The Kingston NV3 Gen 4 SSD offers impressive real-world performance at an incredibly affordable price. It’s a compelling upgrade for users looking to boost their system’s speed without breaking the bank. This review dives deep into the NV3’s features, performance, and overall value.
Kingston’s NV2 SSD, released last year, provided excellent value. The NV3 takes that a step further, offering significant improvements while remaining budget-friendly, and even setting a record in our 450GB single-file write test.
Kingston NV3 Features: A Closer Look
The NV3 leverages a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, utilizing four lanes for maximum bandwidth. This M.2 NVMe SSD employs a DRAM-less (Host Memory Buffer/HMB) design to keep costs down. It’s powered by a Silicon Motion SM2268XG controller and uses Kingston-branded, stacked QLC NAND. This is based on the observed performance off-cache and the TBW rating, although Kingston hasn’t officially confirmed the NAND type, stating it may vary depending on the drive capacity.
The chips underneath the warranty-invalidating label: A Silicon Motion controller and Kingston-labeled NAND.
Kingston NV3 Pricing and Availability
The NV3 comes in various capacities and price points: 500GB ($54), 1TB ($77), and 2TB ($154 – the capacity tested for this review). A 4TB version is reportedly in development but pricing has yet to be announced.
While the NV3 is budget-friendly, the trade-off is a shorter warranty period of three years, compared to the typical five years offered by competitors. The TBW (Terabytes Written) rating is also relatively low at 160TBW per 1TB of NAND. This is lower than the 250TBW per 1TB often seen on comparable QLC drives. However, 160TBW is still ample for average users.
Kingston NV3 Performance: Real-World Speed Demon
Despite slightly below-average synthetic benchmark scores for an HMB design, the NV3 shines in real-world performance tests, significantly outperforming its predecessor, the NV2. We compared it to similar 2TB PCIe 4.0 HMB SSDs, the Crucial P310 and Corsair M600 Elite (the P310 is a 2230 form factor).
CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential transfer speeds were very good, though not the highest among the compared drives.
CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential transfer performance.
The NV3 impressed with its random operation performance, although HMB SSDs generally lag behind DRAM-equipped drives in this area.
NV3 CDM8 4K random operation performance.
While fast in our 48GB transfer tests, the NV3 didn’t break any records.
48GB transfer test results.
However, the NV3 truly shone in our 450GB single-file write test, setting a new record. The NV2’s significantly slower performance here is likely due to its smaller secondary cache and potentially QLC NAND.
450GB single-file write test results.
Performance did slow down considerably during a subsequent 900GB file write after the 2TB test unit’s secondary cache (approximately 600GB simulated SLC) was exhausted. This slowdown will occur sooner as the drive fills. However, in our testing, the transfer rate stabilized around 220MBps after the initial drop. While this slowdown is unlikely to affect most users, power users who frequently write large files might consider a TLC drive with a higher TBW rating for more consistent performance.
Slowdown occurring at approximately 75% full.
Should You Buy the Kingston NV3?
The NV3 delivers near top-tier NVMe performance at a significantly lower price. For users who don’t constantly push their drives to the limit, the NV3 offers outstanding value. It’s a remarkable improvement over the NV2 and a highly recommended budget-friendly SSD.
How We Test
Our drive tests are conducted on Windows 11 (64-bit) using an X790 motherboard (PCIe 4.0/5.0) with an i5-12400 CPU, 64GB of Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz RAM, integrated 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4, and Intel CPU/GPU graphics. 48GB transfer tests use an ImDisk RAM disk occupying 58GB of RAM. The 450GB file transfer is from a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro (also the OS drive). Tests are performed on freshly formatted and TRIM’d drives for optimal results. Note that real-world performance can vary as the drive fills. Results are specific to the tested capacity and may vary due to component differences.
