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The Kingston 512GB SSD arrives in a similar box to the 128GB unit we looked at a few months ago. The distinctive ‘Kingston' red head on the left and specifications on the right.
The drive is protected inside by a very tough plastic surrounding. The ‘upgrade' bundle is great, there is a USB cable, SATA power and data cables and a drive rail system for installation in a 3,5 inch drive bay, if needed. There is also a CD including software and information on the drive. There is also a copy of Acronis True Image HD – which is a very capable drive backup software suite.
The drive has been assembled in Japan and information on the specific unit is detailed on the front, at the bottom. The chassis is nicely designed and has all the relevant mounting locations for fitting into a variety of systems.
The insides of the drive chassis are lined with thick, heavy duty thermal transfer material which is the first time we have seen this. It is a great idea to help keep temperatures of the components lower as heat will be transferred to the case.
The majority of the internals are Toshiba based with a T6UG1XGB drive controller on the PCB as well as a 128mb DDR Micron chip handling the caching. As this is a 512GB drive we expect to find flash memory on both sides – a total of 16 chips, which are BGA and single stacked.
Trim support will certainly be welcomed as it will help performance to stay at a constant level throughout months of everyday use. Windows 7 is the Operating system of choice for TRIM support so if you haven’t yet upgraded, now would be a good time.
Drive reliability has been stated to be around 1,000,000 hours which means well in excess of 110 years if you used it 24/7. Realistically we can assume that the drive should not fail within a standard operating lifetime.
I almost fainted at the price, but for the capacity and audience interested, it makes sense.
THese are good drives, but for over a grand, seems pointless for me anyway. thats the price of a full system 🙂
Just ordered two for Raid 0 in my new rig. yes, im kidding.
Good review though, seems to be a drive for wealthy playboys rather than college peops like me
This is the size I want, but until they hit one third the price they are now, its a pipedream for me.
Zardon come on buddy, lets keep it real. they have probably sold 10 of these worldwide 😉
Tim you would be surprised how many businesses buy these, and even the people who buy GTX480s for SLI, might have a few of these in raid 0 without the need for a mechanical storage option.
lol, yeah maybe, but its such a massive amount of money. id go for the 128GB drive and get a 2TB mechanical for the files. But maybe im just a peasant :p
And just to stress my point – http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-168-SE&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=1279
you could get literally 20TB of mechanical storage for a single 512GB SSD
Tim until the prices drop, which wont happen for quite some time (not to that point anyway), its always going to be the case. Flash memory like this is still very expensive.
I like this drive, cant say I like the price, but for a businessman on the move, it makes a lot of sense really. it can be billed as expenses, you never have to worry about a knock wrecking the platter on the move and you can easily store all your business related work files and more on a single product.
I think ill have to pass, my poor heart cant take it.
Holy Moly! For that kind of money you can buy very powerful RAID card + bunch of 2.5″ HDDs for RAID0 and superior performance or RAID 6 and superior storage space… or both with two independent arrays!
I think my wallet just fainted. if you have the money for this, I envy you !
Lovely, every PC should have one. or two.
I read this thinking, this is great, might get one myself then I realised its over a grand. I feel like a pauper now. 40GB Corsair unit for me I think !
It’s weird seeing the Vertex 2 being schooled by the Agility 2. I thought it would have been the other way around. It also shows the Sandforce not being affected by the smaller over provisioning of the Agility 2.
Thats a monster of a drive at a monster price… They will come down soon I am sure. Nice review!