California-based Kingston Digital said on Wednesday that its SSDNow V Series of solid-state drives are now available. The launch starts with the SSDNow V300, a high-performance, cost-efficient upgrade solution for those wanting to move away from the typical mechanical hard drive setup.
According to Kingston, this drive features an LSI SandForce Flash Storage Processor (FSP) solution customized for Kingston and optimized for 19-nm NAND Flash memory. Sequential read and write speeds are up to 450 MB/s on a SATA 3 connection, whereas random 4K write speeds are up to 60,000 IOPS and random 4K read speeds are up to 85,000 IOPS, depending on the capacity.
"LSI worked together with Kingston to deliver a customized high-performing solid-state drive solution for their cost-effective SSDNow V Series," said Kent Smith, senior director of product marketing, Flash Components Division, LSI. "Our award-winning SF-2281 Client FSPs provide Kingston's customers with enterprise-class features and an enhanced everyday computing user experience, especially for first time SSD users."
The 2.5-inch SSD arrives in three capacities – 60 GB, 120 GB and 240 GB – and has a PCMark Vantage HDD Suite Score of 39,000, 49,000 and 57,000 respectively. On a power consumption level, the drives consume 0.640W (MAX) at idle, 1.423W (MAX) while reading, and 2.052W (MAX) while writing.
"Kingston is committed to delivering SSDs at the best price to performance ratio as possible. We achieve this again with our next-generation SSDNow V300," said Ariel Perez, SSD business manager, Kingston. "The SSDNow V300 is the best cost-efficient upgrade for users who want their existing systems to perform faster. They will experience faster boot up and shutdown times, and will also see much better system performance when multiple applications are open."
The SSDNow V300 is available as a stand-alone drive or as an upgrade kit containing cloning software and other accessories for a desktop and/or notebook system. To purchase the SSD directly from Kingston, head here. Otherwise, the new series can be found at Amazon, Best Buy, Staples, Newegg, TigerDirect, and Fry's Electronics.