The Kingston KC2000 SSD Review: Bringing BiCS4 To Retail
by Billy Tallis on July 22, 2019 8:00 AM ESTMixed Random Performance
Our test of mixed random reads and writes covers mixes varying from pure reads to pure writes at 10% increments. Each mix is tested for up to 1 minute or 32GB of data transferred. The test is conducted with a queue depth of 4, and is limited to a 64GB span of the drive. In between each mix, the drive is given idle time of up to one minute so that the overall duty cycle is 50%.
The Kingston KC2000 performs well on the mixed random IO test. It's a bit slower overall than the ADATA SX8200 Pro that uses the same controller, but still fast enough for this market segment.
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| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
The power efficiency of the KC2000 during the mixed random IO test is second-tier, falling behind the Toshiba and WD drives that also use BiCS TLC and the ADATA SX8200 Pro that uses Micron NAND with the same SM2262EN controller as the KC2000.
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The ADATA SX8200 Pro with Micron NAND earns a higher overall score than the KC2000 largely due to better performance on the more read-heavy half of the test, while the KC2000 mostly catches up during the write-intensive portions. The Samsung 970 EVO Plus by contrast earns its advantage primarily from better performance during the write-heavy half of the test.
Mixed Sequential Performance
Our test of mixed sequential reads and writes differs from the mixed random I/O test by performing 128kB sequential accesses rather than 4kB accesses at random locations, and the sequential test is conducted at queue depth 1. The range of mixes tested is the same, and the timing and limits on data transfers are also the same as above.
On the mixed sequential read/write test, the Kingston KC2000 is slower than most high-end NVMe SSDs, though it does significantly outperform the Toshiba XG6 that relies on the same 96L TLC NAND.
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| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
The subpar performance of the KC2000 on the mixed sequential test carries over to its efficiency score. The KC2000's power draw is about average, but it doesn't deliver quite as much performance within that power envelope.
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RSAUser - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
As stated in the conclusion, overpriced, especially at 1TB if matching the 970 Evo Plus which has way better performance.High end pricing does not work with lower middle of the pack performance.
sircolby45 - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
I agree...This drive is way overpriced. Does Kingston think it is actually going to sell at that price point? You are much better off with the ADATA drive or the Corsair MP510 IMO. (As well as the plethora of other similar spec'd/priced drives)bug77 - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
Actually, this will be faster than the 970 EVO in real life.DigitalFreak - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
Considering the 970 EVO is very close to the 970 EVO Plus in performance, I don't see that happening.bug77 - Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - link
That's because you're looking at sequential speeds. SSDs are bottlenecked by their 4k random reads and there this drive does better then Samsung.FunBunny2 - Tuesday, July 23, 2019 - link
"SSDs are bottlenecked by their 4k random reads"in general, I'd have agreed 5 years ago when app storage still leaned toward RDBMS, even sqlite. these days developers are content to read the whole file, just because seq is so much faster than spinning rust.
patrickjp93 - Thursday, July 25, 2019 - link
It still holds true, and as someone who contributes to Postgres and Norio (which is 4x as fast as SQL Server), random is still king. There are a lot of bloom filters and hash functions sitting in front of it all to prevent excessive I/O, but the bottleneck is still very much the random 4K read.DeepLake - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
I think you have mistaken 970 with 860. This Kingston SSD will be better than 860, yes. But thats about it. 970 evo plus is way better and way more expensive, atleast where i live. HP EX950 is in the same price range as KC2000, but HP performs much much better. So in the end i agree that Kingston is very overpriced.inmytaxi - Friday, July 26, 2019 - link
How do you know that high end pricing won't work with lower middle of the pack performance? Data?kobblestown - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
Why is Corsair MP510 not among the contenders? It has three times the endurance (1700TBW for the 960GB model), better (I think) performance and probably lower price.