INTRODUCTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   The continuous price free fall in the SSD market (due to increased competition and smaller manufacturing processes) has allowed manufacturers not only to forge new alliances and improve existing ones with NAND Flash controller manufacturers but also to finally release their very own high capacity models. Of course the price/capacity ratio crown is still held by regular HDDs and that's not going to change any time soon but nowadays you can purchase an 1TB SSD for less than $0.8 per GB which is quite a leap compared to just 4 years ago when you had to spend over three times as much. The best thing about that however is that PCIex SSD prices have also taken a dive so i expect such models to become quite popular even amongst regular consumers and gamers in the near future. Now as some of you know three days ago Kingston announced the availability of the latest addition in their SSDNow line the high capacity V310 960GB SSD model which features the 3108 NAND flash controller by PHISON and as expected we are amongst the very first people to actually take it for a ride.

 

   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, Canada, Europe, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Australia, New Zealand, India, Taiwan, China, and Latin America.

 

   PHISON may not be as popular as Samsung, LSI/Sandforce and Marvell but we've seen their controllers being used in several SSD models in the past and although not at the top of the charts still they do offer a very good price/performance ratio (enough for manufacturers to choose their solutions over others). So the brand new SSDNow V310 960GB SSD wears the PHISON PS3108-S8-I SATA-to-Flash 8-channel micro-controller and Micron's 128Gbit 20nm MLC NAND Flash. The PS3108-S8 NAND Flash controller has an MTBF of 1 million hours and packs the usual features we've seen in the past with other SSD models like the S55/V55 including AES encryption, NCQ/TRIM/RAID, S.M.A.R.T, Static and Dynamic Wear Leveling, Bad Block Management and DEVSLP (Device Sleep). Now this is the first time we've decided to test an 960GB drive (well not much of a choice since the V310 is only available at that capacity) because we feel that most consumers can't afford one so we're quite eager to see how it performs.

 

 

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once again Kingston ships their SSD inside a small box with a product picture at the front, their logo, capacity of the model, advertised read/write speeds and the type of bundle in the box.

 

 

The bundle type is also printed on the left side.

 

 

You can take a look at the contents of the bundle just by turning the box around.

 

 

So the bundle contains the V310 960GB SSD, 7mm to 9.5mm bracket, USB 2.0 enclosure, 2.5" to 3.5" mounting plate, several mounting screws, software CD (contains the cloning suite), SATA data cable and a Molex to SATA power cable/adapter.

 

 

THE SSDNOW V310 960GB

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The SSDNow V310 960GB is just your regular 7mm thick SSD by Kingston so nothing really new here.

 

 

Several certification icons along with the model capacity, electrical requirements, serial number and barcode are placed on the large sticker at the top.

 

 

What surprised me a bit when i turned the drive around was the lack of a warranty void sticker (the why you will see later on).

 

 

At the rear end we find the typical SATA power and data connectors.

 

 

The T-5 screws are actually placed at the front of the drive beneath the large sticker that's why there's not a warranty void seal at the rear.

 

 

Opening the drive is very easy (taking the sticker off without tearing it is the hard part).

 

 

At the first side of the PCB we see 8 Micron 20nm NAND Flash MLC packages each 64GB in capacity.

 

 

8 more NAND flash MLC packages are placed on the opposite side, again 64GB in capacity each.

 

 

Here we also see the PHISON PS3108-S8 NAND flash controller and what seems to be a 1GB DRAM memory chip by Kingston.

 

 

TEST BED

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TESTING METHODOLOGY

 

   After roughly 6 years of testing sold state drives i have 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.

 

   Many people made inquiries about the charts ever since the last comparison 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 7 Ultimate x64 installation with every update installed up to July 23rd 2014.

 

 

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - HD TUNE PRO / HD TACH RW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TEST RESULTS - AS SSD / IOMETER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   When we finally finished all tests i focused especially on the V310 and the S55/V55 models that use the same NAND controller by PHISON to check their performance differences and that got me thinking. You see although in read speeds the V310 is overall superior to the S55/V55 when it comes to 4k-512k read/write speeds things change dramatically and that's also why it lags so much behind in IOmeter. Of course if you're interested in purchasing an 960GB SSD like the V310 then you obviously care mostly about capacity and thus performance takes second place but still i wanted to see more. That being said it's hard even for us sometimes to notice such performance differences in real life use so regular consumers shouldn't really be concerned. Unfortunately i was hoping to find a tantalum capacitor array inside one such high capacity SSD like the V310 but since this is the basic consumer line by Kingston that wouldn't be very wise since it would also increase the price of the product.

 

   Since the SSDNow V310 960GB SSD is a brand new product we were unable to find the exact bundle version we reviewed here (SV310S3B7A/960G) inside the USA but the Desktop bundle retails for USD620.98 (Amazon.com) while our version retails for 493.50Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk) a price tag which basically means that you're getting each GB for just $0.65/0.52Euros (even less if you choose to get just the drive). So with that in mind the SSDNow V310 960GB model may not be on the receiving end of any stellar performance awards but it does offer a very good price/capacity ratio and it's really not half as bad in terms of performance either (we're still talking about a current generation SSD) and that's why it gets our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality
- Good Overall Performance
- Massive Capacity (960GB)
- Bundle (2.5" USB Enclosure/ 3.5" bracket/ 7mm to 9.5mm bracket/ SATA III Cable/ SATA Power Connector/ Cloning Software)
- 3 Year Warranty
- Price ($0.65 per GB)

 

CONS

- 4k-512k Read/Write Performance (Compared To The Competition)