Kingston to Release Phison-Powered M.2 Consumer SSD

[Cristian_25H]

This summer Kingston Technology will be joining the M.2 crowd by rolling out the SM2280S3 solid state drive. Pictured below Kingston's M.2 offering has a 2280 (80 mm long) form factor and makes use of a Phison PS3108 controller which supports the SATA interface and not PCIe like the SandForce 3700 found in the ADATA SR1020NP SSDs. This means the SM2280S3 only delivers speeds comparable with today's SATA 6.0 Gbps drives (540/514 MB read/write speeds in testing) and may have compatibility problems with some M.2-equipped Z97-based motherboards (the ASUS Z97-A is one of them).

The SM2280S3 also uses DDR3 memory (at least 256 MB) as cache and should ship in 120 GB, 240 GB and 480 GB capacities. The drives' prices are not yet known but it's likely they will be some of the cheapest M.2 solutions available.



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[The Von Matrices]

I don't understand the point of using low end controllers on SSDs. The main cost of SSDs is the flash memory not the controller; the manufacturers only save a few pennies by going for a much cheaper controller but pay for it in significantly reduced performance.

 

[mr2009]

if its just gonna deliver sata3 peformance, might as well not make a m.2 ssd kingston. It just wasting the m.2 slot and its capabilities...

 

[kn00tcn]

I don't understand the point of using low end controllers on SSDs. The main cost of SSDs is the flash memory not the controller; the manufacturers only save a few pennies by going for a much cheaper controller but pay for it in significantly reduced performance.

a few pennies * a million units = a few million $, right?

(of course, they could just raise the price by a few pennies, maybe they have a preordered deal to get a fixed lower price of the worse controllers)

 

[mr2009]

a few pennies * a million units = a few million $, right?

(of course, they could just raise the price by a few pennies, maybe they have a preordered deal to get a fixed lower price of the worse controllers)

a few pennies * a million units = still less than a million $