Kingston SSDs have become more capacious, retaining almost the same price - we meet A400-R series
About 10 years ago, choosing a solid-state drive as a system disk for a gaming or working system seriously hit the average user’s budget. Even then, the model series consisted of options with a volume of 30 to 512 GB, if you look at the desktop segment. But the price tag for a gigabyte was about 100 rubles - yes, the disks with a capacity of 120 GB cost an average of 12,000 rubles. And now for this amount which drive can you take? True - 960 GB, and even for the delivery of 120 GB modelk buy in addition. Almost an order of magnitude cheaper. So what will be discussed today? About the new Kingston A400-R drive, which, with a larger 16 GB volume relative to the A400, costs only two school lunches more expensive. “Free cheese is only in a mousetrap,” you say. But here it is not entirely free.
Many of you are likely to immediately go to the search engines with requests for "Kingston A400-R testing" or similar. But do not rush into this, because the novelty is just presented on the territory of two countries - in Russia and in Ukraine, and we will demonstrate the results of testing in this material. Conquer the rest of the world A400-R will be later. But even here users with a complex (in a good sense of the word) character may say: “Are we here, beta testers?”. No, it is not. A400-R is a full-fledged product, fully ready for stable and long-term work, no experiments on you are done :)
Then, actually, and what is the SSD in front of us in the end? The novelty, named A400-R, is focused on use in work PCs, gaming systems without special requirements for the disk subsystem, laptops, nettops and other devices that require reliability, sufficient speeds achieved by the SATA interface and where the majority of load drives will not be beyond the form of elevated databases with a large number of users is the lot of drives of a completely different series. About speeds and resource - a little later, but for now let's note the 2.5 ”form factor with dimensions of 100x69.9x7 mm, which will allow installing a device drive with a corresponding compartment in which options with a thickness of 9.3 mm are not suitable. It is also noteworthy that the case is made of metal, which has a good effect on the temperature mode (despite the small number of points of contact directly with the board inside), and also serves as additional protection against external influences during transportation of both the drive and the product assembled with by him.
')
Series A400-R currently has two options - 128 GB ( 1890 rubles ) and 256 GB ( 2870 rubles ). At first glance, the difference in volume with A400 (120 and 240 GB) is small, but isn't this bonus worth a couple of hundred rubles? In addition, the network often asked questions about the emergence of Kingston increased storage capacity - and here they are, for the first time in the history of the manufacturer! Actually, the dignity is obvious - in its pure form we have 15 GB of additional space, which is enough to install several heavy programs, some games (although, I must say, most of the AAA projects already roll over 50 GB, but still) or storage of some data, access to which must be always and quickly. What can I say - Windows 10 after installation takes about as much space. Anyway, the bonus is nice. Someone will think now: “Aha, we were deprived of our backup memory (over-provisioning)!”. And no! The total amount installed inside the chip is 288 GB, which gives us over 30 GB of "reserve". For visual comparison, the storage volumes of both series are shown in the screenshot:
Inside the case, the same 2-channel controller is hiding, as it was in the A400 and the same TLC memory. The resource (TBW) remained unchanged - 40 TB for the 128 GB model and 80 TB for the 256 GB version. Such values are quite enough for home or office use of drives.
Firmware Kingston SSD Manager did not pass by A400-R solid-state drives. To work with them requires version 1.1.2.0 and later. All the functionality is available today, and the information about the drive is represented in many forms in a digestible form, and in the raw values in the Health tab. It should be added that if suddenly you read somewhere about the non-working temperature sensor in the A400, then this is incorrect information - these drives also, as well as the new A400-R, are all right.
Using Kingston SSD Manager is highly recommended, as third-party programs of even the most current versions practically do not know anything about the A400-R:
As for speed performance, everything is expected here, because, in fact, the “stuffing” is identical to that of the A400 series models. The difference may be only in the amount of SLC-cache, but it is unlikely to be significant - we will check it today. For now - some synthetics in the form of applications familiar to you. Let's start with CrystalDiskMark - the situation is quite decent for a consumer disk.
Next - TxBench. The results are confirmed - we have a very decent drive in our hands for our price category!
For a snack - Anvil's Storage Utilities.
And now about SLC-caching. Many are well aware of what it is, or at least understand what it affects and under what conditions. For those who are in the tank (or who are simply not interested) - we will explain it in a very simple language, so as not to download unnecessary technical terms. Each vendor has its own implementation method, but the essence is approximately the same - a part of the memory is allocated as a buffer, in which data is written at high speed, and then moved to the main array at a noticeably reduced speed. Actually, this increases the endurance of the drive, but in terms of performance in practice, if you don’t drive a large amount of data back and forth, it will not be noticeable.
And A400-R performance:
It is easy to see that the cache size remains the same, as well as the write speed after. However, this suits us perfectly - the best results can be achieved only by replacing components, which immediately affects the value of the product as a whole.
Cheap and angry? No, this phrase does not fit. Unusually cheap - yes, there is. In fact, we have almost the minimum price on the market, but only Kingston is responsible for the quality, in contrast to the practically nouneym solutions. Yes, and also proprietary software regularly updates. Angrily? Never. The A400-R solid-state drive showed very good speeds, including the data recording period after filling in the SLC-area, where instead of 50-60 MB / s we got over 100 MB / s. All this allows you to use the novelty in laptops, all-in-one computers, nettops, work and gaming PCs without certain strict requirements for drives, but where slow and low-quality solid-state drives are not allowed in order to avoid certain problems in the process. Consider every gigabyte and want to choose a quality product for the lowest price? Then the Kington A400-R is for you!
You can buy SSD Kingston A400-R in Russia exclusively in Citylink stores:
- SSD Kingston A400-R for 128 GB .
- SSD Kingston A400-R for 256 GB .
For more information about HyperX and Kingston products, please visit the company websites.
Ahead of the whole planet
Many of you are likely to immediately go to the search engines with requests for "Kingston A400-R testing" or similar. But do not rush into this, because the novelty is just presented on the territory of two countries - in Russia and in Ukraine, and we will demonstrate the results of testing in this material. Conquer the rest of the world A400-R will be later. But even here users with a complex (in a good sense of the word) character may say: “Are we here, beta testers?”. No, it is not. A400-R is a full-fledged product, fully ready for stable and long-term work, no experiments on you are done :)
Then, actually, and what is the SSD in front of us in the end? The novelty, named A400-R, is focused on use in work PCs, gaming systems without special requirements for the disk subsystem, laptops, nettops and other devices that require reliability, sufficient speeds achieved by the SATA interface and where the majority of load drives will not be beyond the form of elevated databases with a large number of users is the lot of drives of a completely different series. About speeds and resource - a little later, but for now let's note the 2.5 ”form factor with dimensions of 100x69.9x7 mm, which will allow installing a device drive with a corresponding compartment in which options with a thickness of 9.3 mm are not suitable. It is also noteworthy that the case is made of metal, which has a good effect on the temperature mode (despite the small number of points of contact directly with the board inside), and also serves as additional protection against external influences during transportation of both the drive and the product assembled with by him.
')
When every gigabyte counts
Series A400-R currently has two options - 128 GB ( 1890 rubles ) and 256 GB ( 2870 rubles ). At first glance, the difference in volume with A400 (120 and 240 GB) is small, but isn't this bonus worth a couple of hundred rubles? In addition, the network often asked questions about the emergence of Kingston increased storage capacity - and here they are, for the first time in the history of the manufacturer! Actually, the dignity is obvious - in its pure form we have 15 GB of additional space, which is enough to install several heavy programs, some games (although, I must say, most of the AAA projects already roll over 50 GB, but still) or storage of some data, access to which must be always and quickly. What can I say - Windows 10 after installation takes about as much space. Anyway, the bonus is nice. Someone will think now: “Aha, we were deprived of our backup memory (over-provisioning)!”. And no! The total amount installed inside the chip is 288 GB, which gives us over 30 GB of "reserve". For visual comparison, the storage volumes of both series are shown in the screenshot:
Inside the case, the same 2-channel controller is hiding, as it was in the A400 and the same TLC memory. The resource (TBW) remained unchanged - 40 TB for the 128 GB model and 80 TB for the 256 GB version. Such values are quite enough for home or office use of drives.
Software
Firmware Kingston SSD Manager did not pass by A400-R solid-state drives. To work with them requires version 1.1.2.0 and later. All the functionality is available today, and the information about the drive is represented in many forms in a digestible form, and in the raw values in the Health tab. It should be added that if suddenly you read somewhere about the non-working temperature sensor in the A400, then this is incorrect information - these drives also, as well as the new A400-R, are all right.
Using Kingston SSD Manager is highly recommended, as third-party programs of even the most current versions practically do not know anything about the A400-R:
Testing
As for speed performance, everything is expected here, because, in fact, the “stuffing” is identical to that of the A400 series models. The difference may be only in the amount of SLC-cache, but it is unlikely to be significant - we will check it today. For now - some synthetics in the form of applications familiar to you. Let's start with CrystalDiskMark - the situation is quite decent for a consumer disk.
Next - TxBench. The results are confirmed - we have a very decent drive in our hands for our price category!
For a snack - Anvil's Storage Utilities.
And now about SLC-caching. Many are well aware of what it is, or at least understand what it affects and under what conditions. For those who are in the tank (or who are simply not interested) - we will explain it in a very simple language, so as not to download unnecessary technical terms. Each vendor has its own implementation method, but the essence is approximately the same - a part of the memory is allocated as a buffer, in which data is written at high speed, and then moved to the main array at a noticeably reduced speed. Actually, this increases the endurance of the drive, but in terms of performance in practice, if you don’t drive a large amount of data back and forth, it will not be noticeable.
And A400-R performance:
It is easy to see that the cache size remains the same, as well as the write speed after. However, this suits us perfectly - the best results can be achieved only by replacing components, which immediately affects the value of the product as a whole.
We summarize all of the above.
Cheap and angry? No, this phrase does not fit. Unusually cheap - yes, there is. In fact, we have almost the minimum price on the market, but only Kingston is responsible for the quality, in contrast to the practically nouneym solutions. Yes, and also proprietary software regularly updates. Angrily? Never. The A400-R solid-state drive showed very good speeds, including the data recording period after filling in the SLC-area, where instead of 50-60 MB / s we got over 100 MB / s. All this allows you to use the novelty in laptops, all-in-one computers, nettops, work and gaming PCs without certain strict requirements for drives, but where slow and low-quality solid-state drives are not allowed in order to avoid certain problems in the process. Consider every gigabyte and want to choose a quality product for the lowest price? Then the Kington A400-R is for you!
You can buy SSD Kingston A400-R in Russia exclusively in Citylink stores:
- SSD Kingston A400-R for 128 GB .
- SSD Kingston A400-R for 256 GB .
For more information about HyperX and Kingston products, please visit the company websites.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/448988/
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