[SOLVED] NVME reliability - Kingston DC1000B 480GB vs Gigabyte AORUS 500GB

[adriantnt]

I am looking at these two NVME SSD:

Kingston DC1000B 480GB PCI Express 3.0 x4 M.2 2280
part: SEDC1000BM8/480G

and

Gigabyte AORUS 500GB, NVMe Gen4
part: GP-ASM2NE6500GTTD

Which one would be more reliable in terms of keeping it's performance after many writes ?

I want to use them in computers that will be on all the time, running MySQL databases.
Database is around 20 GB and would be written many times, maybe 10 GB of new writes/updates a day.

Kingston says this nvme is made for enterprise environment so that is a plus, Gigabyte on the other hand says it has wear leveling and other technologies that might help with reliability in my case.
Performance specs are better for the Gigabyte, but I assume the Kingston slower write has to do with being optimize for stability over time. 500MB/s should be still OK for me.
If it matters, I plan to use them with ASUS PRIME B550M-K motherboards with Ryzen CPUs, one is Ryzen™ 7 3700X, another is Ryzen 5 3600. And 64GB DDR 4 memory.

It is not critical if they fail and I lose all the data, but I don't want them to be wrong for this setup and constantly fail every 1-2 months.
I have some SATA Kingstons that show they are at "10%" lifespan left, different use (not database), but still, I want to avoid that.

Both cost around 120-130 USD here. Which one to chose ? If there is a more solid choice, I am considering looking at others.

EDIT: Kingston also seems to have ram cache chips (from what I can tell), and I see the same PHISON chip/controller.

Kingston: img1 img2

 

[Lutfij]

The Gigabyte has a TBW of 850 while the Kingston has half that. If you're looking at only writes, then Gigabyte. If you're looking at a drive failure over time, which would be MTBF, then Kingston gets the vote, then again Kingston tend to advertise a lot of things on their stuff and come up short most times.

 

[Maxxify]

Two completely different drives. If you need steady state performance, enterprise will be better. Enterprise/DC also has power loss protection (PLP) so will generally have better reliability. The lack of caching can increase endurance also along with higher OP, but again this is an enterprise feature.

 

[USAFRet]

Personally, the Kingston wouldn't even be a consideration.
But that's just me.

So many other drives.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Agreed. No Kingston drives for me

 

[lvt]

I have both Kingston and Gigabyte SSD so both brands appears equally good to me.

But in this case the Gigabyte is clearly superior in terms of cooling and caching memory (if it's your main boot drive then having DRAM cache is a huge plus).

 

[adriantnt]

[...] The lack of caching can increase endurance also along with higher OP, but again this is an enterprise feature.

I don't understand what you and @lvt mentioned about caching, one SSD has RAM caching on it and one doesn't ? If so, I don't know which one does. I didn't find much info about this. (Gigabyte site is offline for me now thou).

Edit: I think they both have ram cache and use that Phison chip/controller.
Kingston: img1 img2

 

[Maxxify]

I don't understand what you and @lvt mentioned about caching, one SSD has RAM caching on it and one doesn't ? If so, I don't know which one does. I didn't find much info about this. (Gigabyte site is offline for me now thou).

Edit: I think they both have ram cache and use that Phison chip/controller.
Kingston: img1 img2

SLC caching. SLC is a write cache, DRAM is not; it's used for metadata instead. SLC caching is faster than native flash but you're trading capacity for it, as 1 bit of SLC takes up an entire 3-bit TLC cell for example. So your drive has to empty the SLC then convert it to TLC (or back to SLC) when you're doing sustained writes. This actually increases wear and reduces performance. Enterprise/DC drives have no SLC cache specifically to improve steady state (sustained) performance and endurance.

 

[adriantnt]

I already had 2 Kingston ordered, I will probably get 2 Gigabyte too (because I need 4) and see how they perform over time.

If anyone is interested, this is how the Kingston performs on PCIe 3.0 x4 and PCIe 4.0 x4. Two motherboards, I wrote them on the window.

 

[USAFRet]

That sequential write speed is horrible.

 

[lvt]

I don't understand what you and @lvt mentioned about caching, one SSD has RAM caching on it and one doesn't ? If so, I don't know which one does. I didn't find much info about this. (Gigabyte site is offline for me now thou).

Edit: I think they both have ram cache and use that Phison chip/controller.
Kingston: img1 img2

Dram cache is not mandatory, Dramless SSD can use a portion of the available space for caching (that's why you should never use more than 80% of the total SSD space). But as Dram is 100x faster than SSD (some sources say 1000x), having a dedicated cache memory is a technical advantage.

 

[lvt]

Moreover, using the SSD's own space for caching might affect the TBW as well, unless it's a hidden partition, sort of firmware managed space that doesn't count in the SSD's user available space.

 

[Maxxify]

That sequential write speed is horrible.

Well it has no SLC cache, it's writing directly to TLC. That's typical and desirable for enterprise/DC drives.

This speed is as expected giving interleaving. Looking at review samples it's using a Phison E12 (w/DRAM) and FB12808UCN1-42 flash: 128GiB packages, 8-bit flash. Notably there's power loss protection circuitry and 1GB of DRAM (D2516 = 256M16 = 512GBx2) as well - that's double the typical DRAM amount. Flash is stated to be 64L 3D TLC but specifically what, who knows, although if we're talking industrial BiCS then we would expect around 569 MB/s (Kingston's site lists 565 MB/s) given the slow tPROG on that (900µs). All this combined - strong controller, extra DRAM, high-endurance flash, plus a bit more OP - we'd expect it to have very high endurance. The benefit is, of course, that you could write at that speed forever; compare an older 480GB SM2262 drive for example. You see that once it hits steady state (outside SLC, then exceeding direct-to-TLC) it falls to 300 MB/s at best.

 

[USAFRet]

The benefit is, of course, that you could write at that speed forever

True.
But how many people do that...😉

Yes, for an Enterprise level drive, this is acceptable.
Stability vs raw performance.

 

[Maxxify]

You can do better than 565 MB/s, though. I mean grab a 1TB SN750 and do 1.4 GB/s all day. But if you need PLP and high endurance I suppose the DC1000B isn't a bad choice.

To be fair, OP did not state 100% data reliability as a requirement, so no PLP is necessary. There are consumer E12-based drives that would be very similar therefore. Also, doesn't look like OP is doing enough writes for it to matter. Within that price range there are bigger (1TB) drives that'll do everything OP wants and more. OP also states a low bandwidth requirement, so...a cheap OEM enterprise drive isn't a bad idea actually.

That being said, a 500GB E16-based drive is a terrible choice; large, dynamic SLC cache with an inflated TBW, basically an entry-level Gen4 controller frankenstein'd from an E12, not nearly enough capacity to make use of it anyway.

 

[adriantnt]

The Gigabyte arrived too, I attached a test if anyone is interested.
I will have more computers configured, so will use more SSD models in parallel and see how they perform over time (performance, reliability).
Maybe besides the Kingston and this Gigabyte, I am thinking to use a Samsung PRO too. Need to look more into which one exactly.

 

[adriantnt]

To draw some conclusions 3 years later ...

The Gigabyte was a terrible choice for MySQL server, the wear level shown in linux smartctl command quickly reached 30-40% and I stopped using it for databases.

The Kingston DC1000B enterprise had more stable performance (as some of you estimated), even thou it has much lower write speed, the low write speed seems to be common for [enterprise] drives with high endurance. The power loss protection seems to help too, in my home lab I have many power outages and I never noticed a problem with data/disk integrity.

In last years I compared multiple drives in my (write intensive) MySQL servers:

• Gigabyte AORUS Gen 4, 500 GB (850 TBW)
• Samsung 970 pro, 500 GB
• Samsung 980 pro, 1000 GB
• Seagate FireCuda, 1000GB (1275 TBW)
• Kingston DC1000B, 1000 GB (1095 TBW), 475 TBW on the 500 G model. both with PLP
• WD Red SN700 1GB (2000 TBW)
• Samsung PM9A3 enterprise 1TB (1752 TBW) with PLP

The wear level on Kingston DC1000B was the most reliable (increased slower than the others), except for the Samsung PM9A3, I only recently got this one and need to run more tests, should be better than the Kingston DC1000B and the others, the Samsung has high endurance but also 3 times the write speed than the Kingston.

I think even thou some consumer grade drives advertise higher TBW numbers, the enterprise ones seem to increase the wear level much slower (with equal data processed). Most probably because the enterprise ones are better optimised.

// The WD Red SN700 keept disconnecting after a while when computer was in idle (every few days), not sure what is up with that, I found other people having this problem with same drive disconnecting (also at idle). I had to fully power down the computer before drive would be visible again in BIOS. It was not the PSU, and latest drive firmware.

The Kingston DC1000B is discontinued, not sure why because I didn't notice any problems with it, I seen there is a newer model DC2000B, if the Samsung PM9A3 will not be up to expectations, I will tes the newer Kingston DC2000B too.

I wish I had more data and reviews regarding the Kingston DC1000B at the time, but I asked around and didn't find much info. It didn't look like a popular choice; I guess Kingston is not what people have in mind when looking for enterprise grade products, but for me it worked well, I ran 4 of them in different MySQL servers writing data non stop like crazy for ~3 years (web crawler). Then another 1TB one. No problem with them but I was looking for even higher TBW over time.