Introduction

With revenue in the multi-billion dollars, Kingston is the largest DRAM and flash memory products vendor in the world. While their strongest suit is memory modules and USB/flash card storage, they are also a major player in the SSD market, having released famous products such as the KC2000 and KC2500.



Today, we have the Kingston KC3000 for review. This latest high-end SSD comes to market roughly a year after the Kingston KC2500 we reviewed in December 2020. While the KC2500 and KC2000 were targeted at the PCI-Express 3.0 interface, using Silicon Motion's SM2262ENG controller, the new Kingston KC3000 is based on Phison's new E18 controller, which supports PCI-Express 4.0. Kingston has also taken the latest and greatest NAND flash from Micron, the famous 176-layer B47R, and includes 2 GB of DRAM for the mapping tables of the SSD.

The Kingston KC3000 comes in capacities of 512 GB ($135), 1 TB ($290), 2 TB ($450), and 4 TB ($1200). Endurance for these models is set to 400 TBW, 800 TBW, 1600 TBW, and 3200 TBW respectively. Kingston includes a five-year warranty with the KC3000.