There doesn't seem to be too many PCIe 4.0 drives with a 4TB option, so that's a welcome change here for anyone who wants to go all out with storage space. The 1TB model I'm testing has an 800 Terabytes Written (TBW) durability rating, and all models come with a five-year warranty. If you're using the drive every day over the course of that warranty period, you'd have to be writing more than 430GB of data per day to theoretically exhaust the SSD. For highlights, the KC3000 was able to hit peak scores of 585,182 IOPS in 4K read, 445,331 IOPS in 4K write, 6.62GB/s in 64K read, and 1.69GB/s in 64K write. In our VDI Full Clone tests, the Kingston topped out at 129,099 IOPS in boot, while Initial Login and Monday Login showed peaks of 70,000 IOPS and 21,337 IOPS.

Switching over to sequential workloads, the new Kingston drive performed much better than all the other tested drives peaking at 105,888 IOPS (6.62GB/s) and 301µs latency. Though this didn’t quite make it to its top quoted numbers, it is still one of the fastest consumer drives we’ve seen in sequential reads. https://www.tomshardware.com/features/upgrading-your-laptop-with-pcie-40-storage-which-ssd-is-the-best For reliability, the KC3000 has an MTBF of 1,800,000 hours and an endurance rating (total bytes written) of 1.6PBW for the 2TB capacity model. The latter value is noticeably lower than the Seagate Firecuda 530‘s 2.55PBW. It’s higher than Corsair though, which continues this inconsistent endurance spec on E18 SSDs.The KC3000 is the newest premium drive offering from Kingston available in capacities of 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB, all of which use the Gen4 interface. Its graphene aluminum heat spreader also helps to effectively disperse heat while keeping the drive cool during intense usage, making it a great choice for hardware enthusiasts and prosumers looking.

Kingston includes a key for Acronis True Image HD cloning software to make the transition from your old drive to the KC3000 just a bit easier. You also have access to Kingston's SSD Manager software so you can monitor drive health, status reports, secure data deletion, and more. These are optional features; the drive can be physically installed and initialized through Windows in just a few minutes without any extra software required. VDI FC Monday Login told a similar story, as the Kingston drive topped out at 25,768 IOPS at 193.1µs before ending at 21,337 IOPS (747µs). Looking at SQL Server average latency, the new Kingston drive showed a solid average latency of 3ms, which placed it at the upper part of the leaderboard and alongside Samsung’s flagship SSD, the Samsung 980 Pro.Even better and where it matters more. This time the 1TB KC3000 beats its 2TB sibling and turns in the second-best performance we've seen to date. Outstanding. 3DMark SSD Gaming Test This SSD is designed for use in desktop and notebook computer workloads and is not intended for Server environments. The on test that still sets the FireCuda 530 apart from the rest is the 450GB sustained write. The KC3000’s time is nothing to sneeze at however. Shorter bars are better. The Kingston KC3000 is the company’s latest premium SSD offering available in the industry-standard M.2 2280 form factor and in capacities from 512GB to 4TB. Specifically designed for enthusiasts and power users looking to get the most out of the new NVMe Gen4 interface, Kingston indicates that the KC3000 is best suited for 3D rendering and 4K+ content creation software applications. Next, we switched over to our VDI full clone test. For our boot profile, the Kingston KC3000 SSD peaked at 129,099 IOPS at a latency of 261.5µs. This was good enough for second place, though well behind the first place WD SN850.