INTRODUCTION

   PCIe Gen 4.0 M.2 NVMe solid state drive models may currently hold the crown of the fastest consumer grade storage media but according to several manufacturers PCIe Gen 3.0 models still have plenty of room for improvement. On top of that add the fact that only the latest motherboard models by AMD and Intel support PCIe Gen 4.0 and there's not going to be a shortage of PCIe Gen 3.0 models in the market anytime soon. Last year Kingston released their top of the line KC2000 family of PCIe Gen 3.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSDs (1TB model review here) and even though these weren't the fastest ones around they were still able to hit very high data transfer speeds of up to 3200MB/s in reads and 2200MB/s in writes. Almost exactly 1 year since then Kingston has just released their new family of PCIe Gen 3.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSDs named the KC2500 and today I’ll be testing the 1TB variant (also among the first to do so).

   Kingston Technology Company, Inc. is the world’s largest independent manufacturer of memory products. Kingston designs, manufactures and distributes memory products for desktops, laptops, servers, printers, and Flash memory products for PDAs, mobile phones, digital cameras, and MP3 players. Through its global network of subsidiaries and affiliates, Kingston has manufacturing facilities in California, Taiwan, China and sales representatives in the United States, Europe, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Australia, India, Taiwan, China, and Latin America.

   The KC2000 line of PCIe v3.0 M.2 NVMe solid state drives was based on the Silicon Motion SM2262EN 8-channel NAND flash controller which Kingston had paired with Toshiba's BiCS4 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash modules and so it didn't come as a surprise that they used the exact same configuration for the KC2500 line (the name does point to an upgrade of the KC2000 line rather than an entirely new one). Because of that the KC2500 line (currently available in 250/500/1000/2000GB models) still features the same technologies including Silicon Motion’s proprietary NANDXtend error-correcting code (ECC), datapath protection, end to end data protection with SRAM ECC, S.M.A.R.T, TRIM, NCQ, thermal-throttling, active garbage collection, DevSleep (device sleep), LDPC (Low Density Parity Check), SLC write acceleration (algorithms for optimal sustained performance), AES-XTS 256bit hardware encryption, TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE-1667 (rendering the line fully compatible with Microsoft's eDrive and EU's GDPR). As expected even the endurance numbers are the same for both lines so aside the MTBF of 2.000.000 hours again we have 150TBW for the 250GB model, 300TBW for the 500GB model, 600TBW for the 1TB model and 1200TBW for the 2TB model. According to Kingston however the brand new KC2500 family can achieve data transfer speeds of up to 3500MB/s in reads and 2900MB/s in writes so where does the extra performace come from? Well if I’m correct leaving out some firmware tweaks (only normal for 1 year later) Kingston achieved this performance increase by using faster 1866MHz LPDDR3 SDRAM modules with the KC2500 line as opposed to the 1600MHz ones used in the KC2000 line. I will have to double check with Kingston about this (and if this isn't the case i'll update the review on Monday) but this seems to be the only visible difference between both lines*.

* After consulting with Kingston engineers it seems that aside firmware tweaks and different DRAM (which however is still clocked at 1600MHz since the controller doesn't support anything higher than that) the NAND of the KC2500 is also running at higher clock rates (650MT/s).

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

The KC2500 arrived inside the same blister package as its predecessor which allows potential buyers to check the drive from the front.

A few words about the product and its 5-year warranty are printed at the rear in several languages.

Along with the KC2500 M.2 NVMe SSD Kingston bundles a license key for the Acronis True Image HD cloning software.

THE KC2500 1TB

Just like with 99% of the M.2 NVMe drives out there the KC2500 model follows the typical 2280 form factor (22mm in width and 80mm in length).

On the top side of the PCB we once again find 4 Toshiba BiCS4 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash modules (each 128GB in capacity) and the Silicon Motion SM2262EN NAND flash controller.

Turning the drive around we see 4 more Toshiba BiCS4 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash modules (again 128GB in capacity each) along with two 512MB LPDDR3 SDRAM modules.

SSD MANAGER

The SSD manager software detects all Kingston drives, checks for available firmware updates and also allows the end user to check the status of the drive and its partitions (including temperatures, power on time and recorded failures), access the SMART information page, check the current state of TCG Opal and IEEE-1667 (also enable/disable them) and read recorded logs.

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   After over 11 years of testing solid state drives, we’ve concluded that it's almost impossible for any single benchmark suite to accurately measure their performance and that's why in certain benchmark suites we see amazing read/write performance numbers with some drives while in others things are quite different. The reason behind this is that some benchmarking suites are configured to read and write random chunks of data while others read and write constant (sequential) ones. So that's why i always use a very wide selection of benchmarking suites including AIDA64, HD Tach RW, HD Tune Pro, Crystal Disk Mark, Sisoftware Sandra Pro, AS SSD, IOmeter and ATTO. To get the most accurate results each test gets repeated a total of 6 times with the average performance numbers recorded into our charts*. Also, as of February 25th 2015 our results will also include the Storage Networking Industry Association’s (SNIA) IOMeter tests. These tests include a 12 Hour write test used to “simulate” performance degradation over time and a mixed workload test which basically shows what you can expect when using an SSD continuously for roughly two hours. Unfortunately, due to the time required for these tests we repeat them a total of 3 times and not 6 as the above.

   Many people have made inquiries about our charts in the past so once again please do keep in mind that the Charts have the average performance numbers of each drive recorded and not the peak (highest) ones. Also, although every single one of these programs can help potential buyers choose the right drive for their needs you should also remember that from any kind of benchmark up to real world usage the gap is not small (and usually most differences will go unnoticed by most people). All tests were performed in a fresh Windows 10 Pro x64 installation complete with every update up to the date of this review.

* Since November 2018 our SSD comparison charts have been divided to 2.5” and M.2 models to reduce their growing size.

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK

TEST RESULTS - AS SSD / IOMETER

TEST RESULTS - IOMETER SNIA

CONCLUSION

   The moment Kingston reached out to inform me about their upcoming KC2500 line I immediately suspected that it was just an upgrade of the popular KC2000 line (its name kind of gave that up). Well as you can see from our charts, I was right on the spot and so even though the KC2500 1TB model surpasses the KC2000 1TB model in most tests it does so by a relatively small margin. Of course, this was what Kingston was after so even though the KC2500 line doesn’t represent a significant enough upgrade for KC2000 owners its performance levels should make it a good choice for people looking to upgrade their systems. Also just like with the KC2000 1TB we did encounter some thermal throttling during our SNIA tests but still results were very good.

   Kingston released the KC2500 line of PCIe Gen 3 x4 M.2 NVMe SSDs 18 days ago and so today the 1TB variant which I had the opportunity to test today retails for USD249.67 inside the USA (Newegg) and for 239.94Euros inside the EU (Amazon.de) meaning roughly 20% more expensive compared to the KC2000 1TB model at launch. This of course is a drawback but luckily the KC2500 line seems to surpass almost equally priced models (looking at you 970 EVO) in performance. At the end of the day the KC2500 is a reasonable upgrade over an already fast model and since it delivers everywhere, I was hoping it would it certainly deserves our Golden Award.

PROS

- Near Excellent Performance (Up To 3500MB/s Read & 2900MB/s Write)
- Sustained Performance Levels (SNIA Tests)
- 5 Years Warranty
- Kingston SSD Manager Software

CONS

- Thermal Throttling (During Our SNIA Tests)
- Price (For Some)