Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB

[Rob Williams]

Want to make the upgrade to a solid-state drive, but prefer to avoid the high cost of adoption? Kingston helps ease that pain with its SSDNow V Series 40GB, a modest drive that features Intel's NAND and impressive G2 firmware, which helps it deliver stellar performance when compared to an HDD, for an easy-to-stomach price.

You can read Robert's first solid-state drive evaluation here and discuss it here!

[gibbersome]

Another great review!
That's a shame they discontinued the drive though. 40GB is great for most people, but gamers might want to upgrade to 80GB, since many PC games nowadays take between 8-12GB per install.

[Kougar]

Originally Posted by gibbersome

Another great review!
That's a shame they discontinued the drive though. 40GB is great for most people, but gamers might want to upgrade to 80GB, since many PC games nowadays take between 8-12GB per install.

The drive being discontinued is news to me, it's hardly been out on the market! I wonder if this was by arrangement with Intel given Intel has released a slightly different version of this 40GB drive, or if Kingston simply doesn't want to compete directly against it. I'll update the article with the news.

You are definitely right, there isn't enough space on this drive for games... however even an 80GB drive does not have adequate space for most gamers. Borderlands, L4D2, TF2, and Supreme Commander FA together would take over 25GB of room... Off the top of my head Crysis Warhead requires somewhere around 8-10GB by itself due to the high resolution textures. For a gamer that plays a variety of games, or a hardcore gamer that likes to keep their older games around and occasionally play them not even 80GB is going to be sufficient.

its naive ur approaching method.. u show the 40gb to be far superior form 80gb G1, which isnt.... the results form G1 80gb seems from a heavily used disk.. secure erase the disk.. and then reconsider the credibility of your review...

[Kougar]

Howdy, thanks for the critique!

Originally Posted by Unregistered

its naive ur approaching method.. u show the 40gb to be far superior form 80gb G1, which isnt.... the results form G1 80gb seems from a heavily used disk.. secure erase the disk.. and then reconsider the credibility of your review...

Please keep in mind that all solid-state drives in this review were subjected to the exact same dirtying methodology. The Intel drive was Secure Erased prior to the start of testing. The OS was manually installed (not cloned as this preserves the clean state longer) and the Sysmark tests were generated. Due to the nature of Sysmark installing a multitude of older and outdated programs it is required to format and reinstall the OS a second time to achieve accurate results with other programs.

All SSD's here began in a clean state and followed this procedure. The batch file runs and file transfer tests are especially harsh and will hurt the drive performance, but this does nothing more than mirror the use these drives will typically receive.

Because none of these drives supported TRIM at the time of review it is important to test with a dirty drive. The Kingston drive uses Intel's G2 controller and seems much more capable of dealing with heavy use, as both drives started clean and ended in the same dirtied state.

There isn't much use in testing an intentionally "clean" SSD as the SSD only remains clean once. Most users will not be willing to regularly secure erase their SSD and reinstall the entire OS and programs every few months, and so it is important to test in the condition the drives will be expected to work within. TRIM would have made this a non-issue, and honestly I would only recommend a drive with TRIM for this exact reason.

[Rob Williams]

I agree with Robert. This is an issue we discussed in incredible detail prior to finalizing our methodology, and we deemed it that it was most fair to benchmark the SSDs under more realistic conditions. If we benchmark clean SSDs, we would not be giving our readers accurate information, it's that simple. With TRIM taking over as it is, this is an issue we won't have to deal with too much longer.

[Kougar]

For those owners of 40GB Kingston SSDNow V drives, there is a possible workaround for the lack of TRIM support. Please keep in mind this will likely void whatever warranty the drive might have (keep a backup of the old firmware just in case!), and as with any sort of firmware flashing comes with the chance of bricking the unit.

This process is fairly in depth but the payoff of TRIM support should be well worth it for those comfortable with the procedure.

http://www.overclock.net/ssd/656984-...-40gb-ssd.html

[Rob Williams]

That's a great find! I'm glad people who own the drive and thought they were going to get TRIM support aren't completely out of luck. It's still unfortunate that Intel decided to pull out of offering support for the drive, though.