Kingston KC3000 Reviews - Are PCIe 4.0 SSDs worth it?

[@paolocoletti3424]

many thnaks for the shake down. As an FYI for others; 2023 Feb_Kingstyon KC3000 1TB are now sub 80GBP which is pretty amazing drop over the time you reviewed. The KING in value atm comparable for speeds to like for like competitors such as: Samsung 980 PRO 110GBP, WD Black SN850x 106GBP., Crucial P5 87GBP (as smidge slower r/w)....so blooming well done Kingston for this well priced and performing Nvme M.2 As a new install I achieved benchmark /CrystalDiskmark ratings 3-5% above the 7000 read/write figures quoted by Kingston. Not that one can tell in the real world but just nice to know. ALSO Don't dispose of the blister packaging (which is a truly awful way to wrap these btw) as apparently it has a free cloning software licence contained within (not that I can 100% confirm tho as I tossed mine before I found this out, so you need to verify yourself)

[@lehelzelenka207]

Crazy how things change in the shortest time. Right now we have the first PC title with direct storage and the game loads in 1 second from the main menu! Also the price has dropped to 100€ for the KC3000. I bought one, slapped on a generic passive cooler and running it on a PCI Gen3 mobo it does not exceed 35°C. Of course the speeds are around 3000 so it's basically running at half speed since the gen3 platform I'm using!

[@Piotr_Majchrzak]

I'm in the opposite situation :). I have Gen4 free slot, but decided to buy 2TB Gen3 drive on flash sale for about 80EUR. In real life advantage of Gen4 is really rarely visible. Highest speeds are obtained mostly....in tests and only under some circumstances in real life, mostly in queue. When you try copy large file, you'll see that your GEn4 drive performes way below Gen4 specs and provides speeds similar to best Gen3 drives. The only big reason for buying Gen4 instead is that they are newer and have higher IOPS parameters, which improves managing large number of small files, but again it's not so spectacular difference in real life (altough you may see spectacular differences in synthetic test).

[@geronimo5537]

Thanks for the real world testing

[@BrueComputing]

Glad you found it useful, thanks for watching.

[@edmond411hair]

welcome to the real world

[@adamgrant1787]

I just ordered this SSD after watching your review thanks.

[@Phyxsius_85]

On paper it looks like a big difference, but in the real world it's only a few seconds. I thought that when I put NVME instead of an ordinary SSD, it would make a big difference, but it didn't. It's a bit faster, but nothing I couldn't live without. The only thing that is really better is that there are no cables, so the PC looks neater

[@ilhanbayramoglu2811]

I have gigabyte B550 Gaming X V2 mobo and r5 5600 CPU, but my 2tb kc3000 doesn't get past 3750 mb/s in crystaldiskmark, what can be the issue? I already set both gpu and m2 slot to gen4 in bios.

[@ripiosuelto]

👍👍👍 comparisons at real use are the best ways to review a product. Thanks

[@SrApathy33]

I ordered the KC3000 1TB a minute ago to replace my 250GB Samsung Sata SSD. I am hoping for a snappier windows experience, faster windows updates, program installs etc. Pairing it with a 5800x3D and 32GB 3600MT/s (@3533 because 3600 won't post).

[@zkdd23]

How is your experience? Is Windows faster?

[@chriscs9080]

@@zkdd23 I bet there is not noticable difference .. you will only see big difference with big files .

[@jaworq]

34 seconds boot time? Hmm... I have such times on my 2,5" SATA SSD which has read and write ~500 MB/s

[@BrueComputing]

Not necessarily comparable - I was timing how long it took to launch Steam Big Picture so not just the time to get to desktop. BIOS POST time can also be a factor. But yes, some of my point is that in most tasks a fast SSD doesn't make a huge difference.

[@wickedankit]

Thanks for the excellent video. A normal user will only see a difference when upgrading from HDD. I have PCIE 3 SSD and I don't see much of a difference in game loading times.

[@BrueComputing]

Glad it helped.

[@johnsmith-qz4bv]

im looking at this kc 3000 1tb my cpu only supports gen 3 speeds but i plan to upgrade it one day to one that supports gen 4 speeds bc my mb does support gen 4...what are your thoughts..?..

[@canberrano1widowmaker]

I was just about to place an order for a Kingston 2TB KC3000 a minute ago, then as soon as I watched this video, specially for the comparison on the win10 booting and games loading, I immediately cancelled my order... My Kingston SNVS 500GB is working well and I don't need the 0.1sec advantage...

[@redoctober2026]

Thanks millions! I use my laptop mostly for productivity work like using cloud data, MS Offices, Mail, web surfing including KZbin etc. Then, I guesstimate PCIe Gen 3.0 is good enough. What do you think?

[@BrueComputing]

Unless you have a very recent laptop it's unlikely it supports PCIe 4.0 anyway. Higher performance SSDs tend to use more power and produce more heat so I'd generally stick to 3.0 for laptops for now.

[@redoctober2026]

@@BrueComputing thanks sincerely. I will stick to PCIe 3.0 for a while~~

[@captaintT]

Hi thank you for the video, I need help pls If I want to put windows 10 on ssd m.2 which one do you recommend and why Kingston NV2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD 500GB with read speed of 3500 and write speed of 2700 mb/s or should I buy KC3000 with 7000 mb/s read speed ?? just for the windows.

[@Anth0ny85]

Will i have a problem if i use this SSD in PCLe 5.0 ?

[@j.d.4697]

Oh yeah they finally added proper multiplayer modes for FH5!

[@mayurchinchane5548]

Is this good for gaming or should I buy 980 pro plus

[@BrueComputing]

Should be good.

[@mayurchinchane5548]

@@BrueComputing i bought Seagate FireCuda 530

[@thedude5-6]

Would be cool to see a test with dcs world. I'm using a HDD and it takes about 7 to 10 minutes to get into a mp server I'm building a new PC similar to yours r7 5800x aorus x570 elite with 2 nvme drives the shared m.2 is going to be my boot drive the pcie 4.0 is going to have games guess which ones I bought 😂 Samsung 980 for boot drive kc3000 for games. Thanks for the info

[@ivo3598]

is it worth go for Fury instead of this?

[@ElwoodBluesAK]

If same price; Yes If Fury is more expensive; No.

[@perivoj]

Is kc3000 good for a ps5

[@theBarracuda_]

are you the net ninja by any chance, lmao?

[@1111danni]

Hi James

[@RnRforyou]

The other videos out there of the KC3000 are getting less than advertised speeds I'm getting over 7200mb/s reads 7000mb/s writes must just be silicon lottery

[@BrueComputing]

Nothing to do with silicon lottery, it depends how you set it up - I got these speeds connecting it to the main M.2 slot on my board which connects direct to the CPU. The second PCIe 4.0 M.2 slot on my mainboard is connected to the chipset, which then has a PCIe 4.0 4x link between chipset and CPU. In this scenario you are sharing bandwidth with other devices attached to the chipset and it topped out at up to 6400MB/sec.

[@ivo3598]

@@BrueComputing Sillicon lottery applies maybe on CPU

[@tommybull6578]

Not yet

[@BrueComputing]

Hopefully DirectStorage will show bigger benefits.

[@ltshazaam]

This video is irrelevant. You're comparing 2 different drives. That's it. You're not comparing Gen3 to Gen4. You should do a comparison with the same SSD in gen3 and gen4 configuration to answer the question: " Are PCIe 4.0 SSDs worth it?"

[@BrueComputing]

The comparison is between a premium priced PCIe 4.0 device and a low-cost PCIe 3.0 device, and shows that actually you gained relatively little (at the time of testing) from a more expensive PCIe 4.0 SSD in anything other than raw file transfer speeds. What you're suggesting would also have been interesting in a way, but really would just have given the expected result of capping transfers to PCIe 3.0 speeds and then obvious answer that there is no reason to spend extra on a PCIe 4.0 SSD to fit in a 3.0 slot makes no sense.

[@prla5400]

I have a P1 lol

[@henryng439]

8:14 "aren't" huge benefits. Fyi: It was difficult to listen to because of the accent.

[@BrueComputing]

Correct - sorry if it wasn't clear.

[@ChxseOP]

Really? I could easily understand what he was saying lol

[@henryng439]

@@ChxseOP I easily understood the implications of what you're saying.

[@ChxseOP]

@@henryng439 you’re quite perceptive

[@paulosaraiva4923]

there is NO SOFTWARE; kingston have been desonest making belive it it have Acronis. Fraude. The code doasn't work, you have to pay for this clone software that isnt bether than any other 3th party cloning soft. that I have end up using on this 1tb ssd. Also, and this is worst, the downloadable software in Kingston sight for optimization of the ssd nvme KC3000 do not work AT ALL. I bought this nvme for its TBW but I suspect doe to the lack of honesty of Kingston that it is also fake. Whitout optimization software it is not much or at all faster than any other gen 3 nvme. At least mine isnt. Buy at youre own risk.