They Didn't Want Me to Review This - So I Bought It Instead

[@GabrielNica1]

I bought the 1TB version and at that moment it was cheaper than the cheapest SATA drive.

[@user-wq9mw2xz3j]

m.2 nvme are cheaper than sata by now, have been over a year (generally)

[@MajkelPCLabpl]

@@user-wq9mw2xz3j aaand they are much better choice than SATA ;-)

[@user-wq9mw2xz3j]

@@MajkelPCLabpl well. myah. Not always. How many m.2 slots you have on your mother board? 1? 2? max 3. Many still have 0. Then one needs to go on to using pcie adapters, and for that you need to use pcie slots. If you have that. (plus cost of adapter). Sata sata also much easier to move from one place to another than m.2 But yes, generally better I'd say. If you thought about m.2 sata then yes of course, superior.

[@kakurerud7516]

This is QLC, NOT recommended for boot drive!!!

[@user-wq9mw2xz3j]

@@kakurerud7516 barely matters

[@stuartthurstan]

Bought a 2tb version of this to use as a games drive. After watching several tech videos where they tested real world performance and concluded that in games there is very little difference between the fastest and slowest NVMe drives I decided that I wanted the most capacity at the lowest cost. This drive definitely filled that criteria, whilst actually not performing too badly.

[@jonjohnson2844]

Outside of benchmarks the difference with a SATA SSD is almost impossible to notice, m.2 is just really good because you don't need a load of extra cables.

[@ferrumignis]

Speed should be a secondary priority if you value longevity. Odd that she didn't even talk about this using QLC flash, reason enough to avoid it IMO.

[@stuartthurstan]

@@ferrumignis Very true. The longevity of a QLC drive is definitely inferior, but unless you're using it to write and rewrite continuously it's unlikely to be a problem for most users. I'd rather buy this now and replace it in a couple of years, when another $120 will probably get me a 4tb drive, rather than spend twice as much now for a higher quality drive than I really need that I'll probably still end up replacing in two to three years anyway.

[@Canthus13]

I have the same and honestly, I don't see any issues with it. It handles my steam library just fine.

[@zkc7718]

silly spd over cap on system disk and vol over spd. for a storrage. im happy with kyocera as second drv.

[@pascaldifolco4611]

Your SSD reviews are something else, really original and high quality, thanks !

[@Rkcuddles]

She has the perfect set for all these cute artsy shots of the ssds hanging out in the planter. It’s great

[@1sonyzz]

then take off pink glasses and see the world...

[@BenState]

what's original about it?

[@Felttipfuzzywuzzyflyguy]

That's really funny they didn't want to send you one, it's awesome that you bought one anyway to review it on your own. Thank you!

[@bgeneto]

I like the way you explain the applicability of each test/benchmark. it's common to see buyers choosing SSD based on sequential read and write values ​​alone.

[@Groovy-Train]

I've purchased one of these based on your review. Yeah it's cheap and crappy compared to other NVME's, but it'll make a decent upgrade to my gaming drive, which is currently a 1tb mechanical HDD. Keep up the good work. 👍

[@TechTesters]

Thanks! And it's OK if you need something cheap imho. So, glad I could help :)

[@leopold7562]

Oh, definitely yes! It'll make your HDD look like it's using dial-up for transferring data

[@gerryakbar]

How crappy compared to other PCIe 3.0 SSDs?

[@dedge8060]

I wouldn't bother, they fail a lot.

[@UsingUsing01]

​@@TechTesters Hi I want to buy a fast and longevity SSD so I saw on KZbin and some people say that NVMe is "short life" and sometimes "crash" your desktop. I am doubt , I don't know what type of SSD to buy , only fast and longevity, I don't care about prize. Only two things: lifespan, longevity and very fast . Thank you

[@kellervater]

Bought the 2TB version half a year ago, because it were the actual cheapest 2TB nvme on the market. I needed a fast drive as video cache for video editing. Since this isn't any kind of crucial use-case I also don't mind if it fails.

[@taramjwi57]

I considered this one for a budget build I was helping with but went with an on sale p3 plus 1TB ($55) instead. Thanks for the thorough review!

[@el_tio_apoca8014]

Nice review, another thing someone should consider about kingston drives is that they last more than the advertised on their ssd's, so even if they are selling pcie gen 3 speeds the average consumer isn't going to notice it as they are already really fast at a competitive price, basically around normal ssd's price but on nvme factor.

[@palmariusbjrnstad1682]

Great initiative to go buy one even if they wouldn't send a test sample! I like that you covered the vague specs in the start- and maybe this deserves a reminder for everyone: Your NV2 and my NV2 may perform very differently, because they can put any old flash chips (and even controllers) as long as it satisfies those specs. That said, I have one, and in reality it's pretty similar to the reviewed one.

[@TechTesters]

Thanks! Unfortunately more and more SSDs are getting super vague specs these days, kinda disappointing. But it gives an opportunity for a really painful review if I end up buying another one in a few months and it ends up much worse ;)

[@jirehla-ab1671]

Is this nv2 ok for video editing considering it has 300tbw?

[@JMatrx]

They didn't want to send a sample because at launch they advertised it as having a TLC dramless design.. but then they slipped in QLC silently as far as I know without changing the part number. It has a mapping table enabled controller (as SN 570/770, Adata Atom, P3/P3+ and probably also the vanilla 980 I believe). In TLC fashion it performed okayish, in QLC is kinda meh, once the SLC cache is exhausted I saw it bogging down below 100mb/s on some reddit posts.. .. so okayish for a data storage/game folder drive. Not for writing down shadowplay recordings and I'd not use it as a single Windows OS/Mixed data usage. I fear Windows I/O may hammer the SLC cache as any other similar drive.

[@Odd_Taxi_epi04]

Yah, QLC with SLC cache exausted is terrible, and her's is shown at 4:45 clocking 130 MB/s. I consider it one of the most important benchmarks, as it's when you are making a big copy in an old drive that you will really feel the bad performance as those QLCs can be worse than spinning disks for that. A TLC drive will always be quick enough (generally) even if lagging a bit behind in other benchmarks. Not to mention the general endurance.

[@Knebebelmeyer]

really?...i have one of these in my laptop! i will check this! i brought a Renegate for my Gaming Rig....its one of the best drive and better than my 1tb 980pro!! (but u notice the difference only in benchmarks)

[@JMatrx]

@@Knebebelmeyer the renegade is a refined kc3000 that's a fast drive with TLC and dram. The nv2 is the lowest spectrum, better than the nv1 (that can be considered the worst nvme ever produced alongside the crucial P2), neither the P3 nor the nv2 I'd use for Windows or for the sole system drive.

[@curtispavlovec]

They all do the bait and switch, for a 40 or 50 dollar what do you expect.

[@eduardoslabecki6172]

@@Odd_Taxi_epi04 It`s okay, is faster than samsumg 980 pci3. You not see this drive to compare to pci4 ones, yo see this one to compare to gen 3 drives, and with a lower price than a gen3 premium one, and better in general than all gen3 ones. so yes it`s worth the value it has, here i can find it cheaper than a gen 3 nvme WD green so... it's value worth its specs really well.

[@sheldonkupa9120]

Very good and balanced analysis. I got 2 of them, and they are close to 50 degree celsius while not used as boot drive a while after i start up the computer. Even mosfets are at 30 degrees. That means they use a lot of power while idle. But for my usecase they perform reasonably well. The Crucial nvmes i use just are at least 20 degrees cooler.

[@borschelrh]

Thanks for the review and the initiative. I ordered one to use solely as external storage using a cheap USB 3.2 case. It should be fine for this purpose and less expensive than USB thumb drives. Here in Hungary, it comes in at a bit over $100 including the 27% VAT. and shipping. It is the cheapest solution for me for on-the-road camera storage.

[@jjjj-x9g]

hey are they still working

[@sheldonkupa9120]

@@jjjj-x9g i dont fill em up, keep them at 60%. Still working, yes.

[@magoid]

I got the 2TB version in the last Black Friday in November. Works fine for my needs and it was priced in the range of some 1TB offerings, so it was a no-brainer to take it. There was better performance ones? Sure. But I was in need of the capacity, and its performance was a big jump from the ancient Samsung 840 EVO SATA SSD I was using at the time.

[@jjjj-x9g]

is it still working

[@longplaylegends]

All in all, this is actually a great deal for MUCH better than SATA performance, at like half the price of other drives with the same capacity. I think I'm going for a 2TB on one of these. Just seems awfully good to pass up, and I run plenty of games from SATA SSD's that this will outperform anyway, and those almost always work just fine regardless.

[@saricubra2867]

Bought two 1TB of these.

[@denniskarlsson6173]

Yeah I bought a 2tb version to get rid of one of my two sata ssd's

[@majicalpandatech]

If you are in the us on Newegg the 670p 2tb is $100 which has dram

[@longplaylegends]

@@randomguydoes2901 Actually, good point. Current price is like $5 more on Amazon US and it outperforms significantly. Much appreciated! Edit: The sequential write on SN570 is shite. I think the much faster speed in sequential write can make up for SN570's much faster speed in other areas.

[@ferrumignis]

@@randomguydoes2901 I'd take the SN570 in a heartbeat over this, I just don't understand the love for a middling QLC based drive.

[@klopferator]

Bought two of them (500GB), so far no problems. One thing to note regarding the video: It's easy to say "you should buy an SSD with DRAM", but the shops (and often the manufacturers) don't have this information readily available. When I look at Amazon, the only way I know that the Samsung 980 Pro is supposed to have DRAM is because one of the fancy CG images shows a chip labelled "DRAM", but it's not mentioned elsewhere.

[@Mikelica69]

lol true

[@Bajicoy]

Super useful review to see how close a cheap gen 4 and a better quality gen 3 drive are. I really like seeing how cheaper drives compare to the more expensive ones. I recently got a 4tb teamgroup mp34 gen 3 drive as an upgrade to my saberent rocket 1TB gen 3 drive. I spent $120 back in 2019 so it was really cool to see the 4TB drive almost got to $200. Maybe not the fastest drive but fast enough for CAD and games. I did not realize the lower capacity drives reduced speeds so much so thank you for explaining the recommendation that 500GB is a good minimum moving forward!

[@charminbaer2323]

I'm a photographer, I currently have 2 OWC Thunderbay 4 RAID drives, 4TB each. One is a Thunderbay 4 Mini, with 4 x 1TB 2.5" SSDs, the other has 4x 1TB HDDs. The Mini with SSDs I use as my main external storage for my Lightroom library, and the other RAID is a backup of that main one. I'm about to run out of storage, so I was looking at upgrading both of my RAID drives, when I found the Kingston NV2 2TB at $99 each. That's pretty damn cheap, almost as cheap or cheaper than some 2.5" SATA SSDs, whilst having better performance. At this price, I would get 4 of these NV2 drives and put them in a RAID enclosure like the ones from OWC. I'll then upgrade the 2.5" SSDs to 2TB each, and sell my larger Thunderbay 4 with 3.5" HDD.

[@michaelthompson9798]

I got the 2TB model here in Australia 🇦🇺 about 2months ago for roughly $98USD plus local taxes (10% GST) and it’s been a great drive for my photos and extended games library 💪👍🥰. When I first saw the specs of this drive I immediately said it’s a Gen 3 drive (NOT 4 as stated) but it’s performance value for its uses Is exemplary and I would recommend this drive).

[@jjjj-x9g]

hey is it still working

[@maxview99]

This is exactly what I need for a second game drive. Thanks for the review!

[@darrell9616]

Thanks for continuing to cover SSDs.

[@TechTesters]

Of course! And thank you!

[@ricardoaugusto2333]

The issue with the current NV2 drives is that they are now based in QLC flash, that makes them suitable only for low write workloads, they will suffer a higher wear when a high write workload happens.

[@dominus6695]

What about the WD drives labelled as SLC? I read 'SLC cache', so is cache the whole memory, or just one chip used for caching?

[@LatitudeSky]

Great review. Had been looking into a 2TB drive as storage to replace a spinning drive. The boot drive is already an SN770 Black and runs like a rocketship. Less performance on a second drive, if it saves a lot of money, is probably still better than the spinning drive. The second slot is only gen 3 anyway. WD and Sandisk, and Hynix would be my preferences but perhaps this Kingston would work, too. Thanks again. Subscribed.

[@GrizzAxxemann]

I was looking at one of these back in September when I finally upgraded from my old AM3+ platform to AM4. I ended up going with a KC3000 for (at the time since it was on sale) $20CAD more as it clearly had better performance, and would probably be more future-proof than the NV2.

[@interrobangings]

sorry but did you really wait until the *end* of am4 to upgrade and not just go am5 😱

[@GrizzAxxemann]

@@interrobangings yep. Upgrade was about $1000CAD cheaper.

[@williamlau7179]

Planning to purchase 3x1tb Kingston fury gen4. 2 for notebook pcie3. So in a few years can move these two fury to new pc.

[@BilisNegra]

I'm not a power user and I'm not disappointed at all with the results. I had my mind set on this one as yes, it's the cheapest NVME drive of any kind I've seen where I live, and I just wanted to use the technology instead of a SATA SSD. With that in mind, it's clear the leap is going to be quite big no matter what and I want to grab one of these NV2s just as much as I did before watching the review, or even more. I think I'm the kind of person such a product is targeted to and the value is definitely there. Thank you for taking a look at this product.

[@valters6786]

Thank you so much for the review!! Was contemplating between the 2TB version and the 1TB KC3000 for my new build since they are on the same price point in my area. Will get the 2TB NV2 for storing my steam games. More storage, MOAR GAMES! 🤪

[@p_mouse8676]

What's always so "wrong" with getting something affordable? If it fits the purpose, why wasting more money on it?

[@gorrilaunit99]

Because you're getting ripped off. No one should be taken advantage of and pricing accordingly.

[@carleynorthcoast1915]

People have their ego tied up with their tech. It doesn't make sense to get the best because in three years it will be the worst

[@AqepbxVondx]

Becseue kc3000 is only 10 dollars more so don't be cheap. I'm annoyed my prebuilt came with kc3000 and this. Just why.

[@jeji5860]

​@@AqepbxVondxkc3000 is impressive but i cant afford it

[@piadas804]

​@@AqepbxVondx It's literally double the price

[@rohultima]

I own the 2tb version of this drive. And same as she found. It gets hot. And that hurts the drive. I had a spare heatsink and thermal pad. Once I put that on the drive. It's performance was never affected by thermal issues again. So to get it to perform well. You need a heatsink on it.

[@adolfhsouna]

Thanks

[@AliOriginals]

They possibly don't want it reviewed not to leak potential higher end customers. As you mentioned, for most users, this much better value drive is all they need.

[@iliasiosifidis4532]

i bought the 2tb version for 3d assets textures etc. 2TB suppose to be faster, but i am really happy with it after 6 months or so

[@otterpatt]

im actually glad you mentioned this! currently looking for some good news about this storage card for 3d stuff and so far your comment gave me some relief 😭😭 is it still working well?

[@ivreetfroid]

@@otterpatt bro didn't reply so ig its ded 😂

[@HomeAloneGaming1]

i bought one of these 1TB version in December 2022, couple months ago. using it in the 2nd m.2 drive slot on the MOBO. using it mostly to store games etc. i have an 870 evo in the same PC. this Kingston drive is faster, its noticeable. I also have the crucial P5 plus in the same system. the crucial drive is running the OS and it crushes! thanks for the review love seeing info about parts in my PC.

[@unknownoption7013]

I got a 500gb version for about 39e for my home server OS drive as all the case bays were used. Does pretty well for it as most of large read/write operation are made on the spinning rust data drives and for the rest of the time it mainly sits there idling. If you have a similar use case its a pretty good deal.

[@aminesekhri4413]

I'm planing to buy the 500gb to use it just for gaming, would you recommend it ?

[@unknownoption7013]

@@aminesekhri4413 Should do fine. Its slow for a nvme drive sure, but its miles ahead of an hard drive and fast still most similar priced sata ssds. I would recommend, if your motherboard doesn't have it already, to buy a heat sink for it. They're not to expensive.

[@nate6386]

I had an empty spare NVMe to USB3 enclosure and this was perfect to turn it into a giant thumbdrive for doing backups of machines before working on them, or for location to dump data from data recovery software.

[@demon6937]

this is my plan also

[@interrobangings]

I love these SSDs. They're good enough for your average user and dirt cheap to boot.

[@hackerx7329]

I'd say more than good enough as a secondary drive for storing large stuff like game installs or media files. And looking beyond desktops and even laptops this thing is an amazing deal for use with stuff like SBCs and hackable tablets and such

[@Z1nka]

This looks great for a secondary drive. Great review as always 😀

[@TechTesters]

Thanks! And it is.

[@applebro9943]

Mine died in 1 hour last day

[@papuce2]

@@applebro9943 unlucky, but that happens even to the most expensive ones. Just return it :-) Friend bought 2 of these, had 0 problems so far and the performance for gaming is top level, in reality he can't see a difference between this SSD and SSD that costs 2x more :-D

[@sar2dg]

I'm using it as my primary on my 13400/B660/4070TI build. It has 64GB DDR4 3200, 2 2TB PNY 2.5 SSDs, an 850w SFX, inside of a DLH21 ITX case. There is one 92mm Noctua case fan almost perfectly aligned with the Noctua 92mm CPU fan with a third Noctua fan: 120mm case exhaust fan. All the fans are Chromax.black. The CPU idles at 28°C and I've had reach 88° on Cinebench after 30 min. The Kingston drive gets as toasty as 75°C.

[@vexed2576]

That is one powerful pc

[@MaTtRoSiTy]

I have been using a Kingston NVME as my main drive and I have a higher end system (5800X3D, RTX4090 etc) but I don't care for a few seconds less load time and I don't do much other than game and honestly it has been totally reliable and fast enough to be nice to use daily. I would buy another after owning this

[@LatitudeSky]

You hit it about boot time. A lot of reviews focus on it but the average person reboots a couple times a day, at most. Maybe once a day or once a week. Does it matter if that takes 3 seconds or just 2? Not to me. I remember PC boot times not in seconds but multiple minutes. My current PC really does boot in 3 seconds. ANY effort or money spent to reduce that would be a waste in my opinion. I boot once a day. I don't care if a second is wasted. In-app performance matters a lot more but almost any SSD will deliver decent results there. Only benchmarks and testing reveal the differences.

[@BudgetBuildBarry]

Good information, thank you for always making it easy for folks like me who are still learning. Just to add, as someone who is always building on a budget what you have listed in your low end is still a big step up for what I am modding. As of late my starting point has been eMMC so the speeds your hitting are a dream to me!!

[@the-patient-987]

This quality content is why you're my first choice for SSD reviews. The only reason I can only guess they didn't want to send a review sample because they make more money by selling the mre expensive models. Thank you.

[@Nayr7928]

I'm upgrading from a 1TB NV2 to a 2TB P5 Plus. Bought this NV2 for $61 and it's now priced $38 new for the same capacity. Waiting for an Amazon sale for the 2TB P5 Plus, currently priced at $96. I'm buying from Amazon instead of local here in Asia as local/online stores sell it for a hefty $140. Amazon with free shipping is a godsend.

[@EJSmith-dk3yg]

I like that you mentioned the lack of DRAM Cache ... but one of the first things that I look for in an SSD, is if they have (SLC cache) MLC, TLC, or QLC NAND. Sometimes you have to dig for this info, but a crucial part of my decision making process. QLC is always a no for me ! Also always buy the largest one you can afford (they last longer) ! Thank you for the video Nada !

[@RohitCantSing]

Could you explain it further or guide me to a video explaining it.? I'm new to this ssd thing

[@Herkan97]

@@RohitCantSing I looked it up while trying to find SSDs and I didn't even up buying any, so I think you can find it too. Something about read/write endurance, I believe. QLC is the cheapest, but if you want your OS drive dead in 6 months.. You can use backup software that often backs up, like AJC Active Backup or the others that I saw that I didn't like as much or also had to pay for, together with full backups every month to an HDD using Acronis or whathaveyou, anything that gets access and doesn't throw a bunch of errors like 7-zip does and you may be set, I'd use 2 HDDs for the full backups, backup to one and then copy it to the other or use a more complicated setup like RAID but those probably require the drives to be internal or spend a bunch of money on NAS, I don't know as I've never looked this stuff up properly or even at all. Wall of text with partially irrelevant stuff in it: The cheap method is what I started doing, but then I filled up my external drives and I've not done a full backup in 2-3 months..Oops. I just have some cheap 240GB? SSD that I've used twice in a row and the first time it died within 6 months I think, may have been 5 actually, 2022-03-15 to 2022-08-15?, too lazy to check what the range was. More e-waste, presumably. But maybe the higher end stuff requires rarer resources, I don't know which is better if you have the money for either, I still have two SSDs dusting waiting to be installed, I probably should move to one of them, it's what I did with an old laptop HDD I used up. Before the current drive failed, I moved to a different one and then when that failed I moved back and then that failed and now I'm on the second SSD of the same design. Intenso Top 240GB? I think.. It's a miracle it hasn't failed, but my current understanding of its health is based on the previous one I used. Would be nice if this one actually lasted more than a year and the previous one was just poopoo from the start. I didn't have nvme slots in the previous PC config when I still used the previous Intenso Top 240GB? SSD, so it was never on my mind and I read in the manual that two sata slots will be disabled if I use it, I'd rather use 2 SATA slots than one NVME as the speed is entirely irrelevant, clearly. Oh no, a game takes 2 seconds longer to load. I play one game that has been mostly broken for 2 months, it just doesn't do much when starting it for 3+ minutes, one time it was 25min. But yeah, in more realistic settings, nothing takes long enough that NVME is necessary. Most games on HDDs load fast enough, some are questionable like Rainbow Six Siege, I used to be the one that loaded the fastest and I had an HDD, but I think that HDD was failing or there were enough updates that made it take longer and longer, so I became the guy everyone was waiting for, so I got an SSD. It's probably not the right choice as HDDs have lasted a lot longer. Longest SSD I've used was 2 years or so, longest external HDD is 10 years I think and longest internal may be 7 years and I'm currently using it. It is a miracle it hasn't failed like the previous internal HDD I used for the same purpose, considering I bought it before the previous one and I switched to it after. I've also written to it constantly to back up, unlike the one that is broken, at one point it had all my Steam library games installed and I liked that it fit nicely in there. I can't remember, but I think my Steam library at the time took around 3.5TB and the drive was 3.63TB. Not great, supposedly, as 10% space left let's it breathe or whatever. I believe at some point I removed the games and nowadays I wouldn't do something like that, as I wouldn't play 99% of them. Wouldn't have back then either, but I made dumber decisions back then, like removing my Skyrim folder I changed around to work with all the mods I wanted and that took probably a hundred hours, to get space..for stuff that took maybe 2 minutes to get. If I recall correctly, I modified some part of the files with some tool that said what was conflicting in the files, the plugins I think. Maybe it was just Notepad++ and comparing two files? I don't know if I used Notepad++ at that point. Most of the time was spent opening Skyrim, going to places to find out if going there crashes it. Eventually I reached an unstable state where going somewhere wouldn't just crash the game. I think one mod added an entire castle somewhere that was instanced, but still affecting the Skyrim world and going near it crashed the game until I fixed it somehow. I didn't write down almost anything back then, so I have no idea how I did anything or why something may have crashed. But the vanilla is already a bit unstable if you don't use a wiki. Pretty sure I used a wiki for a vanilla playthrough that said what paths taken leads to what issues, basically the place where I would be able to read that grabbing the golden claw without having the quest first, would break the quest or something like that. I used that for everything I did and I still ended up with 3 broken quests after the defeat of Alduin, but I'm uncertain of all of this. I could probably have used console commands to fix them, maybe I was doing a run explicitly to see if I could get to the end with all quests done? I believe I first finished the game on Xbox 360, so I doubt it was that I was trying to do a vanilla playthrough specifically to finish it at all. I know I wanted a save file on PC so I could actually back it up as Xboxes and Playstations are closed systems and I didn't want to touch the jailbreaking stuff.

[@valkaielod]

TLC was a big no-no as well. They do perform admirably and much better than we expected them to when it was new tech. I think the same is valid for QLC as well. I got the 2TB NV2 4 months ago and use it for all desktop tasks including gaming and running VMs. It rocks!

[@williamlau7179]

​@@valkaielod nowadays, ssd are either tlc or cheaper qlc in common markets. When prices are not too different，will go for tlc with dram, like Kingston fury $80 for 1tb. Nv2 is not suitable for notebooks due to high heat.

[@valkaielod]

@@williamlau7179 NV2 is perfect for laptops. Pretty fast and one of the cooler SSDs. I did the exact same thing as you. And would still do it with other models (MX500 vs BX500 for example). But Kingston really nailed this one. I hope they don't begin swapping components with sub-par ones though :)

[@Ghubaluba]

Was looking for some extra storage and was surprised that this one was cheaper than SATAs, good to see it works good for light usage!

[@DJaquithFL]

In the real world, nobody would ever notice between the slowest M.2 and the fastest. They would literally have to do a side by side comparison and even then we're talking about a second or two.

[@Erowens98]

They would notice the lack of DRAM though. Plenty of people move large files like games between drives.

[@autumnlopez4311]

I got this as part of a package when purchasing a case for my pc. It lasted about a year and then it corrupted somehow (even though all that was on it was windows) and completely stopped working until I cleaned the disk and reformatted it. It was used as a boot drive, and pretty much only that, and all my other drives that had my games, downloads and other large files were completely fine. Found out that this isn't the first time it's randomly just shit itself and stopped working, many others have had the issue too. Can't say I recommend it very much, but if you are looking for something cheap while you look for other ssd's, it's okay.

[@danabell2709]

It sounds good for mass storage at the very least. I have a 2TB SN770 on its way because WD had a sale going on their site and I got it for $120 (+tax). Still if I decide to get more storage soon, I'd consider it :)

[@JinghisKhan]

Also consider the Crucial P3. Gen 3 drive but you can get a 2TB one for ~$115 on sale. Great for storage if nothing else, or as a primary drive on budget/M.2 space limited builds.

[@jasonhurdlow6607]

I was going to mention the SN770 at this price as a much better alternative, but you beat me to it. +1 Also consider the Silicon Power UD90 as another option.

[@leopold7562]

Intriguing. I got an NVMe drive ages ago when I put together my current gaming rig and I bought the biggest I could afford at the time - a now measly 256GB, for the cost of FOUR of these 1TB drives! I'm running a 2TB HDD for games and I was very interested in this, right up until the point I remembered my motherboard only has one NVMe slot and because I'm rocking an ITX rig, the one sole PCIe slot is being used by my GPU. Damn.

[@EclecticianG]

Nice job! It was interesting to see how various SSDs perform. I don't buy Kingston anymore, but I often see the NV2 recommended to builders on LTT Forum. Personally, I have 3 Gen 4 M.2 SSDs, of which one was in your comparison: WD Black SN770. I have the Sabrent Rocket 4 (not plus), and I also have the Team Group T-Create Classic. I was surprised to see the variance between drives depending on which tests you ran. Thanks!

[@TheSpectre.24]

entonces es mejor que me compre un WD BLACK SN770 en ves de un NV2 KINGSTON?

[@ThePCExpertAmateur]

@@TheSpectre.24 The SN770 is better than the NV2, but the SN850X is better than both of them.

[@kiraitachi]

I bought 2 of these 1Tb at 62€ each in Spain. I was looking for some cheap storage for my VMware Homelab with PCIE4 motherboard and AM5 CPU. Thanks for the awesome review.

[@georgeindestructible]

What i hate about NVME or M.2 drives is the absence of disclosure of the existence of caching layers, like DRAM>SLC etc etc, it's really annoying to have to always try to "dig out" this information from some search engine and most of the time, unless it's a very known, respected good drive then yeah you can find information but most of the time you won't be able to, especially for cheaper drives. Yeah i know that most controllers these days support HMB but then the implementation issue is a concern because of size, latency, scheduling and speed is determined by the system's ram itself so everyone's experience with it will be different etc etc, but the most important thing is that nowhere near as reliable for good latency and data retention practices compared the real thing, and then there is TRIM which is where DRAM shines to assist it when the drive performs it. I am not saying drives without their own DRAM shouldn't exist, they have their own use cases i just want it be fully disclosed (including all its related specs like speed, latency, power consumption etc etc), this has to be normalized.

[@willcarter7079]

I bought a couple kingston nv1 SSDs last year for archival storage that needs to be thrown in a back pack and travel in a car across America. And work great for me in a ugreen USB type c enclosure. I don't access these drives very often but when I do I need them to work. So far a year later they're still working.

[@EcksGamer]

See the reason why Kingston doesn't want people to review that NVMe drive is because it is extremely cheap and gets hot way too fast as a lot of other reviews has pointed out and also for around the same cost you can get the Team Group MP44L instead which has better overall cooling performance and better overall performance in general.

[@dfuebermann1]

How in the world does this channel not have 1M+ subs?? Everything from the editing to the content itself is spectacular!

[@coningsbydrive9297]

I'd definitely make sure to get a DRAM backed drive for boot purposes, but this looks a great offering for secondary drives, especially if you're only doing occasional writes.

[@Brukner841]

You mean this can't be the main bootable drive?

[@Mildewpants]

@@Brukner841 It can be, and will be much better than an HDD, but it's betst to have an SSD with DRAM for a boot drive. Makes more of a difference for SATA DDSs compared to NVME however.

[@jd31068]

Excellent review! I can see why they didn't want you to review it, it makes sense to buy this instead of some of the high end drives unless you're using demanding software (which most do not) for the masses this drive makes the most sense given its price to performance.

[@Choralone422]

It looks to be a good value if you want NVMe bulk storage but don't need max speed. Certainly better than any SATA SSD. I've been very happy with my purchases of Kingston SSDs in all formats over the past 10 years. I still haven't had one fail in any of the PCs I've upgraded with a SATA SSD or any of the new builds I've done with the KC3000 SSD since it was released.

[@rklrkl64]

Your benchmark graphs show that my £85 new 1TB SN850X (with heatsink) in my PCI 4.0 motherboard is by far the best gaming price-performance SSD I could have bought. It's beaten by the 990 Pro overall, but that's £137 in the UK at the moment. The Kingston here is on offer at £49 at Amazon UK, but its RRP is normally an eye-watering £109 (completely uncompetitive).

[@Faksnima]

I love your reviews! Especially of these drives. However, there is one drive missing that I would love you to check out - the SK Hynix Platinum P41. It's close overall to the SN_850X but with better thermals even without a heatsink. I would love to see how it stacks up in stress and heavy use compared to the 990 and 850x. Keep up the awesome work!

[@AwankO]

I have that exact model of the Sk Hynix, it was more competitively priced compared to its Samsung equivalents.

[@TechTesters]

Thank you! I'm actually trying to get one, but I haven't seen any in the EU for a while. If you find one somewhere let me know.

[@jasonhurdlow6607]

Most reviews show it better than the 850x and a little behind the 990. It's an amazing drive.

[@TheMalpractice-y7t]

P41 is mostly limited to NA

[@Fopserr]

The Solidigm P44 Pro is basically the same drive with a better firmware and actually available in the EU

[@eytfiftin]

I got the 4 TB version of this drive recently from a sale locally here in the Philippines (~USD 65). It replaced a Crucial P3 1 TB Gen 3 that I purchased last I got from Amazon (~USD 60) as a game drive, so a huge upgrade for me.

[@Scj10]

I got it for my laptop and it works fine, the only problem is that I noticed that it does get a little hot while idle and while actually using it. idk if there is something I can do to improve it but the temps are not high enough to be a concern apparently (But it is kinda annoying since the ssd is at a spot where you usually rest your hand and you can definitely feel it). Idle is around 53C and while using it it goes to like 63C. I heard you can put a Thermal pad to decrease it by 2 or so degrees but I am not sure if it is worth it (I have to note that the ambient temperature of my country is pretty hot, when I turn on the ac it gets a little better).

[@joebouharb2039]

Same here .. having the exact same issue but i think it’s not gonna burn the ssd. Not sure if i’m gonna spend more for thermal pad and heatsink

[@Scj10]

@@joebouharb2039 as a little update the SSD is still working fine, havent gotten any heatsink. It doesnt really rise over 70 °c which is decent enough but I think that is because my country is hot af, when I turn the ac It gets a little better.

[@joebouharb2039]

When i play games it stays between 56 c and 61 .. it’s good and idle 49 or 45 but the second installed ssd is 39 degrees on idle, idk if that’s an issue

[@matheuscaldeira25]

I've had a 2Tb one just as a secondary drive for storage, very light use, and it lasted 1 year and 1 month. It just died overnight. Talked to some people and no one had one of those for more than 1 and a half year. Affordable, yes. Worth it, no!

[@johndoh5182]

Here is the way I look at these drives. I'd buy them ALL DAY LONG for inexpensive builds and I don't HAVE a high expectation for a 1TB NVMe that costs $50. For most computers this is all you need. In fact even for a gaming rig this could hold older games, no problem. But for high performance I don't know why a person would be thinking they can get a 1TB NVMe for $50 USD when ALL the highest performing NVMe drives are $100+ USD, with prices getting closer to $150 for the best. You get what you pay for. I have these in NVMe housing for USB. They work fine. I used one of these in a test rig to test a batch of GPUs, and since Win10 is a little more friendly than older OSs I'm about to test a batch of X570 MBs using one of these, where I load the OS on using one X570 and then move it to the other boards. No, the OS doesn't get registered specifically so I can keep swapping hardware.

[@anlklnc5522]

After purchasing this, it broke down in the first week of use and replaced by guarantee. After 1 year of use it broke down and replaced again. So it is not only about the performance.

[@Isyrawr]

Did u use it as OS drive?

[@anlklnc5522]

@@Isyrawr no just for storage

[@Isyrawr]

Your experience with it made me very skeptical about getting it so i ended up getting a crucial p3 instead. Its only less than $10 more where i live. U just saved me from losing my $100 to a fragile nvme😓

[@Justin.Franks]

This is perfectly suitable for my usage (large sample libraries for music production). Basically the only time a write occurs if I am adding a new library or shuffling things around. I just wish there was a 4 TB version, since sample libraries can be massive (several hundred gigabytes, I have one which is 1 TB just by itself, and a couple others over 500 GB).

[@Dreami3Dude]

They actually have a 4tb version already, though I may be a bit late to remind you about this

[@Justin.Franks]

@@Dreami3Dude Thanks! At the time they only went up to 2 TB. It's great that they released a 4 TB version.

[@Archmage1809]

I'm a system integrator and stopped purchasing NV2 for builds due to a spike in the failure rate for like 2 weeks and it has gone bad since then. (PCs return for RMA and if any of them has problems caused by the SSD, it is NV2). I also collect info from other SI and they also see a spike in failure rate after Kingston swap the controller. And it also has a problem with 2 NANDs or above SKU, sometimes the other NAND is way slower after a while, and it takes forever for game that was stored on that NAND, even unplayable if it was your boot drive (around 40mb/s sequence read and 15mb/s if it was the boot drive). Switched to Crucial and TeamGroup, and it is much less headache. (Samsung and WD are optional, but cheaper model/brand to save cost).

[@AlGggeee]

Just went through 3 cheap ssds. Started with he kingston NV2 2tb, and it's speeds were as advertised. Then the Solidigm P41 plus 2 tb which was on sale for 10 USD cheaper than kingston, a bit faster and speeds as advertised. And lastly the Crucial P3 plus 2 tb, and somehow it's showing reads at 7k and writes at 4k. Got it for 112.99 USD with 35 dollars back in rewards. Can't complaint.

[@josipmatic4732]

Heat issue? Take few mm of coppar plate (I am using 4mm) and tight it with rubber band, simple and effective. Any aluminium or coppar mass would be nice to spread and disapeat heat.

[@2kennyS]

this ssd saves my life. I was excited for the SN850X and tried to went to buy 3 SN850X. But I went for 1 SN850X for gaming/os, 1 KC3000 for video storing and 1 500GB NV2 for tenp files and meme, funny images. Good review actually

[@markkennedy4055]

I bought the Crucial P3 Plus 1TB PCIe 4.0 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD, up to 5000MB/s - CT1000P3PSSD8 Form Factor: M.2 2280 Capacity: 1TB Memory Components: 3D NAND Option: P3 Plus Sold and Shipped by Newegg $54.99 USD, Glad I did! BTW great video!

[@lamontsmith8728]

I'm currently running a pair of these 1TB drives in my new build, one is my Windows 11 install on the Gen 4 slot and the other is my Games drive on the Gen 3 slot. Currently I'm having no issues, and I'm not running either as a storage drive, i use a 2TB Seagate Barracuda SATA 3 spinner drive to minimize the large data writes and reads on the NVME'S. Booting up Windows in 11 seconds or less is really enjoyable compared to the 40+ seconds my last build did on SATA 3 spinners.

[@williamlau7179]

Decided on kingston fury gen4 $75 1tbx3pcs. Nv2 $45. Reasons: Tlc vs qlc Dram vs ramless Low temp vs high Longer life vs short Higher speed vs low Very reliable vs just ok. 2 use for notebook. Cost difference is just a few more beers in a night, but fury is for more years. One day, did realize slow files tranfer is not just wasting time but life. IMHO

[@tmsphere]

Got the Fury Renegade version of this with 2Tb. No complaints. It almost maxes out cpu core usage during loading. Also came wo heatsink but at least the sticker was on the back so no need to remove it to apply my mobo's M.2 heatsinks.

Thank you for you review, I had just bought this SSD and I find your analysis very honest, complete and professional.

[@mrmadunit3923]

that was well put concise and for the whole part very factual

[@Lenny65]

Very good review honest and real . Sometimes cheaper stuffs not always bad and you clarify all the good vs.bad . Many will buy this drive now on your testing too . Thanks

[@rja12]

I bought your best, WD SN850X, and a SK hynix Platinum P41...both 2TB versions. The SK P41 was the faster drive. Love them both though and probably can only see the difference in test results and not in real world use. Highly recommend either.

[@jaminova_1969]

Thank You! Talk about good timing! I'm in the process of building a computer and wanted to install the Kingston NV2.

[@Vatharian]

The takeout is kind of backwards realization. Faster drives than basic Gen4 performance aren't needed. There is latency gained and overall responsiveness, going from run of the mill AHCI device, but otherwise, there is very little merit in going for faster, high end drives, for normal everyday use or as OS disk. As for this Kingston, drive, I see one super useful application for it: It has roughly the same performance as top end Gen3 device, and is able to push it on two lanes! For motherboards, that share bandwidth between ports or devices, this may be perfect fit! My motherboard allows me to either assign two lanes to M.2_2 and leave SATA ports 4-7 functional, disable SATA and leave all bandwidth for M.2_2 or split two lanes M.2_2 and two for U.2_2. Another takeout is Gen5 SSDs could very well use safely ONE lane each. Flash after exhausting cache isn't fast enough to saturate even that.

[@penkatadrums]

I have the 4TB version of this drive and I have mixed feelings about it. I use it in the secold slot of my laptop as a Dropbox only drive to sync a 4TB work dropbox account to it. It gets the job done nicely I don't have any issues with anything and I can even video edit straight from the drive with no problems. But when I try to copy/move files from my main drive (980 pro) to the NV2, it just gets really SLOW like 100mb/s slow. This is as slow as an external hard drive. Sometimes it even STOPS completely for 5-10 seconds. This is the only grudge I have with it. When I bought it it was 185 EUR though, so hard to beat. The 990 pro is literally double the price, but I may consider upgrading if I am moving a lot of files to it. Copying/moving FROM IT is not an issue, though.

[@BCrossing]

You have consistently been a good review channel. Thank you for the video!

[@3k3k3]

Great review, covers everything we really need to know!. One of the important ones is the stress test that many leaves out. One thing that would be "funny" is taking a few games and do "real world" load tests. How much faster is the best superduper SSD drive when you load CyberPunk, Star Citizen, Fortnite..

[@TechTesters]

Thanks! Btw, the gaming benchmark and scores include actual loading traces from several games. But if you would count it in seconds, you wouldn't really notice the difference 9/10x

[@3k3k3]

@@TechTesters yeah, your charts cover it pretty good. It was more of a way to show that 30% difference may only be .3 seconds in "real life" :) I guess my point is that with the speed we are getting from even the slowest and least expensive drives there is no real difference. It will take Direct Storage games before it might matter. Keep up the excellent work!

[@fintux]

I needed a budget option, and I was going to go with Samsung 970 EVO plus, but it was on back order, so I had to choose between this and the WD Blue SN570. I read about the NV2 being a QLC drive, I chose the SN570. I think the 970 EVO plus probably would be a better option for many, as it has high endurance and consistent performance, even though it is a Gen 3 drive.

[@EJSmith-dk3yg]

I have two 970 EVO Plus 2TB drives and one 970 EVO Plus 1TB ! Remember this ... the 970 EVO Plus drives use an SLC cache, and MLC (multi level cell) NAND, while the 980 series switched to TLC NAND, even in the Pro versions. I would always go with that, even being Gen 3. Good Luck !

[@Bambledamble]

​@@EJSmith-dk3yg so are you saying to go with previous generation as the new generation does what exactly?

[@WayneWatson1]

I love my Seagate FireCuda 530 2TB, which has 7300 MB/s, 3yr of data rescue service free and 5yr warranty. 2550TBW (rewrite 70% of the drive every day for 5 yrs). Also, the Team group Cardea z440 which is only 5000/4400 MB/s W 3600TBW (2TB) which comes to rewrite 98.6% of the drive, every day for 5 yrs. I'd pair 2 of the nv2 on a raid card tied to my other x16 slot

[@robertcochran7103]

I have some Samsung 990 Pro M.2 devices that needed a firmware update. I've never done such an update before and was having a lot of trouble getting updates to apply. I thought perhaps the Samsung devices could be broken in some way. So, in a panic, I bought two of these Kingston drives. I was intending to clone the Samsung drives to the Kingston devices and then switch them. I was aware that the NV2 is at the low end of the performance band at the time I bought them, but the price as you say was hard to beat and they had what seemed a very attractive quality: Amazon could deliver them quickly. That is what convinced me to pay for them. A little time passed...and after making a variety of mistakes, I did succeed in updating the Samsung device firmware versions. Given your review of the NV2 devices, I probably never should have bought them. It is a shame I did not check this specific product review before buying them. Thank you for a quite excellent review.

[@Machistmo]

Got a 4 TB Silicon Power for 168 bucks. It rocks. Is the drive 1mm clearance all the way across the top? Or is the controller space (near the connector, front half of the drive .5 mm in profile? Consider this when applying thermal pads.

[@mleise8292]

WD Blue SN570 is what I got only recently and 5:40 shows why it's so good in case you don't have a PCIe 4 board anyways. That said, it struggles with the way Steam updates games. Whenever a file is large enough e.g. 20 GiB and Steam tries to patch it, SSD speed drops to like 20 MiB/s half way through. That is with Host Memory Buffer enabled under Windows 10. On another note, that some interesting benchmarks you have there. I always stopped at the usual synthetic benchmarks that only do 4k and sequential tests. But these look much more relevant. P.S.: The marketing as "PCIe 4x4 performance" for the NV2 is a meme, isn't it ^^

[@TechTesters]

Thanks! And you're right, the SN570 does have a sustained write issue, you can see that in the sequential write results as well, and I covered that in my SN570 review too. And UL / PC Mark / 3D Mark benchmarks are great, the storage ones are really well thought out trace benchmarks, making them more relatable than the usual bench tools. We do test lots of other metrics, I just don't talk about each one as it gets a bit boring.

[@mleise8292]

@@TechTesters I watched your SN570 review now and those write speed drops to 600 MiB/s is not even close to the performance drop I'm seeing. It literally goes down to 10 MiB/s in Steam updates (e.g. when patching a 40 GiB file with 300 MiB of updates)! Affected are both the SN550 and SN570 according to a user forum post. The workaround is to disable the write-cache on those SSDs - something that is considered a placebo for other brands. Thought you might find this interesting. Just don't ask me how to test for it in a review. 😅

[@MrPerlew]

Just the type of review I was after. Been looking for a large capacity SSD on the cheap for my PC and you've sold me on the 2TB version. Just what I was looking for, nothing out of this world preformance wise, but cost effective. Thanks for making the review!

[@TechTesters]

Thank you! Do check out my more recent SN580 review as well!

[@AR-bj5et]

It would be great to see you test and review the Patriot P300, it's still hailed by a lot of people as the best price to performance budget drive and it'd be awesome to see if that holds true in the current landscape given how great and thorough your testing is.

[@davidgunther8428]

If the components can vary so much and only the sequential data rates are specified, can testing any one device show what performance can be expected in general for the product?

[@yitspaerl7255]

Thanks a lot for this excellent review. I just purchased a Samsung 980 pro for almost double the price. After watching your review I do realize that the performance difference wil l be close to zero with average Office/internet use. Normally I buy Kingston for many many years. I should do again. Hartelijk dank!

[@Nathan15038]

I actually bought the 2 TB version of this drive because I’m just using it as a verb simple drive for multiple use like normal use and gaming use and also I just need a big drive that doesn’t necessarily have to be that fast. I also used to drive to plot chia plots for chia farming. So does undergoes from heavy writing so I might probably need a heating for it. But even with that and everything the SSD is still in very good condition after all those right cycles and even after the Max write limit advertised on their website has been passed it is still in like top condition. I think overall this is just a really good budget cheap SSD that functions pretty good and would last you years to come

[@dillardc81]

You can find Gen 3 2TB drives for $70 now here in the US.

[@geoffreyveale7715]

I purchased the NV1 2TB version that is PCIe 3.0. The drive generally works well. I use the drive for game files and it is more than fast enough for this purpose. The only big problem observed was when I originally loaded the drive using a copy command from another drive. When copying, say 1TB of files the drive slowed to a crawl of under 40MB/s. Beware buying one of these drives if you plan to move lots of data every now and again. In my case I only did this when installing the drive so that pain was not excessive.

[@boyanpetrov1683]

I got the nv2 as the main ssd for my new pc build. Do you think games will run well with it?

[@damightyshabba439]

First time clicking on any of your videos - and liked & Sub'd. - PROPER unbiased review with a knowledge based / experience based perspective. Yep - I'm in. Off to view the rest of the channel now, but THANK YOU for unbiased "Ignore the marketing department" reviews. Currently looking for a £800 laptop for work (no media creation, no gaming) if anyone viewing has suggestions (NOT MACS!!!!) I'll be interested to hear. No Apples. I 100%, totally, utterly hate Apples. I only ask this here because I'm assuming if you're a regular.... you take no crap and work with what works.

[@ethangoldwyre]

I have been using a 2tb NV1 for the past 6 months as a game drive with no complaints, 1% usage with pretty heavy use.

[@prajwalnoronha2818]

Can you review the Teamgroup MP34 SSD, it is one of the cheapest Gen3 Drive (1,2,4 TB) with DRAM and TLC NAND while having good speeds.

[@tiromandal6399]

🤦‍♂ I have this video tabbed since 1st March but watching it just now as I'd be needing a drive very soon but when I went to check it's prices after being satisfied by it's review I realize there was a sale just a week ago when the price was $63 but now it's back at 76 🤦‍♂ (yea the prices of pc peripherals are insane at where I live, India). I'm a fool for not watching the vid sooner. Anyways I hope it comes down again soon or maybe the P3 plus would before that. Thanks for yet another great review Nada and also about a product that's for us mortals.

[@jozsefk9]

Subscribed. Thank you. So nice to hear that nice English language 😊

[@brendanhoffmann8402]

I got a 1TB Crucial P3 Plus yesterday, it's pretty good. does over 5,000 MB/s seq reads and 3,700 MB/s seq writes. I got it for $66 usd. I'm only using it for games and storage so doesn't need to be great. Seems the 2TB P3 Plus is way faster than the 1TB!

[@dareka9425]

I got the 2TB version of this drive just a couple of weeks ago. Yes, I was very surprised to see an NVME at such a low price point so I paced in front of the shelf several times before I throw caution in the wind and bought it. The last time I bought a high capacity drive as a price that is too good to be true was a 1TB Seagate external hard disk that turned to be a scam and it broke down just minutes after getting it. Still, it's my go to PC shop for over almost 2 decades and they never disappoint me. Except for that weird Seagate hybrid Firecuda drive that keep breaking after a couple of days(on two separate models). I used it mainly to offload data from the main drives and not for gaming. So far I didn't encounter any problems aside from some weird delays in Windows during the frist coupe of days. There's also a Kingston 480GB SATA drives that's selling for less than US$35 next to the NV2 at the shop. I might get it for my second PC, an old gaming PC turned to work PC. I need to see reviews first.

[@DarkTrapStudio]

First time here, Strong video/broll/review skills ! nice thanks