Kingston’s PCIe 4.0 SSD line-up includes drives that are meant for budget users, professional users, and gamers. We had received the 2TB KC3000, Kingston’s current second-fastest PCIe 4.0 SSD for review. Here are our thoughts about the drive.
Currently, Kingston’s high-speed PCIe 4.0 SSDs include the Renegade SSD and KC3000 drives. While both drives share similar performances, the Renegade was aimed at gamers, and the KC3000 towards professional workloads. However, unlike the Renegade SSD line-up, the KC3000 does not come with a dedicated heatsink, and instead, it comes with a low-profile graphene aluminum heat spreader for even distribution of the heat from the chips.
It’s worth noting that Kingston does provide a normal and heatsink version for the Renegade SSDs. That said, the low-profile graphene aluminum heat spreader is black in color, and matches the black PCB of the drive. The heat spreader features a design pattern that resembles the lines of a circuit board. The KC3000 comes in 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB variants. The 2TB model that we have here, is a dual-sided 2280 drive, with chips on both sides of the device.
In terms of performance, Kingston uses the Phison E18 controller with DRAM, and the drive uses 3D TLC chips. Each of the storage variants we mentioned does differ in terms of read and write speeds. For instance, Kingston rates the 512GB version to have a read and write speed of 7000 MB/s and 3900 MB/s, respectively. The write speed improves further to 6000 MB/s, when choosing the 1TB model. And the 2TB/4TB models with faster 7000 MB/s write speeds.
With regards to endurance, the 512GB drive is rated at 400 TBW, the 1TB model for 800 TBW, the 2TB for 1.6 PBW, and the 4TB model for a massive 3.2 PBW, with which we are impressed. Kingston also mentions that the 512GB and 1TB models weigh about 7g, while the 2TB and 4TB models weigh about 9.7g.
To test the performance of the drive, we used the KC3000 on our testbed that features the AMD Ryzen 7700X processor, 32GB Kingston Fury Beast RGB DDR5 6000 MHz memory, ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E Hero motherboard, XFX 1000W PSW, XFX Radeon 5700XT GPU, and more. We tried the benchmark tools such as CrystalDiskMark, AS SSD, 3DMark storage test, and PCMark storage benchmark tests. Take a look at the scores below.
As you can see, the performance of the KC3000 is impressive for a PCIe 4.0 drive, where it was able to hit 7032 MB/s read speeds, and 6869 MB/s write speed. The write speeds are slightly lower than what Kingston rates for, but that can differ between different systems. With such high speeds, the KC3000 can also be used for console storage, such as the PlayStation 5.
Verdict
For those looking for a reliable and high-performance PCIe 4.0, we recommend the Kingston KC3000 NVMe SSD. While the drive shares similar performance as the premium Kingston Renegade SSD, the prices are slightly cheaper too. The drive comes in 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities, and comes with a low-profile graphene aluminum heat spreader, along with a black PCB.
The read speeds of the KC3000 can easily hit 7000 MB/s, and the write speeds can also reach up to 7000 MB/s, depending on the storage size. The 2TB and 4TB versions feature a very high endurance rating, which is perfect for professionals looking for a long-lasting drive. The drive also comes with DRAM for maintaining its high-speed transfers, along with the Phison E18 controller, and the device uses 3D TLC memory chips.
