Kingston KC3000 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD - High-performance storage for desktop and laptop PCs -SKC3000S/1024G

Product Information

Even better and where it matters more. This time the 1TB KC3000 beats its 2TB sibling and turns in the second-best performance we've seen to date. Outstanding. 3DMark SSD Gaming Test

In 4K write, the Kingston drive went on to peak at just over 445,331 IOPS with latency at about 281.7µs. This placed it third, but still well behind the Seagate and Corsair drives, which boasted over 100K IOPS more. For highlights, the KC3000 was able to hit peak scores of 585,182 IOPS in 4K read, 445,331 IOPS in 4K write, 6.62GB/s in 64K read, and 1.69GB/s in 64K write. In our VDI Full Clone tests, the Kingston topped out at 129,099 IOPS in boot, while Initial Login and Monday Login showed peaks of 70,000 IOPS and 21,337 IOPS. Looking at SQL Server average latency, the new Kingston drive showed a solid average latency of 3ms, which placed it at the upper part of the leaderboard and alongside Samsung’s flagship SSD, the Samsung 980 Pro. The new Kingston offering is also the latest Gen4 SSD to use the effective combination of the Phison PS5018-E18 controller and Micron’s B47R 3D TLC NAND. The E18 leverages the new TSMC 12nm process node (a significant improvement from the previous 28nm), which increases performance by up to 25% over the previous generation. This noticeable difference allows greater power efficiency and lower thermal output. All of the combined means faster potential performance of SSDs. We previously saw the E18 used inside drives like the Seagate FireCuda 530 and Corsair MP600 Pro XT, and expect more of the same impressive numbers in our Kingston KC3000 charts.

Greater flexibility.

For reliability, the KC3000 has an MTBF of 1,800,000 hours and an endurance rating (total bytes written) of 1.6PBW for the 2TB capacity model. The latter value is noticeably lower than the Seagate Firecuda 530‘s 2.55PBW. It’s higher than Corsair though, which continues this inconsistent endurance spec on E18 SSDs. Based on “out-of-box performance” using a PCIe 4.0 motherboard. Speed may vary due to host hardware, software and usage. Kingston KC3000 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD delivers next-level performance using the latest Gen 4x4 NVMe controller and 3D TLC NAND. Upgrade the storage and reliability of your system to keep up with demanding workloads and experience better performance with software applications such as 3D rendering and 4K+ content creation. With formidable speeds of up to 7,000MB/s read/write, it ensures improved workflow in high-performance desktop and laptop PCs, making it ideal for power users who require the fastest speeds on the market. The compact M.2 2280 design fits seamlessly into motherboards and gives greater flexibility where high-power users appreciate responsiveness and superior loading times. Switching over to sequential workloads, the new Kingston drive performed much better than all the other tested drives peaking at 105,888 IOPS (6.62GB/s) and 301µs latency. Though this didn’t quite make it to its top quoted numbers, it is still one of the fastest consumer drives we’ve seen in sequential reads. In PCMark 10's overall storage test, the KC3000 had the second highest score, edged out by the Crucial P5 Plus. It posted the highest score in the Call of Duty gaming test and the second highest in Overwatch. It also had a high score in launching Adobe Photoshop, tied with the ADATA S70 Blade, and had the best scores in PCMark's ISO and file copy tests.

This test uses SQL Server 2014 running on Windows Server 2012 R2 guest VMs and is stressed by Quest’s Benchmark Factory for Databases. StorageReview’s Microsoft SQL Server OLTP testing protocol employs the current draft of the Transaction Processing Performance Council’s Benchmark C (TPC-C), an online transaction-processing benchmark that simulates the activities found in complex application environments. Unsurprisingly, Kingston quotes their new KC3000 drive with a pretty impressive performance profile with read and write speeds of 7GB/s and 7GB/s, respectively, for the 2TB and 4TB models. Random 4K performance is quoted to reach up to 1 million IOPS for both reads and writes. These numbers are exactly what the Phison E18 controller indicates it tops out at.We put the KC3000 through our usual suite of internal solid-state drive benchmarks, comprising Crystal DiskMark 6.0, PCMark 10 Storage, and AS-SSD. Crystal DiskMark's sequential speed tests provide a traditional measure of drive throughput, simulating best-case, straight-line transfers of large files. The only test where the KC3000 fell marginally off the pace was in our 450GB sustained write—something most users won’t do very often, if ever. 3 minutes and 36 seconds is still a very fast time.