[Testing] 512 gigabyte solid state drive for Kingston KC400 enterprise segment

    Hello Giktayms! I continue a pleasant tradition: in January after the CES 2016 exhibition, the announcement of the Kingston KC 400 was announced , and just a month and a half later, a blog post on testing this SSD was published on the GeekTimes blog. For acquaintance with a novelty I ask under cat. Kingston SSD packaging is quite traditional and does not contain additional decorative expensive elements. Cardboard blister with a transparent plastic insert does not contain anything superfluous and additional, even a plastic frame to increase the height of the disk to 9.5 mm. Kingston KC400 is built on the Phison PS3110-S10-X eight-channel controller. This is the most progressive option from the current range of the manufacturer. An option familiar to most modern Kingston SSDs.











    The memory is equipped with 16 MLC chips under the Kingston label with the label FD32808UCT1-DE, with a capacity of 32 gigabytes each. Thus, the total disk capacity is 512 gigabytes, of which the user does not have the entire volume available, but only 477 gigabytes, the rest is reserved for the backup area.



    The cache memory with a capacity of 128 megabytes is organized by the Nanya NT5CC128M16FP-DI chip .

    The official specifications of the drive suggest a speed of sequential read / write at 550/530 MB / s, with random blocks of 4K size - up to 86000/88000 IOPS.

    The TBW parameter that determines the maximum amount of information that can be written to the disk is set at 150 terabytes for a 128 gigabyte disk, for 256, 512 and 1024 gigabyte disks it is 300, 800 and 1600 terabytes, respectively.

    The testing methodology is quite simple:
    Before the tests, the amount of information that is twice as large as the disk capacity is written to the disk; after each test, a pause of half an hour is made to correctly execute the TRIM command.

    Test stand


    • Processor: Intel Core i7-5960X
    • Motherboard: Gigabyte X99-SOC Champion, Intel Socket 2011-3
    • RAM: HyperX Predator DDR4-3000 16 Gb (4 * 4 Gb)
    • System SSD: HyperX Predator PCI-E SSD 480 Gb
    • Video Card: AMD Fury X
    • Power Supply: Corsair AX1200i, 1200W
    • Operating System: Windows 10 Professional (64-bit)


    A set of test applications:


    • ATTO disk benchmark 3.0.5
    • Crystal Disk Mark 5.1.2
    • IOMeter 1.1.0
    • PC Mark 8




    ATTO disk benchmark 3.0.5


    A synthetic test to assess the correctness of the manufacturer's stated speeds. Actually, most of the data indicated on the boxes of SSD drives of different manufacturers was obtained using ATTO Disk Benchmark.



    Crystal Disk Mark 5.1.2


    This test allows you to evaluate the operation of the drive in four modes: linear read / write, read / write blocks in 4K, linear read / write with a depth of 32 teams, read / write blocks in 4K with a depth of 32 teams.



    IOMeter 1.1.0


    The most advanced of the tests. I will conduct several testing options:
    • linear reading and writing (blocks of 256 kilobytes in size, request depth - from 1 to 16),
    • random reading and writing of blocks of 4 KB, (request depth - from 1 to 16)






    Performance Recovery Tests


    In the PC Mark 8 test suite, it is possible to conduct performance restoration tests under continuous load.
    The scheme of the package is as follows:
    First, the disk (unformatted, without partitions) is filled twice in blocks of 128 KB.
    Then the degradation phase follows:
    The disk is filled with random blocks of different sizes from 4 KB to 1 MB. Because the blocks are not aligned, disk performance drops sharply.
    The first tests begin 10 minutes after filling the disk with random blocks.
    After passing the test, the filling process is repeated. Before each new test, a pause is made, which is five minutes longer than the previous one, that is, 15 minutes, 20 minutes and so on. This is repeated eight times.
    After this, tests of the stable phase begin. The script is repeated five times, a pause of 5 minutes is made between runs without additional load.
    This is followed by the performance recovery phase, when a five-minute pause is made between the scenarios to practice disk wiping.

    Several applications are being tested in the package; I chose Adobe Photoshop (a heavy script).

    I give four graphs: average access time, read speed, write speed, total disk speed.











    You can clearly see how the recording speed and access time are restored as the disk is “resting”.

    Final thoughts


    Kingston KC400 shows itself confidently in most tests, which certainly leaves a good impression. Significant performance in terms of recording volume allows us to consider this solid-state drive as a reliable basis for systems with frequent use of write operations.

    The average price on Yandex.Market for a model with a capacity of 512 gigabytes at the time of publication is 15,136 rubles .

    Thanks for watching and stay with Kingston on the Guktime!

    For more information on Kingston and HyperX products, visit the company's official website . A page with a visual aid will help you choose your HyperX kit .



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