

Sequential read and write speeds in CrystalDiskMark are excellent, beating out the Samsung 980 Pro and Crucial P5 Plus. The Kingston KC3000 looks great on paper, but how does it really perform? I ran a bunch of tests using an ABS Challenger (ALI589) with Intel B560 chipset on a Gigabyte DS3H motherboard, 16GB of dual-channel DDR4 RAM, and 11th Gen Intel Core i5-11400F CPU. These are optional features the drive can be physically installed and initialized through Windows in just a few minutes without any extra software required. You also have access to Kingston's SSD Manager software so you can monitor drive health, status reports, secure data deletion, and more. Kingston includes a key for Acronis True Image HD cloning software to make the transition from your old drive to the KC3000 just a bit easier. Most people won't ever hit the threshold for high-end drives, but it's something to keep an eye on if you quickly burn through data. It extends beyond the 1TB model, with generous coverage for all sizes in relation to how many gigabytes you're buying. This is a generous TBW rating that beats out the likes of the Crucial P5 Plus, the XPG Gammix S70, and the Samsung 980 Pro.

If you're using the drive every day over the course of that warranty period, you'd have to be writing more than 430GB of data per day to theoretically exhaust the SSD. The 1TB model I'm testing has an 800 Terabytes Written (TBW) durability rating, and all models come with a five-year warranty. There doesn't seem to be too many PCIe 4.0 drives with a 4TB option, so that's a welcome change here for anyone who wants to go all out with storage space. The Kingston KC3000 is extremely fast and backs it up with a generous TBW rating. The back of the PCB has a sticker with drive information and not much else. It won't work as well as a full heatsink, but it's certainly better than nothing. This is all covered with a thin graphene aluminum sticker that helps spread heat. It's an M.2 2280 drive with two 76-layer 3D TLC NAND chips, 1GB of DRAM, and an eight-channel Phison E18 controller. The Kingston KC3000 uses a single-sided design that allows the drive to fit into more slots and be better served by a heatsink. Source: Windows Central (Image credit: Source: Windows Central)
