Kingston SSDNow V+ Series 64GB SSD Review

As we all know hard drives are a very important component of any computer system. If you look back to the days when drives were a measly couple of hundred megabytes in size but much more in expensive, the only direction the market seemed to be going was up, both in terms of size and performance but also in price. Thankfully things took a move in the right direction for the consumer with hard drive sizes rising and performance increasing but with more and more competition on the market the price war began. We saw the likes of Western Digital and Hitachi battling it out for the hard drive crown. Seagate, Samsung and many other various manufacturers also joined in, trying to get a piece of the pie. The consumer wondered where this would all be heading and whether performance would keep increasing whilst sizes doubled and sometimes even tripled whilst still giving us fantastic prices. This is truly the case as we see 3TB drives entering the market using large amounts of cache and newer technology but we still see mechanical hard drives being the bottleneck of any system due to their spin rate amongst other factors. This is where manufacturers went back to the drawing board and came up with SSDs or Solid State Drives which incorporated technology from the tried and tested hard drive as well as the influence of a simple flash drive. This allows for faster speeds in terms of read and write, longer life and a reduction in noise. SSDs are aimed at different markets including the desktop and laptop markets and are available from many different manufacturers including of course Kingston. When we hear the name SSD we automatically associate them with the word speed. In simple terms this means if you're using a desktop computer or laptop you're going to be seeing a performance increase well in comparison to the older mechanical drives that we all know and love. Kingston have quite a few product ranges in their SSD catalogue including the V+ series which come in a variety of sizes, including the 64GB version that we're looking at today. According to every type of branding and marketing they are classed as a performance upgrade kit. Products that appear in Kingston's catalogue include SSDs aimed at servers, corporate environments and of course consumers and remember Kingston also make memory as well. Lately we have seen more of these products from memory manufacturers as opposed to hard drive manufacturers. A prime example is Kingston with their SSDNow V+ Series 64GB SSD. Normally when we see a SSD, we expect cardboard box type packaging with a few manuals and an anti-static bag to come included with the SSD itself. This product differs somewhat with a thin cardboard sleeve with the relevant information on it including what series of SSD it is; the V+ series, and that it's a 64GB performance upgrade kit aimed at laptop users. Also listed in the bottom right hand corner is that the drive has a 3 year guarantee.[/COLOR] [COLOR=#000000]The back of the box appeals to the masses by offering up the main features; faster system start up and increases application responsiveness as well as the package contents in lots of different languages. This is because Kingston are regarded as a global company that sell to many different countries. When the cardboard sleeves are removed, it leaves a plastic clam shell casing with the Kingston logo embossed into it and a clear view of exactly what's included inside all neatly tucked together. When you open the plastic packaging up, we can see a variety of different goodies which include hard drive cloning software and 2.5 USB Enclosure with Kingston logo for easy cloning so that a reinstall isn't completely necessary. You also get a Mini USB to USB cable for connecting the USB enclosure to your current system and the necessary software and installation guide all bundled on the CD. Quite a thoughtful accessory is the included set of 3.5 mounting brackets and screws for installing the drive into your chassis as some cases don't come supplied with a 3.5 to 2.5 adapter. A Molex to Serial ATA power adapter, Serial ATA data cable and of course the 2.5 64GB SSD in an anti-static bag complete the line up. Unboxing Video: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW223j051ZM[/youtube] The particular SSD that we're looking at today is part of the V+ series drives from Kingston which come in a number of different capacities including: 64GB 128GB 256GB 512GB This review is of the 64GB version and Kingston believe that this drive will dramatically increase the performance of existing systems. Kingston also say: Kingston® introduces the new SSDNow V+ solid-state drive to help consumers and organisations of all sizes enhance the performance and life cycle of computers that have a Serial ATA (SATA) interface. Faster and more reliable than a standard hard disk drive, SSDNow V+ is now available in 64 GB, 128 GB, 256 GB and 512 GB capacities. The full specifications of this drive are listed below: Specifications: Sequential Read Throughput 230MB/s Sequential Write Throughput 180MB/s Form Factor 2.5" Interface SATA 1.5 Gb/sec. and 3.0 Gb/sec Capacity 64 GB, 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB Storage temperatures -40 - 85°C Operating temperatures 0 - 70°C Dimensions 69.85 x 100 x 9.5 mm Weight 84 gram PCMARK® HDD 2005 Score 64 GB 38,177128 GB 38,065256 GB 38,272512 GB 37,974 Vibration operating 2.17G Vibration non-operating 20G Power specs 2.6 W - active / 0.15W Idle Life expectancy 1,000,000 Hrs mean time before failure Operating shock 1500G Features: Innovative Uses MLC NAND flash memory components. Silent Runs silent and cool with no moving mechanical parts. Shock Proof No moving mechanical parts so the SSD handles rougher conditions. Supports S.M.A.R.T. Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology to help maintain a healthy drive Guaranteed 3 year legendary Kingston warranty, 24/7 tech support The drive comes nicely packaged in a simple anti-static bag just like you'd expect from Kingston memory products. Once taken out of the bag we can see the SSD itself in a stylish grey metal enclosure with a big sticker on the top, The sticker informs us that the drive is made by Kingston Technology (in case there were any confusion) that it's 64GB in size, is part of the SSDNOW V+ Series and the relevant serial numbers are included. These numbers will be useful for finding out the nitty gritty details on the drive and also aiding in support issues. One part of the serial number that may catch your eye is the product number itself which is the SNVP325-S2. The important factor of this model number is the S2 part which notifies us that this is the 2nd phase of this series of drives. This in turn means that the drive has improved features over the first generation and includes an improved Toshiba controller, whereas the first gen used the older Samsung technology. The drive being an S2 also features an updated set of firmware. The drive reveals two screw holes on each side for easy mounting into their case. Depending on the case used you may need to use the optional brackets supplied in various different ways but a lot of chassis manufactured today come inclusive of 3.5 to 2.5 drive bay adapters. Turning the drive over gives us a look at the material used on the drive, a warranty sticker and more screw holes for easily mounting the drive into a case. We also get a clear look at the connections that this SSD uses. As you can see the connections are nothing out of the ordinary with a SATA power connector and SATA II data connector which is backwards compatible with the earlier revision; SATA 1. We can also see a clear space for a jumper that is used for firmware flashing if need be. It is also worth noting that Kingston recommends that the drive is used on a SATA II controller and that the BIOS menu is set to AHCI mode. Obviously this may differ if you decide to use two in a RAID configuration. The SSD also fits very snug in the enclosure which can be used via the supplied USB cable to clone your existing data including operating system to the SSD directly. Video Review: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjxbuYjXHM4[/youtube] As always with our testing procedures, we try to remain as clear and concise as possible to give the fairest results on every bit of hardware we review. Hard drives and SSD's are no different, hence we use the same system hardware and software benchmarks for all tests. This allows us to show exactly how a certain piece of hardware performs. It also gives us the ability to show a broad spectrum of hardware for comparison purposes which aids in making purchasing decisions. We have tested a similar drive in the form of the Centon 64GBSSD25S2VS1 so will be using this as our main comparison analysis. We will also be testing it against a Seagate Barracuda 500GB SATA-II 3.5 standard drive too. Our main testing rig features the following components: Test System Processor (CPU) AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Motherboard Asus Crosshair IV Formula Memory (RAM) 8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1800MHz Graphics Card AMD Radeon HD 6850 1GB Primary Hard Drive Kingston V+ Series 64GB SSD x 2 (Raid 0) Power Supply BFG EX Series 1200watt Operating System Windows 7 Professional 64-bit AS SSD is a benchmark utility that gives many testing options including three practice tests but importantly for us, contains four synthetic tests which read and write speeds for sequential and random tests. Some tests include 4K blocks whilst others are similar but use 64 thread operations.[/COLOR] When testing was complete for the singular drive, we configured two in a RAID 0 setup and ran the test again. The comparison for the drive is shown in the below chart to give distinct views on how it compares with other configurations. ATTO is a tool that allows you to benchmark your hard drive to show its performance with various different transfer sizes and lengths. It gives you the facility to show read and write speeds for easy comparison and also has options to change the queue depth among other fields. Here we can see the difference when two of these drives are placed in a RAID 0 configuration. The chart gives a clear comparison between the SSD on its own, in a RAID 0 configuration and against a mechanical hard drive. CryStalDiskMark is benchmarking software that is very similar to AS SSD giving sequential read and write speeds across various block sizes including 512K, 4KB and 4KB with a queue depth of 32. You also have the option to select the test data from Random, 0Fill and 1Fill. A RAID 0 configuration is then tested to see how it fairs in comparison to the single drive. The comparison chart below shows how the Kingston SSDs performed when comparing to a standard hard drive and against different configurations. HD Tune is a utility that gives the user a lot of information on a hard drive's health status, as well as giving the ability to scan the drive for errors, check temperature and more importantly benchmark by giving the facility to run read and write tests to make sure your drive is running correctly and secondly to use in comparison with other drives and other users. After testing this drive on its own, we tested two of them in a RAID 0 configuration to see how they compare. The chart below clearly shows the difference between a standard mechnanical hard drive, the solid state drive and two of the SSDs in a RAID 0 configuration. For the money, you may find that it takes a long time to decide on exactly what drive fits your purposes and needs. As more SSDs hit the market, branding slightly faster speeds for slightly lower prices, what would make you buy this drive over any other? The first reason would involve looking at test results and benchmarks. You can see that the tests we ran showed solid results across the board with fast speeds and low access times as expected from a drive of this nature. As soon as you place two in a RAID 0 configuration, you will gain faster read and write speeds of anywhere up to 80%. Our results clearly show the variance between a singular and set of raided drives. The second reason would involve buying a drive manufactured by Kingston, due to their fantastic support and position in the market. As we all know, Kingston are the world's largest independent manufacturer of memory products and their values are reflected in their products, just like this SSD that we looked at today. The bottom line is, if you are in the market for an SSD to give your system that kick up the backside it deserves, you will find that any of the Kingston SSDs on the market will be suitable for your need. But to get the best performance for your money, you really want to be looking at the V+ Series 64GB! 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