Kingston KC3000 2TB test: High-end SSD up to 7GB/s

With the KC3000 series, Kingston offers high-end SSD drives that are supposed to overshadow the advantages of this type such as Corsair MP600 Pro XTAnd Seagate FireCuda 530 and the others WD Black SN850. These models take the form of classic M.2 2280 modules running on a PCIe 4 interface with support for the NVMe 1.4 standard.

KC3000 appliances come without heatsinks, or at least without heatsink. The manufacturer preferred to choose the “aluminium-graphene heat sink”. a pompous name to designate a simple label made up of a thermal plate mounted on the front of the SSD; The other side, which also has memory chips, is just a sticker without thermal properties. So don’t expect miracles, but this one has the advantage of making the KC3000s compatible with the Sony PlayStation 5 – provided you add an original third-party radiator; Count about ten euros in a specialty store.

On the component side, there is a Phison PS5018-E18 controller, as well as an advanced chip etched at 12nm and equipped with three Cortex-R5 cores to manage a maximum of eight channels. The console is accompanied by a cache of 2 GB. The memory used is silkscreen Kingston but it was actually originated in micron factories. This is a 3D NAND memory with a cell layer of 176 cells.

This chip configuration is finally completely identical to the one on Corsair MP600 Pro XT where is the Seagate FireCuda 530. It’s up to Kingston to deliver firmware improvements polished enough to come in and provoke its competitors.

The Kingston KC3000 2TB is guaranteed for five years or 1,600 TB of data written, whichever comes first. The endurance while writing is great and corresponds to 877 GB of data per day for five years. Suffice it to say that this endurance will never be user tested, except for in-server use cases – an area where an SSD is not necessarily intended.