Kingston SSDNow V 40GB Review, Forget about HDDs as your OS partition

The market for Flash-based Solid State Drives has matured significantly over the course of the last years, as new technologies have enabled increased performance and capacity as well as better pricing policies and reliability, when compared to some of the initial models. SSDs are becoming more and more an alternative for computer users looking to boost their system's performance, taking advantage of the read and write specifications of these compact and energy-efficient storage solutions. On that note, there are a number of SSD products out there and more to come along the way, providing users with new alternatives for boosting their system's performance.

Such is the case with one of Kingston's latest products, a new SSD that has just been launched as part of the company's SSDNow V series, specifically designed for mainstream users looking for a way to improve boot times and application startup. Featuring a capacity of only 40GB, the new SSD from Kingston is said to have been designed as a choice for desktop PC users looking for a high-performance drive that can be used for installing the operating system and some of the most accessed applications.

Kingston, as you might already know, is one of the most recognizable brands in the market for Flash-based storage solutions and a leading provider of memory solutions. The company debuted on the growing market for Solid State Drives with the adoption of a co-branded series of Intel SSDs. Having learned from that experience and looking to further expand its presence in the market, the company later announced the debut of its own series of SSDs, with the launch of the new V-series.

The model that we will be testing today has been specifically designed to host just 40GB of capacity, making for an ideal choice for a desktop computer's first partition. The performance specifications of this storage solution clearly indicate that it hasn't been designed to replace a PC's hard drive, but rather the OS partition, enabling users to increase their system's overall performance with faster boot times and speedier applications.


Now, without further ado, we shall proceed to the technical part of our review, providing you with more detailed specifications on what this SSD has to offer. We will go through the manufacturer's specifications and claimed performance stats, compare them with our results and then try to draw a conclusion on what this new SSDNow V solution has to offer.

Manufacturer's technical specifications:

Sequential Speed: up to 170MB/sec.
read 40MB/sec. write
Performance: enhances productivity; makes users more efficient
Innovative: 2.5-inch form factor; uses NAND Flash memory components
Silent: runs silent and cool with no moving parts
Reliable: less likely to fail than a standard hard drive
Shock Resistant: no moving parts; handles rougher conditions than a hard drive
Supports S.M.A.R.T.: Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology
Guaranteed: three-year Kingston warranty, 24/7 tech support
Capacity1: 40GB
Storage temperatures: -40° C to 85° C
Operating temperatures: 0° C to 70° C
Vibration operating: 2.17G (7-800Hz)
Vibration non-operating: 20G (20-2000Hz)
Power specs: Active: 0.15W (TYP); Sleep: 0.06W
Life expectancy: 1 million hours MTBF

The Kingston SSDNow V 40GB Solid State Drive is the second such solution from the company we were presented with the chance to benchmark and put through its paces. However, this is truly our first review of a Kingston-made SSD, which is why we were interested to see what the manufacturer has managed to achieve without the help of the Santa Clara, California-based chip maker, the world's leading vendor of high-performance processors, Intel.

Before we head on and talk about the testing platform and the applications we used to benchmark the performance of Kingston's new SSD, we do have to mention a couple of things. As you'll see on the cover of the SSD, this product is clearly intended for use as a desktop storage solution, more specifically, as a replacement for the system's OS partition. The 40GB SSD is accompanied by a desktop upgrade kit and looks to provide consumers with faster boot times and increased application responsiveness. Although you can use it in some of those high-end notebook PCs, with dual storage drives, Kingston clearly indicates this product as a solution for desktop PC users, who can take advantage of the system's other HDDs for storing less important applications and other digital content.

The platform, for the various benchmarks we went through with the new SSDNow V drive, was a Dell Optiplex 740 desktop PC, featuring an NVIDIA GeForce 6150 chipset, coupled with an nForce 410/430 MCP and an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ processor, running at 2.2GHz and coupled with 1,5GB of DDR2 memory and an 80GB Western Digital, 7200RPM 3.5-inch hard drive. As Microsoft's much-anticipated Windows 7 operating system has just received its official market debut, we wanted to see how the new SSD took advantage of the optimizations enabled by Microsoft's much-anticipated OS.

With that in mind, we proceeded to testing the drive's performance using some of the most popular benchmark applications, currently available. We used the HDD Test Suite in PCMark Vantage, HD Tune, the suite of HDD tests available in Lavaly's Everest application, as well as the increasingly popular ATTO Disk Benchmark.

The SSDNow V 40GB drive from Kingston is essentially a 2.5-inch SATA-enabled storage solution that has been specifically designed for use in today's mainstream and high-end computer systems. It comes with a rather useful bundle, which includes a desktop upgrade kit, namely the necessary 3.5-inch brackets and mounting screws and the SATA power and data cables. That, alongside the small SSD, will enable users to install the drive inside their desktop PC, much in the same way as any other traditional 3.5-inch hard drive.

The bundle includes everything you need to set up the drive inside your desktop PC chassis. With a regular Phillips screwdriver you will easily mount the provided 3.5-inch brackets on the back side of the SSD, while the additional mounting screws will enable you to install the drive inside the 3.5-inch internal bay. The SATA power and data cable sure come in handy, especially for those users that have to make do with the cables that are available in the chassis and which are usually taken by the available hardware.

As it is featured with a traditional SATA interface, the drive will immediately be recognized by the operating system and the system's BIOS. Initializing the drive is as easy as on any other traditional hard drive, so theoretically you shouldn't have any issues with the installation process of the new part.

Talking about performance, as you can see in the screenshots below, the drive is capable of delivering the promised read and write speeds, so you'll pretty much get what you paid for. In HD Tune, it managed to deliver an average read speed of 197.4MB/s. Things were pretty good in the ATTO Disk benchmark as well, while in PC Mark Vantage's HDD Test Suite, the low-capacity SSD managed to score an impressive 30271 points.

We wanted to test the boot times and the drive's performance when dealing with some of the most widely used applications, but we had little time to do a fresh install of Microsoft's brand-new Windows 7 operating system. We will, however, update the article as soon as we have the stats, once we will have the performance details.

One more thing that we liked about the new SSDNow 40GB storage solution was that Kingston will provide users with a rather useful bundle, which includes the aforementioned 3.5-inch brackets and mounting screws and the SATA power and data cables, but also a rather useful hard drive cloning software, available on the installation CD.

The Good

Kingston's SSDNow V 40GB does provide an interesting choice for consumers, which are being prompted to consider it as a solution for their desktop PC, more specifically as a replacement for their main OS partition. While there are many low-capacity or low-priced storage solutions already available on the market, the performance specifications and speed of the new Kingston SSD do make it a noteworthy alternative. Performance is everything you'd expect it to be, that is if you don't plan on using the drive as the main storage solution for a small, portable computer system The bundle is what you should go for with the drive, as the price difference isn't that significant to give up on the aforementioned software and tools.

The Bad

We haven't talked much about the pricing of the new drive, but this is basically where we've got our mixed feelings. It will go on sale for an MSRP of US$123 with the included bundle, while the standalone offering is US$117. That said, the Kingston SSDNow V-series 64GB MLC-based SSD with desktop bundle is currently available at Newegg for US$158.99 and will provide you with increased storage capacity but with a lower read speed of 100MB/s and write speed of 80MB/s. The bundle is pretty much the same for both drives, but the 64GB model appears to provide a better alternative.

It's up to you to choose between a higher-capacity SSD for approximately US$30 more and a 40GB model that offers an impressive read speed, optimized to become your new OS partition. The choice would be easier if the price tag for the 40GB went a bit lower, somewhere in the US$100 range.


Overall impressions

Kingston's new SSD does look to provide computer enthusiasts with a rather interesting choice when looking for a desktop storage solution. The drive's overall performance is impressive, but it's certainly not a choice for those looking to expand their system's storage capacity with a faster drive. Pricing isn't really that bad, but with the 64GB costing nearly as much as the 40GB model, the choice is rather difficult.

Sales package:

Kingston SSDNow 40GB SSD
3.5-Inch brackets and mounting screws
SATA power and cable
Hard drive cloning software
Installation Guide (CD)

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