Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB Desktop Bundle Review (with RAID!)

Conclusion (Single):

This is a great SSD for those wanting a nice and snappy OS at a reasonably low cost.  That said, the 40GB capacity requires a bit of a mentality shift as far as how you organize your files.  Such a small capacity means your videos and other media will need to be located elsewhere.  If running Vista or Windows 7, you may run out of space before you get Office and a couple of games installed.  If you can deal with putting some of your stuff on a separate (spinning) drive, and place only those things you want to run snappy on the SSD, you will likely be happy with your purchase.

Conclusion (RAID):

I was hoping the RAID testing would go better than it did.  Sure the ‘1/2 specs’ of this drive doubled up to match a single 80GB model, but the IOPS did not scale as well as I’d hoped.  The pair only excelled in small random reads (web server) and sequential reads (>350 MB/sec).  The issue came with the random write scaling of the array.  At present, it seems Intel’s driver is not fully optimized for use with SSD’s.  Reads scale beautifully, but random writes leave something to be desired.  At present, my recommendation is for power users to hold out for a single G2 (80 or 160GB) series drive, be it from Intel or Kingston.

If this says anything, I’m about to move my personal OS partition from a RAIDed set of 4 80GB G1’s to a single 160GB G2 – mainly because of the same type of write speed inconsistencies demonstrated by this review.  Remember these issues are most likely caused by the ICH10R or its associated driver and have nothing to do with any particular SSD.

PROS:

• The excellent IOPS scaling of the Intel G2 controller at a significantly lower cost.
  
• RAID configuration potentially yields higher IOPS and read speeds for the same cost (as compared to a single 80GB unit).
  

CONS:

• Lack of TRIM support with shipping firmware (though it is planned).
  
• 40GB is pushing the lowest end up the spectrum for capacity and requires owners to stay vigilant of their disk usage.
  
• Write speeds of the single drive is almost slower than USB 2.0.
  

Final Thoughts

Kingston certainly surprised us by taking the initiative to work with Intel and release their own ‘custom’ version of the X25-M G2.  While the 50% reduction in flash channels effectively cut most of the specifications in half, read speeds and random access performance remained highly competitive, making this an ideal entry-level SSD.  Testing a pair of them in a RAID-0 configuration boosted reads past that of a single 80GB unit (for the same cost), but write performance varied based on the type of usage seen by the array.  RAID issues aside, the Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive delivers excellent performance for an economical cost.