Kingston SSDNow V 30GB Desktop Kit Review

Main Menu

HardwareBistro Search

Login Form

Support Us!

Product: SNV125-S2BD/30GB
Manufacturer: Kingston
Supplied by: Kingston
Price: 93USD/RM288
Launch Date: Jan 2010

Unlike HDD products, SSD is no longer monopolized by HDD vendors as most of the memory vendors have stepped into this businesses as well since SSD can be classified as flash memory product and most important is profitable. Kingston, one of the leading memory vendors has launched quite number of SSD products and today let us take a look on their SSDNow V SSD 30GB desktop mounting kit.

Company Profile

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 cell phones. In 2007, the company's sales exceeded $4.5 billion.

With global headquarters in Fountain Valley, California, Kingston employs more than 4,500 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.

Features:

• Performance - Enhances productivity; makes users more efficient
• Innovative - 2.5" form factor; uses NAND flash memory components.
• Silent - Runs silent and cool with no moving mechanical parts
• Reliable - Less likely to fail than a standard hard drive
• Shock Resistant - No moving mechanical parts so the SSD handles rougher conditions.
• Supports TRIM - Enhances device wear leveling by eliminating merge operation for all deleted data blocks.
• Supports S.M.A.R.T.
• Guaranteed - 3-year legendary Kingston warranty, 24/7 tech support
• Cache - 64MB onboard cache

Specifications:

• Capacity* - 30GB, 64GB, 128GB
• Storage Temperatures - -40°C to 85°C
• Operating temperatures - 0°C to 70°C
• Vibration Operating - 2.17G (7-800Hz)
• Vibration Non-Operation - 20G (20-2000Hz)
• Sequential Speed** -
30GB - 180MB/sec. read; 50MB/sec. write
64GB - 200MB/sec. read; 110MB/sec. write
128GB - 200MB/sec. read; 160MB/sec. write
• PCMARK® HDD 2005 Score+ -
30GB - 18,900
64GB - 21,317
128GB - 20,177
• Power Specs -
30GB Active: 1.7W (TYP) Sleep: 0.05W (TYP)
64GB Active: 5.2W (TYP) Sleep: 0.7W (TYP)
128GB Active: 5.2W (TYP) Sleep: 0.7W (TYP)
• Life expectancy -
1 million hours mean time before failure; 64GB/128GB
500,000 hours mean time before failure; 30GB

Available Models

SNV125-S2/30GB (stand-alone drive)
SNV425-S2/64GB (stand-alone drive)
SNV425-S2/128GB (stand-alone drive)
SNV425-S2BN/64GB (notebook bundle***)
SNV425-S2BN/128GB (notebook bundle***)
SNV125-S2BD/30GB (desktop bundle***)
SNV125-S2BD/30GB-2P (twin pack***)
SNV425-S2BD/64GB (desktop bundle***)
SNV425-S2BD/128GB (desktop bundle***)

Package & Contents

Kingston SSDNow V-series comes with an eye-catching packaging box which is expected and reasonable since customers have paid such huge amount of money for getting this device. Some features and package contents are written at the back of the packaging in multi-language formats (17 languages).

Besides the other paper box, Kingston SSDNow V-series is packed with another soft container and the full package contents are a SSD, desktop mounting rails, mounting screws, SATA cable, SATA-to-Molex power converter and CD. The SATA-to-Molex converter is a good bundled item especially for those are still having older type of power supply.

The Kingston SSDNow is kept inside an ESD bag to ensure the device is free of electrostatic damage. No user's manual is provided but we do hope a quick reference guide is given to guide the user how to setup the desktop mounting kit. In term of warranty, Kingston SSDNow V-series comes with 3-year legendary warranty with 24/7 tech support.

A Closer Look on Kingston SSDNow V

Before we discuss further on Kingston SSDNow V-series, let us have a brief overview on Kingston SSD family. Currently there are total six series where it covers from entry till performance and consumer till corporate. E and M series are the highest performance SSDs, V+ and V100E+ series are meant to be used for corporate customers with better security feature while V180+ and V series are for consumer; former one with 1.8" form factor while latter one comes with much affordable pricing.

Unlike other SSD vendors, Kingston does have special edition for their SSD where a desktop mounting kit is bundled for those are planning to install the SSD for the desktop chassis; this is needless if your chassis is able to support 2.5" HDD. Currently only Kingston SSDNow V and SSDNow V+ series do have this desktop kit and you can distinguish them with those standalone SSDs as the desktop kit comes with "BD" or "B" in their part number.

Most of the users are getting SSD to act as the physical/primary OS drive as it provides blasting speeds to enhance the productivity and SSD tends to be much error-free than traditional HDD. There are two types of SSDs in the market; SLC (single-level cell) and MLC (multi-level cell). The latter SSD is much reliable SSD with longer life span but the former one comes with much affordable price. TRIM is supported on Kingston SSDs where it enables garbage collection overhead without slowing down the future write operations.

Our review sample today is the consumer model; Kingston SSDNow V 30GB desktop kit which is the minimum requirement to set it up as an OS drive. The sequential read/write speeds for 30GB model are 180MB/s and 50MB/s while 64GB/128GB comes with much faster write speeds; 110-160MB/s (200MB/s for read). Life span is one of the reasons for choosing SSD than HDD and the life expectancy for 64/128GB is 1 million hours MTBF while half for 30GB; 500,000 hours MTBF; much higher than traditional HDDs.

Kingston SSDNow V 30GB desktop kit comes with matt chassis which is not only good for handling but also better in term of heat dissipation. Kingston SSDNow V 30GB desktop kit comes with SATA data and power connectors which can be used for desktop as well notebook setup. No USB port is available for Kingston SSDNow V 30GB desktop kit as it is no longer needed for modern SSD since these SSDs can be fully utilized and much acceptable as an OS drive.

As usual we are curious about the contents of the product hence we have naked the ngston SSDNow V 30GB desktop kit and we were quite shock as the whole SSD PCB is pretty small; just occupy approx ~ 40% of the whole 2.5" form factor. Toshiba T6UG1XBG SSD Controller is used as the bridge of the NAND memory and SSD I/O interfaces. Another important chip is the Micron 9UB17 which is a 64MB DRAM memory and works similar as the HDD cache.

Another PCB side of the Kingston SSDNow V 30GB desktop kit is filled with four memory chip but these chips are only visible once the white sticker is removed. The total added capacity for these four Toshiba memory chips is 32GB but only 27.9GB is visible and usable. For a single OS even for Window 7, the Kingston SSDNow V 30GB desktop kit is still more than enough to support it but definitely not for plenty of those high end games. It's not a bad choice if you have enough budget to RAID them in 0-1 configuration to enhance the data protector or performance.

Here is the mounting kit of Kingston SSDNow V 30GB desktop kit and four screws need to be secured the SSD on these mounting rails. We hope some brief desktop kit installation guide is provided as it will be quite confusing for newbie and first time user. Basically with the desktop kit, it will make Kingston SSDNow V 30GB desktop kit as width as a standard 3.5" HDD so that it can be mounted into any desktop chassis without any manual modification.

Installation, Testing & Performance

The hardware setup for Kingston SSDNow V 30GB desktop kit is pretty simple where user just needs to fasten the SSD on these rails but please ensure the installation direction is correct; place the higher side of the rail next to the SSD and fasten them with screws through the shorter side of the rail.

We have setup Kingston SSDNow V 30GB desktop kit on our In Win chassis where additional tool-less rail kit is needed; no worries as the tool-less rails fit perfectly in the Kingston desktop kit. Software or operating system setup is another required process else we don't see any point to have this 30GB SSD to be a secondary extended drive; user may format and install a fresh operating system or just get an OS migration tool to transfer from previous HDD.

Test Bed

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8300 @ 2.83GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3 (Gigabyte G31M-ES2L)
Heatsink: Noctua NH-C12P
Memory: Kingston HyperX 4GB DDR2 8500
Hard Drive: 250GB 7200RPM 8MB Seagate
Graphic Card: Galaxy GeForce GTX260+
Casing: In Win Maelstorm
PSU: Aerocool V12XT-800
Router: TRENDnet TEW-639GR
Optical Drive: HLDS DVD RW +/-
Monitor: Dell 22" Wide Screen LCD
Speaker: Edifier R501
Mouse: SteelSeries Ikari Laser
Mouse Pad: SteelSeries QcK+
HeadSet: SteelSeries 3H
Operating System: Window XP Pro SP2/Vista Home Premium
Ambient Temperature: 27 Degree Celsius

Here are the performances of Kingston SSDNow V 30GB desktop kit and we have compared it with a Seagate standard 3.5" 250GB SATA HDD. We don't think we have to explain the results in detail as the results already speak for itself where the SSD performance is much better SATA HDD in read mode but still lacking behind in term of write mode for this budget SSD (high end SSD will not have this problem). Besides that the temperature of Kingston SSDNow V 30GB desktop kit is much lower than SATA HDD; 37C vs 42C and furthermore SSD doesn't generate any noise at all since it does not have any mechanical moving device inside the drive. Overall SSD is still much preferable in most of the aspects except it comes with much higher price.

Verdicts

If your desktop performance is reaching the bottle-neck even with highest end of CPU, graphic card, memory then replacing the SATA HDD with an SSD is not a bad move since SSD comes with greater read and write speeds (for high end SSD) compare with traditional SATA HDD. Besides that SSD is zero noise and comes with much lower temperature. Kingston SSDNow V 30GB desktop kit is an ideal SSD device for desktop setup and 30GB is the minimum and most affordable SSD model in the market that you can get without emptying your pocket. Currently Kingston SSDNow V 30GB desktop kit is being sold at less than 100USD which is much affordable compares with other higher capacities.

Pros:

+ Great read performance
+ Desktop mounting kit
+ 64MB onboard cache
+ TRIM supported
+ Ideal for OS partition
+ Lower temperature & no noise at all
+ 3 years warranty

Cons:

- More expensive than SATA drive

Thanks to Kingston for providing this sample for us to review.