I haven't had much (if any) experience with Kingston SSDs. For that matter, the CanadaComputers geeks I spoke with in the store didn't know much about Kingston's SSDs either... I like to ask computer store employees which brands generate the highest number of RMA's, to see if they know their stuff and to find out which brands I should avoid. According to the CanadaComputers staff PCSTATS chatted with, the highest RMA award goes to OCZ, so we decided to give the Kingston SSDnow V300 SSD a shot.

In this review PCSTATS will be testing the 240GB Kingston SSDnow V300 SSD - a 6Gb/s SATA III drive rated by the manufacturer for sequential read speeds up to 450MB/s and write speeds up to 450MB/s. Kingston's "SSDNow V300" is built around MLC NAND Flash and reportedly the LSI SandForce (SF-2281) controller. In the hierarchical world of Solid State Drives, Kingston's SV300S37A/240G slots into the mainstream class.

Looking at the numbers, Kingston's SSDnow V300 SSD is spec'd for 4KB random reads at 85,000 IOPS and 4KB random writes at 43,000 IOPS. The SSDNow V300 drive supports SMART, NCQ, and TRIM. Peak power consumption is rated at 2.052W, idle is a scant 64mW; this puppy can certainly help extend notebook battery life if you're considering an SSD to replace a 2.5" HDD. The 1.0 million hours MTBF rating Kingston assign to the SSDnow V300 is lower than other SSDs PCSTATS have tested (average is 1.2M - 2M hrs MTBF). The drive is backed by a 3 year limited warranty.

Kingston's 2.5" SSDNow V300 240Gb SSD (model: SV300S37A/240G) retails for around $214 USD/CDN, or about $0.89/GB. The SSDnow V300 family includes models ranging from 60GB to 240GB capacity.

240GB Kingston SSDNow V300 SSD Model: CT256M4SSD2 Memory: MLC NAND Flash Controller:Marvell 88SS9174-BLD2 TRIM: Yes NCQ: Yes Garbage collection: Yes Wear levelling: Yes Capacity: 256GB Interface: 6Gb/s SATA III Formfactor: 2.5" (9.5mm thick) Warranty: 3 Years Price: $214USD/CDN

Kingston's SSDNow V300 comes in a standard die cast aluminum chassis, painted gray with a large logo sticker on one side and nothing on the opposite. The SSD measures 2.5" wide and is just 7mm thick. It comes with a stick-on plastic frame that increases overall thickness to 9.5mm. Nothing else is included.

Kingston's 2.5" SSDNow V300 SSD

The on board controller is what makes or breaks an SSD -- it's responsible for balancing bandwidth, latency and reliability. Kingston's SSDNow V300 reportedly uses an LSI SandForce (SF-2281) controller. The useable capacity of the drive is 223.6GB. Let's see how this SSD handles itself on the PCSTATS test bench, next.

Prelude to Benchmarks

The details of how the Kingston's SSDnow V300 SSD test system was configured for benchmarking; the specific hardware, software drivers, operating system and benchmark versions is indicated below. Please take a moment to look over PCSTATS test system configurations before moving on to the individual benchmark results on the next page.

PCSTATS Test System Configuration

test system processor: intel core i5 2500k (32nm) clock speed: 33 x 100 mhz = 3.3 ghz socket: socket lga1155 motherboard: gigabyte ga-z77x-ud5h (z77 express) videocard: gbt gv-n470so-13i (geforce gtx470) memory: 4x 4gb corsair ddr3-1600c9 memory speed: ddr3-1600 ram hard drive: - ssd - 128gb Plextor PX-128M1S (3GB/s) 120GB OCZ VTX2-SSD (3Gb/s) 240GB OCZ VTX3-SSD (6Gb/s) 240GB SanDisk SDSSDX-240G-G25 (6Gb/s) 256GB Crucial M4 CT256M4SSD2 (6Gb/s) 240GB Kinston SV300S37A/240G (6Gb/s) - HDD - 1TB WD RE4 WD1003FBYX (3Gb/s) 1TB WD WD1001FALS (3Gb/s) 3TB Seagate Barracuda XT (6GB/s) 2TB Segate Barracuda XT (6GB/s) 750GB Seagate Momentus XT SSHD (6GB/s) 500GB Seagate Momentus XT SSHD (3Gb/s) Optical Drive: Plextor PX-B310U Blu-Ray Power Supply: Seasonic SS-760KM (760W) Heatsink: Intel Reference 2011 Heatsink Monitor (1080p): ASUS MK241 24" HD LCD Software Setup: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultiimate 64-bit Intel INF 9.2.3.1020 nVidia 285.62 Benchmarks: Hard Drive Benchmarks: AS SSD 1.6 HDTune Pro 4.0 PCmark Vantage SiSoft Sandra 2012 HD Tach 3.0.4.0 CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1