Page 10 - Conclusion
Despite Kingston's all-business brand perception, is the KC3000 1TB yet another exceptionally high performance SSD for gamers and enthusiasts like the KC2500, except upgraded and supercharged with the PCIe 4.0 interface? Based on our test results, the answer is a clear "yes". The Kingston KC3000, equipped with the new Phison E18 controller and Micron B47R 176-layer TLC flash ICs, has very fast linear read and write speeds even when compared to other PCIe 4.0-based drives. In fact, it demonstrated the best write performance among all compared drives in quite a number of benchmarks. The KC3000 also showed strong simulated real-world performance in our PCMark 10 and 3DMark disk benchmarks, virtually tying the venerable WD_BLACK SN850 NVMe SSD 1TB. The only issue was it was somewhat weak in medium workloads, but the SN850 was no different. What the Kingston KC3000 1TB also offers above the competition is its excellent 800TBW write endurance and zero overprovisioning, so you will see a few more gigabytes -- 22GB to be exact -- in Windows compared to other 1TB models. As the icing on the cake, you will get a license to Acronis True Image HD as well as a 5-year warranty should anything go wrong. What you will not get with the KC3000, however, is hardware encryption support, which is unfortunate, because the KC2500 had it. Furthermore, the graphene-coated aluminum sticker is not a real heatsink, so you will still need to use the one that comes with your motherboard to prevent thermal throttling. For about $175 at press time, the Kingston KC3000 1TB costs a little more than the $165 WD_BLACK SN850 1TB and $140 XPG Gammix S70 Blade 1TB, which is more than reasonable in my opinion. The biggest problem is not the price though. It is the availability. The KC3000 is sort of hard to find, so if you can find one to buy at the right price, you can be sure that you are getting one heck of a solid state drive.
As we wrap up the year with this being the last review published here at APH Networks in 2021, I wish all of you the best in 2022!
Kingston provided this product to APH Networks for the purpose of evaluation.
APH:Renewal Award
Since April 30, 2007, Number Ratings have been dropped for all CPUs, motherboards, RAM, SSD/HDDs, and graphics cards. This is to ensure the most appropriate ratings are reflected without the inherent limits of using numbers. Everything else will continue using the Number Rating System.
More information in our Review Focus.
Do not be fooled by its looks, because the Kingston KC3000 1TB is one heck of an NVMe SSD on the PCIe 4.0 hardware interface.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 8.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 5.70
7. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 10
8. Benchmark: PCMark 10
9. Benchmark: 3DMark
10. Conclusion
