Packaging and Contents

The Drive

The drive uses the M.2 2280 form factor, which means it is 22 mm wide and 80 mm long. A heatspreader is not installed.


Unlike most M.2 NVMe SSDs, the Kingston A1000 uses the PCIe x2 3.0 interface, which provides half the bandwidth of the x4 interface that is typically used. PCIe x2 enables speeds of up to around 2 GB/s, which should be sufficient for how the A1000 is positioned. Please note that using an x2 drive will not magically free up two PCIe lanes for other slots. The four lanes to the M.2 slot are hardwired on the motherboard, so they can't be reassigned.


You will find the SSD controller and four flash chips on the PCB. A single DRAM chip is also present to provide the SSD controller with RAM and soak up write bursts.


The Phison PS5008 is a 4-channel PCIe SSD controller.


The four 3D TLC flash chips are produced by Toshiba and rebranded by Kingston. They use 15 nanometer technology.