reliable QLC memory.
Kingston KC600: a legend in the mSATA form factor
KC600 series solid state drives have been on the market for several years, and the mSATA size is gradually becoming another common format in addition to the previously offered 2.5 โ. Based on Silicon Motion's SM2259 controller, the new KC600 mSATA offers the same specs as the 2.5-inch version but differs in size (50x30x5mm) and available capacities. A 2 TB version is not provided, but there are 256, 512 and 1024 GB options.
As for performance, read and write speeds remained the same: sequential reads occur at 550 MB / s, and write - in the range from 500 to 520 MB / s. The maximum random read / write IOPS (IOPS) is 90,000 / 80,000. In general, these are typical values โโfor current SATA SSDs that are limited by the SATA III interface.
Please note that the KC600 family of drives in the mSATA version supports hardware encryption that meets the AES-256, TCG Opal and eDrive standards. The warranty period is 5 years, and the TBW is 600 TB (more than the models from the NV1 series, by the way).
For more information on Kingston Technology products, visit the company's official website .