Kingston KC3000 PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD Review

Today we’re taking a look at Kingston’s KC3000, a PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD that looks ready to top the charts.

We previously reviewed Kingston’s A2000 PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD – a budget-oriented SSD that offers superb performance without you having to worry too much about the costs, making the jump to high-speed storage easier for everyone. Fast forward to today and we’re taking a look at the company’s KC3000, a PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD that looks ready to top the charts.

Kingston KC3000 Technical Specifications

Form Factor	M.2 2280
Interface	PCIe 4.0 NVMe
Capacities	512GB, 1024GB, 2048GB, 4096GB
Weight	7.5 kg / 16.53 lb
Controller	Phison E18
NAND	3D TLC
Sequential read/write	512GB – 7,000/3,900MB/s 1024GB – 7,000/6,000MB/s 2048GB – 7,000/7,000MB/s 4096GB – 7,000/7,000MB/s
Total Bytes Written	512GB – 400TBW 1024GB – 800TBW 2048GB – 1.6PBW 4096GB – 3.2PBW
Price and Warranty	Php14,100 (1TB) Limited 5-year warranty with free technical support

 

PACKAGING AND DESIGN

Similar to other of Kingston’s M.2 offerings, the KC3000 comes in somewhat of a blister pack. The size, rated speed, and other specifications are printed on the box on the front and back. 

The M.2 SSD itself is easy to remove, and once you take that out it also comes with Acronis, which would help you migrate your files if you plan to use this as an upgrade to your boot drive. Just to note, this isn't explicitly mentioned, so be sure to check inside the packaging before you throw it out.

And here we have the KC3000 in the flesh. We're liking this understated appearance personally. The heat spreader is looking quite slick, and while not as bulky as other heat dissipation elements from the competition seems to do well enough during our benchmarks and practical use.

PERFORMANCE

Kingston advertises the speed up the KC3000 going up to 7000MB/s on PCIe Gen 4 specs. So here we’ll be trying it out on our GIGABYTE AORUS ELITE X570 motherboard and put that claim to the test.

Test System Setup

Motherboard	AORUS X570 ELITE
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
GPU	COLORFUL iGame GeForce GTX 1080 Vulcan X OC
RAM	ZADAK 16GB DDR4 @3600MHz
Cooler	Noctua NH-D15
Motherboard	GIGABYTE X570 AORUS Elite
PSU	CORSAIR RM750 80 Plus Gold
Case	NZXT H510 Elite
OS	Windows 10 Pro
Monitor	Philips 272M8 27" IPS 144Hz

PCMark 10 - Full System Drive Benchmark

PCMark features a full system drive benchmark that utilizes a wide-ranging set of real-world tracer from popular applications and common tasks. 

Crystal Disk Mark

CrystalDiskMark is an open source benchmark software used to measure the transfer speed of different media data storage drives including such as HD, SSD, USB memory, SD card and NAS

AS SSD Benchmark

AS SSD tests the sequential or random read/write performance without using the cache. Results are measured in iops.

ATTO Disk Benchmark

ATTO Disk Benchmark is an industry leading benchmark that help measure performance of system storage such as hard drives, solid state drives, RAID arrays, and so forth.

Real World Performance

For an actual application on how it works, we've copied our Halo Infinite installation folder from our PCIe 4.0 SSD on the main drive to the target drive. The file folder consists of 27,563 files amounting to 26.5GB with file sizes from KB to GB, and another archived file as well.

Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Benchmark Tool

The Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Benchmark Tool is a convenient tool that measures your computer's hardware performance and at the same time also logs the total loading time between runs.

Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition

Final Fantasy XV has very long load times during start up, so we'll be using this opportunity to log the time of drives to boot up the game from the main menu to the start of a new game when the loading screen appears.

CONCLUSION

The KC3000 easily tops out the charts. It’s fast, alright. In our use case however, realistically, we’re not sure how to find the right application to take advantage of that speed. Loading speeds are indeed incredibly fast, and it can make ample space for everything that you don’t need it to be exclusively for your operating system. 

Bundle-wise, the free Acronis True Image HD Software is a nice addition, although we wish Kingston would put it in the label properly as most people likely just ditch the packaging especially when products come in blister packs like this one.

When it comes to pricing, the KC3000 starts at Php6,070 for the 512GB version and rockets pretty high up as you scale in size. Kingston backs it with a 5-year limited warranty, making sure that you'll be confident with your purchase and you'll have support for that duration.

Bottom line is, if you're looking for a high-speed storage solution that can future-proof your setup or you simply want to get the fastest available drive there is, it's no question that the KC3000 can easily outpace the competition, simply put.