Kingston NV2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Internal SSD 2TB M.2 2280 -SNV2S/2000G

Product Information

Our test setup relies on the measurements taken from industry standard benchmark tools and real-world applications. It is important to note that we are testing the review sample after burn-in, with at least 24-hours of uptime. This is done so to negate the FOTB (fresh out the box) state of the DUT (device under test), yielding better benchmarking consistency. Test System Specifications AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read-and-write tests, as well as random read-and-write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. It uses The PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to fully test the performance of the fastest modern drives. The benchmark is designed to measure the performance of fast system drives using the SATA bus at the low end and devices connected via PCI Express at the high end.

Kingston’s SSD management utility is called SSD Manager, (version v1.5.2.5) at the time of testing the drive) It automatically detects any firmware updates as well as displaying drive status, temperatures and SMART information File copy performance is measured in Seconds (s). This is done via TeraCopy and 16 GB worth of files. Adobe Illustrator – starting the application until usable Adobe Premiere Pro – starting the application until usable. Now what we have here is the NV2 which is an update to or rather, a replacement for the NV1. Out with the old, the NV2 has a higher throughput for both read and write along with a native PCIe 4.0 interface. Form factor and choice of capacities remains the same. We got the 2 TB variant here, featuring 3,500 MB/s read and 2,800 MB/s write speeds. Kingston’s SSD management utility SSD Manager, may not be as feature-rich as some of its competitors but without all the bells and whistles and funky GUIs, it's still a pretty useful tool. It's regularly updated, will automatically detect any firmware updates as well as displaying drive status, temperatures and SMART information.Kingston rate the Sequential read/write performance of the 1TB NV2 as up to 3,500MB/s and 2,100MB/s respectively. When tested with the ATTO benchmark we got test results that confirmed and even bettered the official write rating at 2,400MB/s. Tested reads came up a little short of the official maximum at 3.180MB/s. However, switching over the CrystalDiskMark 8 benchmark we could confirm both official figures with default test results of 3,672MB/s and 2,621MB/s for read and writes respectively. Temperature is measured in degree Celcius (ºC) at system idle and load. This is done via AIDA64 Extreme and its System Stability Test. We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the Sequential read and write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below. KitGuru says: It may not set the world on fire with its performance and the hardware might be different from our review sample, but at the end of the day, it's still a 1TB Gen 4 drive for under fifty quid.

A closer inspection of the device reveals that our 2TB-capacity NV2 uses a Silicon Motion SM2267XT controller, which is a relatively recent, value-oriented model launched in 2020 and designed for DRAM-less operation (by comparison, the non-XT SN2267 is for use with LPDDR4). This controller offers four NAND channels and is capable of 500K 4K random IOPS read/write throughput according to Silicon Motion. All of the drive’s four 512MB NAND memory modules are mounted on the same side. The Kingston NV2 looks exactly like the NV1 or any barebone M.2 SSD for that matter. Not even a whiff of Graphene could be found here which is understandable for the price. Estimated delivery times are provided to us by the respective delivery companies. We pass this information onto you, the customer.

Final Thoughts

Easily integrate into designs with M.2 connectors. Perfect for thin laptops and small-form-factor PCs. Extended capacities. To test the real-life performance of a drive we use a mix of folder/file types and by using the FastCopy utility (which gives a time as well as MB/s result) we record the performance of the drive reading from & writing to a 256GB Samsung SSD850 PRO.

As you can see from the benchmark result screens we were able to confirm Kingston's official figures for the 1TB NV2 of up to 3,500MB/s for reads and up to 2,100MB/s for writes with test results of 3,672MB/s for reads and 2,621MB/s for writes. Kingston’s NV2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD is a substantial next-gen storage solution powered by a Gen 4x4 NVMe controller. NV2 delivers read/write speeds of up to 3,500/2,800MB/s with lower power requirements and lower heat to help optimise your system’s performance and deliver value without sacrifice. The compact single-sided M.2 2280 (22x80mm) design expands storage by up to 2TB while saving space for other components, making NV2 ideal for thinner notebooks, small-form-factor (SFF) systems and DIY motherboards. Available in capacities from 250GB - 2TB to give you all the space you need for applications, documents, photos, videos and more. Gen 4x4 NVMe PCIe performance.When it came to Sequential read performance, the drive's performance levelled off at QD8 finishing the test run at QD32 just 4MB/s faster at 3,562MB/s, which confirms the official maximum speed rating of 3,500MB/s.

Using the Real World profile, the best Sequential read figure we saw was 2,994MB/s, some way short of the official maximum speed for the drive of 3,500MB/s. However, the best write result of 2,586MB/s bettered the official figure by some 486MB/s. The SM2267XT is the DRAM-less version of Silicon's SM2267 controller. Instead of an onboard DRAM chip, it uses HMB (Host Memory Buffer) technology. Built on a 28nm process, the 4-channel SM2267XT uses 2 ARM Corex R5 CPU's supporting a NAND channel speed of 1,200MT/s, Loading time is measured in Seconds (s). This is done via Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker and its official benchmark. The read result of 67.29MB/s from CrystalDiskMark 8's 4K QD1 test sees the NV2 in the bottom half of our results chart. Its write score of 211.81MB/s is much stronger though.

Thermals

Custom made and designed products such as flash memory products with custom logo’s on them. E,g USB flash drives and memory cards with your own logo The Kingston NV2 comes with the usual stuff that most NVMe SSDs have right out of the box: SMART, TRIM, etc. Aside from those standard features, the NV2 also comes with an endurance of 640 TBW, topped with a 1,500,000 Hours MTBF. We used CrystalDiskMark 8 to test the random performance of the drive at lower queue depths (QD1 – QD8 where most of the everyday workloads occur) using 1 to 4 threads. We were impressed by the Kingston NV2 1 TB's exceptional read and write speeds, making it an excellent gaming choice. Based on my experience working with a range of SSDs offering similar speeds, I can ensure that game loading times will be significantly reduced compared to HDDs, resulting in an exceptional gaming experience.