Kingston KC2000 NVMe SSD Review: Competitive Pricing And Performance

Kingston recently expanded its portfolio of solid state drives, with a new family of products targeting high-performance desktop and workstation applications. The Kingston KC2000 series of drives feature a PCI Express Gen 3.0 x 4 controller, 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory, and boast of peak transfer speeds north of 3GB/s. The drives are offered in an array of capacities, ranging from 250GB all the way on up to 2TB, and they support a number of security-conscious features as well. All told, the Kingston KC2000 series drives try to cater to a myriad of use cases, from mainstream consumer desktops, to gamers and enthusiasts, and workstation users. Whether or not Kingston pulled it off remains to be seen though, so let’s quit delaying, jump in and take a closer look...

Kingston KC2000 NVMe M.2 SSD Specifications & Features

Form Factor	M.2 2280
Interface	NVMe PCIe Gen 3.0 x 4 Lanes
Capacities	250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB
Controller	SMI 2262EN
NAND	Toshiba 96-layer 3D TLC
Encryption	AES 256-bit
Sequential Read/Write	250GB – up to 3,000/1,100MB/s 500GB – up to3,000/2,000MB/s, 1TB / 2TB – up to 3,200/2,200MB/s
Random 4K Read/Write	250GB – up to 350,000/200,000 IOPS, 500GB – up to 350,000/250,000 IOPS, 1TB – up to 350,000/275,000 IOPS, 2TB – up to 250,000/250,000 IOPS
Total Bytes Written (TBW)	250GB – 150TBW 500GB – 300TBW, 1TB – 600TBW 2TB – 1.2PBW
Power Consumption	.003W Idle / .2W Avg / 2.1W (MAX) Read / 7W (MAX) Write
Storage Temperature	-40°C~85°C
Operating Temperature	0°C~70°C
Dimensions	80mm x 22mm x 3.5mm
Weight	250GB – 8g 500GB – 10g, 1TB – 10g 2TB – 11g
Vibration Operating	2.17G Peak (7-800Hz)
Vibration Non-operating	20G Peak (20-1000Hz)
MTBF	2,000,000
Warranty/Support	Limited 5-year warranty with free technical support

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Just like the vast majority of other NVMe M.2 drives currently on the market, the Kingston KC2000 uses the common M.2 2280 (80mm) "gumstick" form factor. Kingston utilizes an attractive, dark-colored PCB with the drives, and populates both sides of the board with an array of components, though the top is covered by a rather large decal adorned with all of the drive’s pertinent data and branding that hides just about everything.

The foundation of the Kingston KC2000 is an 8-channel Silicon Motion SM2262EN controller. That controller is paired to some of Toshiba’s 96-Layer 3D BiCS TLC NAND Flash memory, a few pieces of DDR3L DRAM cache, and customized Kingston firmware. The drive features a PCIe Gen x4 interface and support for the NVMe 1.3 specification. We should also mention that the Kingston KC2000 family supports a full suite of security-related features too, including TCG Opal 2.0, XTS-AES 256-bit, and Microsoft eDrive if that is important to you.
The overall performance of the Kingston KC2000 will ultimately vary depending on the capacity. We are looking at a 1TB drive here. Kingston rates the drives for up to 3,200 / 2,200MB per second reads and writes, respectively, with up to 350K / 275K read and write IOPS. Endurance for the 1TB drive is rated for 600TBW, though that number obviously floats upward or downward depending on the total capacity. Kingston also backs the drives with a full, five year warranty.

All of that jargon doesn’t mean much if performance isn’t good though, so let’s get to the benchmarks...