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As with the DC500R, the DC500M ships in a blister pack with the drive's capacity clearly labelled on the front while the rear has multilingual marketing and warranty notes on it.
The DC500M is built on a standard 2.5in, 7mm format using a metal enclosure, held together with four Torx security screws hidden under the front label.
Although the 3.84TB DC500M uses the same Kingston branded Intel 64-layer 3D TLC NAND memory as the 3.84TB DC500R, there is a difference in the NAND packages used and the layout of the components on the PCB. Where the DC500R uses 16 256GB packages, the DC500M uses 10 packages of 512GB to give a raw capacity of 5120GB.
The unused space is used for over-provisioning purposes to greatly enhance the endurance of the drive. The difference this makes can be seen by comparing the endurance figures for the two 3.84TB drives. The DC500R is rated at 3504TBW (0.5DWPD) while the DC500M is rated at a very impressive 9110TBW (1.3DWPD).
The NAND packages are equally split between the two sides of the PCB. On one side of the PCB, the NAND chips are joined by three Micron DDR4-2666 DRAM chips. On the other side of the board are three more DRAM chips and the Phison PS3112-S12DC controller. The DC500M has two more DRAM ICs than the DC500R but fewer tantalum capacitors for power loss protection.
Built on a 28nm process, the eight-channel PS3112-S12DC is Phison's latest SATA III controllers supporting drives up to 8TB. It features Phison’s 3rd generation LDPC ECC engine and supports AES 256 bit encryption.
Kingston’s SSD management software utility is simply called SSD Manager. With it, you can monitor the health of the drive and how it’s being used, check the drive’s SMART data and update the firmware as well as securely erasing the drive. You can also adjust and manage the over-provisioning of the drive.
