Kingston Announces Shipment of A2000 Series PCIe 3.0 4x NVMe PCIe SSD - $100 for 1 TB

[Raevenlord]

Back at CES 2019 we shared a story on Kingston's then upcoming A2000 series NVMe drives. The company's development strategy for these was to undercut SATA SSDs in pricing while delivering non SATA-bound speeds. The company planned to leverage component cost falls for NVMe controllers, pairing that with the reduced materials cost of NVMe drives (smaller than their SATA counterparts) so as to be able to achieve below-SATA price points. The choice of Toshiba's BiCS4 3D TLC NAND also aimed to keep costs down, whilst delivering performance that's "at least three times as high as SATA-bound drives".

The company is offering a limited 5-year warranty on their A2000 series, which in itself is a sign of the company's confidence in these products - despite their entry-level classification and overall development strategy. The A2000 series will be available in 250 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB capacities, with speeds claimed of up to 2,200/2,000MB/s sequential read/writes; up to 250,000/220,000 IOPS in random 4K read/writes; and 600 TBW rating (all of these values are for the 1 TB solution, with TBW falling to 350 TBW for the 500 GB part and 150 TBW for the 250 GB drive. These drives make use of a PCIe 3.0 4x controller, which means savings weren't at the expense of 2x PCIe channels, as some solutions have done in the past in order to cut costs. Pricing is being quoted at $40 for the 250 GB part, $60 for the 500 GB one, and a mere $100 for the 1 TB part. The true democratization of NVMe SSDs has just caught some heavy favorable winds on its sails.



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[ironwolf]

$100 price on the 1 TB is just meh. Not great, not bad.

 

[TesterAnon]

$100 price on the 1 TB is just meh. Not great, not bad.

Yup, specially since for a PCIe 4.0 SSD its quite slow.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

this drive is a freaking steal. idc what people say. I rather have this than a bulky 2.5in drive

 

[dj-electric]

this drive is a freaking steal. idc what people say. I rather have this than a bulky 2.5in drive

Nothing about this is "a freaking steal" When fast 1TB NVME drives were available for 100$ for a while now. Sabrent's Rocket as e.g

 

[Slizzo]

Yup, specially since for a PCIe 4.0 SSD its quite slow.

Good thing this is a PCIe 3.0 SSD then.

This price is pretty good. The drive is not maxing out PCIe 3.0, but it's respectable speeds.

 

[danbert2000]

Seeing as the Intel 660p 1 TB is hovering around $95, and this uses TLC instead of QLC, this is a great price for what you're getting. The fact that you can get 1 TB for only twice as much compared to a hard drive is astounding. I remember the first Crucial TB drive being $1000, and that was like 5 years ago.

 

[Sithaer]

Nothing about this is "a freaking steal" When fast 1TB NVME drives were available for 100$ for a while now. Sabrent's Rocket as e.g

Cheapest brand new 1TB NVMe I can find in my country atm is ~127$ 'Crucial MX500' so if this stays around the 100$ pricepoint then this will be a good deal and I might even pick one up myself at some point.

 

[bug]

So what's the catch?

 

[Space Lynx]

this drive is a freaking steal. idc what people say. I rather have this than a bulky 2.5in drive

not really, Adata XPG 8200 Pro NVME 1TB goes on sale quite frequently at $120 and it has 3500 read and 3100 writes. /shrug $20 more for much better performance and longer lifespan, also the Adata comes with its own slim profile heatsink.

 

[Sithaer]

not really, Adata XPG 8200 Pro NVME 1TB goes on sale quite frequently at $120 and it has 3500 read and 3100 writes. /shrug $20 more for much better performance and longer lifespan, also the Adata comes with its own slim profile heatsink.

Yea I heard about that SSD but when I checked here,~100$ for the 512Gb model and more than twice as much for the 1TB model..

I would only need a 1TB SSD for casual gaming purposes like moving all of the game launchers and their games there so the average speed would be fine with me.
Mainly looked at the 2.5 models 'cheaper' but if this Kingston would come at this price then I would consider it instead a standard 2.5 .

 

[Space Lynx]

Yea I heard about that SSD but when I checked here,~100$ for the 512Gb model and more than twice as much for the 1TB model..

I would only need a 1TB SSD for casual gaming purposes like moving all of the game launchers and their games there so the average speed would be fine with me.
Mainly looked at the 2.5 models 'cheaper' but if this Kingston would come at this price then I would consider it instead a standard 2.5 .

ya everything is more expensive over there, so fair enough. honestly, I can barely tell a difference between my SSD laptop and my NVME laptop. i mean it's a little snappier sure, but eh.

 

[Sithaer]

ya everything is more expensive over there, so fair enough. honestly, I can barely tell a difference between my SSD laptop and my NVME laptop. i mean it's a little snappier sure, but eh.

Aye,even an average SSD is significantly better than the average HDDS and probably I couldn't tell the diff between SSDs so at this point it all comes down to pricing/reliability in my case. 'keeping the HDDS for storage tho'

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

using this as a game drive may sound overkill, but if I ain't doing heavy workload, that's enough for me. Also, Kingston is widely available for the market from where I live so hearing this is good news. Sabrent or whatever that name is doesn't exist for me. Common brands like WD, Corsair, ADATA, Kingston, Samsung, Patriot, etc have choices but this drive caught my eyes. 1TB NVMe PCIe for $100 is a rare sight over here coz there are too many M.2 & 2.5in SATA SSDs costing the same price but only maxes out at 960GB.

 

[ObiFrost]

and it has 3500 read and 3100 writes.

Theoretically, judging from majority of user cases (amazon, reddit other retailers and forums feedbacks, although difficult to prove or deny legitimacy) wind up dropping into 660p performance area or 960 PRO. Blame inconsistent batches.

 

[TheTechGuy1337]

Some of you are missing the point here. As more manufacturers start adopting lower msrp prices. The competition will start to bring those prices further down. A sale price with a discount is not the same thing as the regular price of an item. And a lower MSRP price means an even lower price when it goes on sale. Do you see what I'm getting at here? Look at the bigger picture.

 

[danbert2000]

Some of you are missing the point here. As more manufacturers start adopting lower msrp prices. The competition will start to bring those prices further down. A sale price with a discount is not the same thing as the regular price of an item. And a lower MSRP price means an even lower price when it goes on sale. Do you see what I'm getting at here? Look at the bigger picture.

Yep, good point, this starts at $100. It and other cheap NVMe stablemates may soon drop low enough to kill off the 1 TB hard drive altogether.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

HDDs already no longer seen in normal desktop PCs imo. The only relevance they have are either invested in large capacity archive drive or in NAS box.

 

[bug]

HDDs already no longer seen in normal desktop PCs imo. The only relevance they have are either invested in large capacity archive drive or in NAS box.

Oh they are. Not everybody owns a NAS or is comfortable sending their data to the cloud

 

[kapone32]

Excellent indeed and though the Intel 660P is about the same price this is a better on paper drive. I am keen to see reviews though as the 660P actually performs better than advertised.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

@bug I kinda prefer local archival since that way I dun need constant access to find the things I need or need to redownload it.

 

[Deleted member 178884]

HDDs already no longer seen in normal desktop PCs imo. The only relevance they have are either invested in large capacity archive drive or in NAS box.

I'm here using 16tb worth of HDDs (X300 6tb and a WD Elements 10tb) and have no issues - IMO SSDs are only useful as a boot drive, rest is users being impatient ; ) and modern HDDs aren't even that bad for load times these days.

 

[bug]

I'm here using 16tb worth of HDDs (X300 6tb and a WD Elements 10tb) and have no issues - IMO SSDs are only useful as a boot drive, rest is users being impatient ; ) and modern HDDs aren't even that bad for load times these days.

My beef with the mechanical HDD in my system is that, since it's rarely used, it goes to sleep. And when I need it, it gets noisy and it's slow to wake up. But for TB/$, you can't beat a HDD.

 

[Deleted member 178884]

My beef with the mechanical HDD in my system is that, since it's rarely used, it goes to sleep. And when I need it, it gets noisy and it's slow to wake up. But for TB/$, you can't beat a HDD.

Strange - I've never had these issues with my HDDs at least - writing is audible but it's nothing actually irritating and I'd still use them over an SSD for mass storage and for gaming myself, Noise with HDDs is quite a big issue with seagate in particular it seems, my 2tb barracuda that died a few years back was making an absolute racket under load...

 

[kapone32]

My beef with the mechanical HDD in my system is that, since it's rarely used, it goes to sleep. And when I need it, it gets noisy and it's slow to wake up. But for TB/$, you can't beat a HDD.
[/QUOTE

I'm here using 16tb worth of HDDs (X300 6tb and a WD Elements 10tb) and have no issues - IMO SSDs are only useful as a boot drive, rest is users being impatient ; ) and modern HDDs aren't even that bad for load times these days.

In terms of cost yes. Performance is another matter all together. There is no going back to HDD after SSD and NVME unless price is the mitigating factor.

Strange - I've never had these issues with my HDDs at least - writing is audible but it's nothing actually irritating and I'd still use them over an SSD for mass storage and for gaming myself, Noise with HDDs is quite a big issue with seagate in particular it seems, my 2tb barracuda that died a few years back was making an absolute racket under load...

What??? You would use an HDD over an SSD. I guess you like making coffee while your game loads.