Review Kingston NV2 SSD Review: Cheap But Risky

[Admin]

The Kingston NV2 is designed to be the cheapest NVMe SSD around. To make that work, Kingston uses different controllers and flash which leaves the customer at the mercy of RNG. Performance has a wide range depending on what you get.

Kingston NV2 SSD Review: Cheap But Risky : Read more

 

[Uzer]

For a QLC vs. TLC comparison, it would be interesting to see results from your 1TB tlc sample.

 

[DavidLejdar]

I have that drive 1TB as my OS drive on a chipset-lanes slot these days, and I can't complain. The Phison E21T PCIe 4.0 controller seems to work quite nicely. In particular for reads, the drive comes with a 4K random read of over 80000 IOPS, which is more than what e.g. WD Black SN770 1TB and Corsair MP600 Pro 1 TB deliver, looking at benchmark results in that regard, and the read latency is quite solid.

I do use a heatsink on it though, just to be sure, and I wouldn't argue that it is the best drive around. But for a (relatively) cheap drive, which I won't regret to put into a PCIe 3.0 M.2 slot later on, it works fine for what I use it for.

 

[magbarn]

Can I use this as a SSD cache for an unraid server?

 

[Uzer]

RNG generator put SM2267XT + Toshiba 112L BiCS5 TLC in my 1TB NV2 box.

This stick I put in a laptop without a heatsink.
Not sure if a heatsink would fit, and I would have to remove the warranty sticker. And open some 10 screws.

My laptop gets very little writes, so to be honest I should probably only worry about my own fitness and health.

... I don't care if the older 28 nm controller throttles after 500 GB of writes. It is the NAND write temperatures that correlate with endurance. If the Sm2267xt is hot, it's not an issue, as long as Nands stay cool.

 

[AndrewJacksonZA]

I get that, if one can afford to do so, one should spend a little bit more, but compared to, say, a good non-QVO Samsung SATA drive, even a "low end " PCIe 3 SSD seems better, or not?

 

[Uzer]

I get that, if one can afford to do so, one should spend a little bit more, but compared to, say, a good non-QVO Samsung SATA drive, even a "low end " PCIe 3 SSD seems better, or not?

My first impression was that the laptop felt just a bit more responsive after I replaced m.2 SATA drive with NV2 (I cloned the Windows installation). Not sure if it was placebo or not.

 

[MrMarcie]

My first impression was that the laptop felt just a bit more responsive after I replaced m.2 SATA drive with NV2 (I cloned the Windows installation). Not sure if it was placebo or not.

It's not placebo. I just got the 2Tb version for my workstation. I had en EVO 970 1Tb and the Kingstone is faster, snappier. It runs hotter but I have a heatsink on my motherboard. So it's around 44 Celcius. And sometimes with lots of action goes up to 53. So I'm very very impressed, for the price.

I think the article is to negative about this drive.

 

[tlmiller76]

I have this in one of my laptops and have been pretty impressed thus far, for the price. In CrystalBench, it outperforms my "Black" SN750, and according to the motherboard monitoring it's been fairly efficient.

 

[Derael]

I don't think 2 star rating is fair, unless you completely remove the price of the equation. I got it for 100 Euro as a secondary drive for storing files and large games I don't play often, and it works without any issues, which is pretty much all I need. For main drive there are likely better options, but some product being niche doesn't warrant 2 stars. In terms of price/performance it's absolutely great, hard to find a cheaper M.2 SSD per TB. The closest option I've seen is 130 Euros, and it doesn't perform much better to warrant paying so much more.

 

[1991ATServerTower]

It's not placebo. I just got the 2Tb version for my workstation. I had en EVO 970 1Tb and the Kingstone is faster, snappier. It runs hotter but I have a heatsink on my motherboard. So it's around 44 Celcius. And sometimes with lots of action goes up to 53. So I'm very very impressed, for the price.

I think the article is to negative about this drive.

I have to agree with you. These SSDs definitely have their place in the market.

Personally, I picked up the 1TB version for use with my FX-8320 / GTX1660 / M5A97 R2.0 system, because even with the $15 PCIe adapter it was the same price as a similarly low-end 1TB SATA drive. Even limited to the PCIe 2.0 speed available in the 8x slot of this old motherboard, this Kingston NV2 is 2.5x faster than my 256GB Crucial MX500 SATA drive. That is a lot faster! And... it was the same price. Does it have DRAM like the MX500 series? Nope. Does it matter? Nope, because it's still faster.

Note that a 1TB Crucial MX500 SATA drive (one of the last SATA SSDs with DRAM) would have cost $35 more at the time. I really like the 500GB version of the MX500 that I have in my other computer, but it just didn't make any sense to buy the 1TB version instead of the Kingston NV2 and adapter, even for this old desktop.

Here are benchmarks of my NV2, MX500, and 2TB Western Digital hard drive.

 

[Glock24]

Most cheap Kingston SSDs are crap, they become slower than spinning rust after a while. Kingston is also known for bait and switch with some higher end SSDs.

 

[Amdlova]

Only dead ssd I have kingston, SanDisk. Samsung ones still rocking 840 evo says hello

 

[Nikolay Mihaylov]

Can I use this as a SSD cache for an unraid server?

I couldn't find how unraid disk cache works. If it uses ZFS and the cache is simply L2ARC device then you should not have problems. The data on the L2ARC drive is checksummed so if there's any problem with the cached data it will be fetched from the data drives. And the L2ARC has a persitent mode where it survives reboots so it shouldn't see as many writes as it would if it were to be filled up from scratch after every reboot. Caveat: by default the L2ARC fill rate is limited to 8MB/s so you should tweak it to higher values if you want the best performance.

 

[AndrewJacksonZA]

Even limited to the PCIe 2.0 speed available in the 8x slot of this old motherboard, this Kingston NV2 is 2.5x faster than my 256GB Crucial MX500 SATA drive.

Thanks man!

I couldn't find how unraid dick cache works.

Uh, my dude. ;-)

 

[Nikolay Mihaylov]

Uh, my dude. ;-)

Edited for posterity

 

[PiranhaTech]

I actually got this one. The read benchmarks looked pretty good, but the write benchmarks looked mediocre. This actually works well for me. I don't do many writes on that laptop.

 

[DrSpanky]

Not a top performer but has a pcie 4.0 interface that allowed me to run it in a 1x slot and still maintain reasonable performance where it mattered.

 

[CountMike]

Not really fair to compare it with twice and more expensive ones. I already have 3 NVMe SSDs of various capacities and I'm contemplating NV2 as replacement for my only HDD left built in, it's for temporary storage before data ends up in a 4TB NAS for long time storage in duplicate. It has to be connected to PCIe x16 (working at x8) gen3.0 so will probably get some lower performance which really doesn't matter much.
So what I'm really asking for is exeprience in those conditions and if temps are really to high.

 

[HalloM8]

I can't say I agree with this review anymore, the NV2 seems to be a good performer for its position in the market... Aka not being compared to 990 Pros and MP600 Pros... I have no doubts about the testing methodology, they seem to line up with other results, but a 2 star rating seems a little ignorant. I'd give this a 4 as it stands

 

[Mr.Vegas]

Guys is there any info if the 4TB is TLC or QLC? I need 3 drives dont want to take a chance
This says its TLC, but this drive so far had 3 controllers, same way it was TLC i can get QLC..

Kingston NV2 4 TB Specs

4 TB, TLC, PCIe 4.0 x4, M.2 2280

www.techpowerup.com

 

[Niija]

Sure nobody likes to see such a bad rating on their reference page for the unit they just bought, but I cannot doubt about TH criteria, so its clearly a BAD NVME SSD.
The thing is... who cares that it's garbage if I could get 2TB for $60 with 3 years of waranty from a well-known brand?
We're talking about it being cheaper than any no name chinesse 2TB SATA III drive, even traditional HDD!!
So I couldn´t agree less whit a review like this time.
I find it PERFECT as a secondary unit, no need for higher speed in everyday task. Best performance/storage/price unit up to date!
*****

 

[djsolidsnake86]

anyone haved problem of 100% utilize of this ssd, and extemely slow read/write speed? it tooked about 10 hours for transfer 1,5tb (from 2tb nv2) to another disk
i returned the 2 drives (i have 2 nv2) totally crap nvme

 

[Xii-Nyth]

this drive performs great overall but not in sequential. this review is a joke

 

[Xii-Nyth]

I can't say I agree with this review anymore, the NV2 seems to be a good performer for its position in the market... Aka not being compared to 990 Pros and MP600 Pros... I have no doubts about the testing methodology, they seem to line up with other results, but a 2 star rating seems a little ignorant. I'd give this a 4 as it stands

yes, with this logic an intel optane drive will be a one star bc its made for 4k random at qd 1