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

[@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!

[@ShinyHelmet]

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

[@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?

[@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?

[@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.

[@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

[@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.

[@maxview99]

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

[@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.

[@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!

[@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.

[@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.

[@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?

[@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

[@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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!

[@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

[@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.

[@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

[@DDRWakaLaka]

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

[@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!!

[@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

[@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.

[@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

[@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

[@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.

[@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?

[@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.

[@reygood1]

Tom's hardware review is too negative, your review is just for being practical. I would just keep my important files to my other reliable drives though. Running this with Gen 3 speed I might have more headroom for its heat dissipation.

[@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.

[@DDRWakaLaka]

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

[@GrizzAxxemann]

@@DDRWakaLaka 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.

[@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.

[@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! 🤪

[@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!

[@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.

[@jaminova_1969]

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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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😓

[@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.

[@meromero6284]

Very informative video, thank you. I wanted to buy one of these for my new 4k system as main ssd, decided to buy the kc3000.

[@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.

[@realdadgaming]

Very informative and detailed review! I will take your advise and go with P3. You earned my sub!

[@TechTesters]

Glad it was helpful!

[@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.

[@vulcan4d]

I consider you the nvme goddess :) I only buy your recommendations.

[@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 :)

[@jamesperez6785]

exactly the review i was looking for. i've had my eye on this ssd for quite some time now

[@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.

[@whssy]

Still on a gen 3 mobo and needed some cheap space for my steam library. Getting an NV2 was a no-brainer. Not sure I would have if I had a gen 4 board.. but as a "my 9900K is fine and dandy for now - at least until 15th gen comes along" it was a great solution. PC runs exactly the same or better with this as my boot drive as it did with the 4 year old 256GB 980 I was using before. Buying anything "better" would have been a waste of money for this specific scenario.

[@TechTesters]

Sounds reasonable! 👍

[@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.

[@masterluckyluke]

Thanks for the review, I was looking for a good and cheap storage drive to replace my HDD and found this one. So for pure storage like documents, photos etc. it seems to be a good buy. 2TB for 77 Euros (at this moment), that's almost insane.

[@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.

[@SubmaxSubrose]

I love your videos! I have one of these as a games and file storage ssd (nothing that intensive) and its so cheap and thats ok for me. But I was curious to use it as a main drive, now I know better and will look for something faster. Thanks for sharing and respect for your great review!

[@TechTesters]

Thank you! :)

[@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.

[@mrmadunit3923]

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

[@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.

[@tuhinlavania5730]

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

[@danielfernandezaguirre]

the title scared me as I recently built a home office pc for a friend with this as a boot drive because he had a tight budget, hopefully it turns out ok over time.

[@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

[@shapelessed]

An SSD not having physical D-RAM cache does not mean it does not use one. NVMe SSDs can utilize system memory to perform caching.

[@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.

[@TCLG6x6]

Its funny how so many people say "Hey this is slow but still good value for the capacity" and here i am absolutely flabbergasted by the speed after upgrading from a SATA 3 Drive

[@winclouduk]

Great video. I have the 2tb version of the wd blue drive and it’s actually not as slow as the tests say. Also the price need to be in gbp too as here we don’t do dollars or euros

[@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.

[@steaksoldier]

I use a 2tb one of these as a shared steam drive between linux and windows installs and I have no issues thus far. Not bad if the fastest speeds arent what you need.

[@doodskie999]

I use the 1tb version of this ssd. Its pretty good My pc boots in 7 seconds and Im pretty satisfied with it.

[@soonts]

Since apparently you're in Netherlands, consider Intel 660p series. The price is about the same at the moment, €61 for 1TB, €111 for 2TB. These SSDs are using PCIe generation 3, but I think it only matters for faster more expensive drives.

[@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.

[@davidwayne9982]

I will use 500gig for OS- and a 2T for DATA ONLY-- and NOT auto- mount it.... so it's used only when i WANT it to be used. That's worked VERY well for me for a long time now.

[@abdu47137]

Thank you. I almost bought an NV2 but, I check the Crucial pricing and it turns out they are the same price. so I went for it

[@dherrendoerfer]

The benchmark result values make no sense at all - the drive is faster under heavy load than light - and seq test is the write test controller throughput at 4xPCIE3 ? Why is the sticker in the thermal test on while it's off in the intro ? I've got the 1T TLC and QLC, and the 2T QLC version of this, and they benchmark way differently - These are lazy gc models, did you let yours clean the fast write area between tests ?

[@georgeindestructible]

People also need to know another thing about M.2 vs NVME based drives, M.2 drives cannot do bidirectional communication because the SATA protocol no matter the version, does NOT physically/electrically support it, NVMEs on the other hand do, and so, if the drive has DRAM, its controller can use it to write to DRAM while reading from the main NAND flash at the same time, which speeds things up by quite a lot and reduces latency thus response to IO requests making an NVME drive quite a lot better fit for an OS drive, especially if it's directly placed on an NVME connector on the motherboard which is directly connected to the PCI-E lanes of the CPU.

[@darrell9616]

Thanks for continuing to cover SSDs.

[@TechTesters]

Of course! And thank you!

[@igavinwood]

Nicely done. Much appreciated testing results and related to actual real life scenarios. Subbed to the channel as you have proven yourself as a reliable and realistic tech tuber.

[@TechTesters]

Thank you very much!

[@deneguil-1618]

Funnily with this video what you've conviced me to go for for my storage setup is a 1TB SN850X as my boot / work programs drive (also random files while i don't have a NAS) and a 2TB SN770 as my game drive lol

[@deneguil-1618]

@OpenYourMind The SN770 looks great, I really like WD drives in general they seem reliable and not too expensive. No problem with my SN570 in my laptop and their HDDs are a staple in NAS for a reason I do code quite often and like to edit videos from time to time so I'd still prefer the SN850X for the main drive tho

[@jasonhurdlow6607]

Good combo and the current sale prices make it affordable too!

[@LaczPro]

Today's Crucial SSDs prices are insane. Well, any SSD is getting cheaper which is amazing.

[@shadowhacker27]

They never want you to review their products so they can create them and keep them for themselves... LMAO!

[@Onion_Knights]

$50 for 1TB? take my money. 2TB great for storage

[@Portuguese-linguica]

I remember when the first 8 gb hdd came out in 2000 and my dad saying you will never fill that thing . Still have that dinosaur lol .

[@Kevin-mx1vi]

The bottom line is that it's still a damned fast drive, and faster than most people actually *need* .

[@LiannLee1666]

I have 3 of them in my gaming pc 1 TB instead of harddrives ...faster en quiet..they are great.....

[@TheVirusWar]

I stumbled upon this some days ago and am literally waiting for the next week to get my salary so I order one of these. This video is amazing, KZbin really did well on recommending it. So, in conclusion, compared to every SATA SSD, its better, and it's cheaper than most 1TB SSD's, so why not buy it? Really good review and a lot of technical data, exactly what I needed.

[@DannyWilliamH]

I have the 250GB drive because it was on sale for $18 and I wanted an OS only NVMe drive for my not-at-all-state-of-the-art PC. It actually runs as Gen3 so speed isn't the main reason why I bought it, lol. Yeah, I like it. I boot in about 8 seconds from power-on, including MB/bios flash screen. About half the time as my SATA SSD. It literally only holds the OS (plus essential software, drivers, updates etc). No games or user files. I like it. The price was right at the time and I'm not a speed freak in that I'm happy as long as I didn't spend too much and I don't have to wait too long, haha.

[@sypharorigin]

Using the 500gb for OS and a 2tb for gaming. Very happy so far and having lower temps than I expected.

[@vibingwithvinyl]

I just bought a 2TB version of this for 90 euros. Will do just fine as a storage drive.

[@Butzemann123]

If you unlucky you get the garbage KV2 with qlc. The P3 Plus (also qlc) becomes trash once its half full. A german pc magazine found that it speed goes below HDD speed once its SLC cache is full and it stayed slow even after waiting for half an hour. On a budget i think better go for the sn570, which is currently available for 52€.

[@potatoes5829]

just bought the 250gb version of this one because it was literally the cheapest (new) ssd on sale near me.

[@poepflater]

thanks, have been eyeing these...

[@TechTesters]

Hope it helped!

[@6TheBACH]

Thanks, this was very informative.

[@shApYT]

What abou the solidigm p41 pro? 2tb for 115 dollars.

[@markcumbriauk]

This drive should be great just as a backup or storage drive.

[@TinBin-Craig]

in my laptop my temps are not good 60 65c idle and over 70c then running games

[@BenState]

I bought a 1TB WD black for about the same.

[@Snowwie88]

But what about endurance? At the moment the Kingston NV 4TB version has an MTBF of 1.5 million hours and has a TBW of 1.28PB. That would mean roughly if you write just over a terabyte per day to this drive the first malfunctions are expected after about 171 years. Any insight on this?

[@RitaBaumann]

I would like to see this drive compared to the Patriot P400.

[@robertthomson1994]

I just got this about a week ago (2tb version) works great for my games and having them load faster. I'll be picking up a ek heatsink for it here soon.