INTRODUCTION

   2014 is finally here people and just like one of my friends says each year is a brand new 365 paged book so make sure you all write each page the best way you can. 2014 is a particularly special year since there are many things for us to look forward including the new X99 chipset based mainboards by Intel (finally something to replace our X79 system although we will keep it as well to continue with some of our databases) which will also use the brand new DDR4 RAM, new SSD/HDD hybrid models with large capacity NAND flash, new HDDs with at least 6TB capacities and of course new SSD NAND flash controllers. CES may just be 4 days away but some prototypes may actually make it there in time (if not we will probably see them in this year’s CeBIT) so if you live near Las Vegas i strongly recommend attending if you'd like a first row seat on everything new to come in 2014. Now normal SATA III SSDs may not be the hottest hardware component around currently but thanks to all the continuous price drops sales keep increasing so naturally every manufacturer out there wants a piece of the pie. Kingston has been amongst the top players for quite some time now and although they have enough SSD models to cover every consumer out there still they keep adding more the last of which is the SSDnow KC300.

   Kingston Technology Company, Inc. is the world’s independent memory leader. Founded in 1987 with a single product offering, Kingston® now offers more than 2,000 memory products that support nearly every device that uses memory, from computers, servers and printers to MP3 players, digital cameras and mobile phones. In 2009, the company's sales reached $4.1 billion. With global headquarters in Fountain Valley, California, Kingston employs more than 4,000 people worldwide. Regarded as one of the “Best Companies to Work for in America” by Fortune magazine, Kingston’s tenets of respect, loyalty, flexibility and integrity create an exemplary corporate culture. Kingston believes that investing in its people is essential, and each employee is a vital part of Kingston’s success. Kingston serves an international network of distributors, resellers, retailers and OEM customers on six continents. The company also provides contract manufacturing and supply chain management services for semiconductor manufacturers and system OEMs.

   For the new KC300 Kingston has followed the same path as they have done in the past so under the hood once again we see the SandForce SF-2281 controller by LSI (perhaps the most popular controller of 2012/2013) featuring RAISE (error correction, RAID like protection and recovery) DuraClass (advanced wear leveling and monitoring algorithms), DuraWrite technology (up to 20x or more the flash endurance compared to some controllers), TRIM, AES 128-bit encryption and intelligent garbage collection. Once again the SF-2281 is paired with Toshibas 19nm Toggle NAND flash memory modules which we've seen used in several of the latest SSD models to hit the market by quite a few manufacturers. So yes at least at first glance the KC300 doesn't seem very new since it shares many components with some other models in the Kingston product line but since firmware always plays a significant part in terms of performance we can never be too certain about what to expect.