Kingston has announced their first NVMe SSD, and it will debut under the KC series as the KC1000. In recent years, Kingston has seemingly directed power users and gamers towards the HyperX brand, but the KC1000 could help guide the KC series in a different direction.
Kingston seems to be targeting a very wide audience with the new KC1000, as Kingston lists the video editing, virtual reality, CAD, streaming, and gaming applications for the KC1000. Here's a list of the targeted use cases of the KC1000:
- High-resolution video editing
- Virtual and augmented reality applications
- CAD software applications
- Streaming media
- Graphically intensive video games
- Data visualization
- Real-time analytics
Kingston KC1000 Specs
Form Factor | M.2 2280 |
Interface/Protocol | PCIe 3.0 x4/NVMe |
Capacities | 240GB, 480GB, 960GB |
Controller | Phison PS5007-E7 |
NAND | MLC (Toshiba 15nm, planar) |
Sequential Read/Write | 240GB: 2700/900 MB/s 480GB: 2700/1600 MB/s 960GB: 2700/1600 MB/s |
Random Read/Write (4K) | 240GB: 190,000/160,000 IOPS 480GB: 190,000/160,000 IOPS 960GB: 190,000/165,000 IOPS |
Max Read/Write (4K) | 240GB: 225,000/190,000 IOPS 480GB: 290,000/190,000 IOPS 960GB: 290,000/190,000 IOPS |
Endurance (TBW) | 240GB: 300TB 480GB: 550TB 960GB: 1PB |
Power Consumption | .11W Idle/.99W AVG/4.95W Max Read/7.40W Max Write |
MTBF | 2,000,000 Hours |
Warranty | 5-year |
The KC1000 will offer three capacities, but six total SKUs; each capacity is available as a bare M.2 drive, or with a half-height, half-length (HHHL) add-in card adapter. While there is no current word on prices, the KC1000 is slated to ship in mid-June.
In other news, Kingston was recently at the 2017 Creative Storage Conference where they purportedly demonstrated “nearly 2 million IOPS.” Details are scarce, but products on showcase were the enterprise/data center SSD, the DCP1000, as well as the 2TB DataTraveler Ultimate GT.
We’re certain to have more Kingston news—in addition to a superfluity of other hardware news—as GN traipses through Computex 2017. Stay tuned to the website, and subscribe to our YouTube channel to catch the latest Computex news.
- Eric Hamilton