PCIe Gen 4.0 offers a massive upgrade over to the PCIe Gen 3.0 SSD. It’s almost doubled the transfer speeds as the bit rate increased to 16 GT/s from 8 GT/s. But, the performance upgrade comes at a cost; price, and increased thermal output.
The Kingston NV2 is the answer for budget PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD storage that carries the PCIe 3.0’s price tag and can be used without a heatsink, but there’s a caveat to it.
The NV2 is built around the Phison E21T PCIe 4.0 DRAM-less controller and uses a 112-layer BiCS5 TLC NAND flash.
Based on the tech specifications; the sequential read and write speeds and endurance (TBW) differ, depending on the capacity;
- 250GB – 3,000MBps / 1,300MBps (Read / Write), 80TB TBW
- 500GB – 3,500MBps / 2,100MBps (Read / Write), 160TB TBW
- 1TB – 3,500MBps / 2,100MBps (Read / Write), 320TB TBW
- 2TB – 3,500MBps / 2,800MBps (Read / Write), 640TB TBW
From the sequential speeds it offered, the NV2 is miles behind the top-of-the-line PCIe 4.0 SSD that can reach up to 7,000MBps. Don’t get me wrong, the speed it achieved is able to match most PCIe 3.0 high-end SSDs that required DRAM cache, more expensive TLC NAND Flash, and heatsinks.
FYI, top-of-the-line Gen 3.0 SSD is already impressively fast for any workload for the masses, topped up to 3,500MB/s read and write speeds. Most average users will never notice the doubling in sequential reading or writing speeds on the Gen 4.0 SSD on modern software and gaming.
Because it doesn’t come with a heatsink and I don’t think it would need one as throughout my benchmark test with CrystalDiskMark, the temperatures were decent without any sign of thermal throttling. Hence, it can be a great SSD upgrade for laptops or SFF PC that has no space for a heatsink.
What is more appealing is the price tag. The Kingston NV2 is a cost-efficient SSD that can be found cheaper than some high-performance PCIe 3.0 SSDs. At a starting retail price of RM 120 for the 250GB and the 2TB at only RM 584 that offers the best cost per GB and offer high endurance.
Verdict
The Kingston NV2 makes a good secondary or also primary drive if you have a budget constraint or double the capacities with the same budget. Considering this is a PCIe 4.0 SSD, it is backward compatible that works on PCIe 3.0 slot for future upgrades.
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