Kingston UV400 480GB SSD review - A budget drive

 

	Review: Kingston UV400 Reviewed by: Antonis Sapanidis Provided by: Kingston Model: Kingston UV400 480GB SSD Firmware version: 0C3FD6SD

As expected technology moves forward in all
directions, from very high end SSD NVMe drives to the more affordable ones that
are still 2.5” form factor and use technology that benefits pricing. The
Kingston UV400 SSD is a drive that is affordable, and to achieve that it uses
TLC NAND. I understand that most of the enthusiasts will ignore this sort of drive,
but then again this drive is meant for this type of person.

The Kingston UV400 is here to replace your
hard drive, give you better boot times, very low access times, and all this at a
very attractive price. But before I start this review for the Kingston UV400
SSD you may want to check out the Kingston website by clicking here.

Thanks to Kingston for providing me with
the UV400 480GB SSD for this review.

Kingston UV400 480GB SSD

Let’s start by taking a quick look at the
packaging of the Kingston UV400 SSD, and as you can see from the picture there
is the drive itself, and on the box we have the basic info about the SSD.
Everything points to a more value for money drive, unlike some other drives similar
to the HyperX Savage which feature almost everything that you might, or might not,
need.

From the front of the package, there is the
drive, information about the size of the drive, SATA 3 specifications, and also
a three year warranty.

Here also is the back.

The front of the drive is simple and has the
Kingston logos that are painted in black. Simple, and to my eyes good looking but
also cost effective.

And
the rear of the Kingston UV400 480GB SSD.

Here is how the front side of the PCB
looks, with eight NAND Chips labelled as Kingston, the Nanya DDR chip, and a Marvel
controller.

On the other side of the PCB we find
another set of eight NAND chips.

A closer look at the Marvel 88SS1074-BSW2
controller.

Here is a closer look at the NAND,

Specifications of the Kingston UV400 480GB SSD

In the pictures below we get a more
detailed view of the specifications and the features of the Kingston UV400 480GB
SSD series as they appear on the official website.

As we can see there are two versions of the
UV400 SSD, one that has the Notebook & Desktop kit, and the one that I was sent
which only has the drive and reduces the cost of the SSD. The UV400 at the time
of writing this review is available in three capacities, 120GB, 240GB, and
480GB, with a 960GB drive along soon. As always prices will vary so be on the lookout
for a good deal for the Kingston UV400 SSD.

 

CrystalDiskInfo

In
the above screenshot we can see all the available info for the Kingston UV400
480GB SSD.

 

Let’s head to the next page where we
take a look at our testing methods and the review PC.

 

Test machine

For this review I will be using a computer
with the following configuration:

Hardware:

• Motherboard: ASUS X99-A (Intel X99 chipset)
• Processor: Intel Core i7 5280K @ 4.4GHz
• RAM: RAM: HyperX Savage 4x4GB 2400 @ 2666
• GFX: MSI GTX 960 2GB
• Sound: Onboard Realtek HD audio
  controller
• OS SSD: HyperX Fury 240GB
• PSU: Seasonic 750W
• Display: Futsiju Siemens 22”
• Operating System: Windows 10

 

The Kingston UV400 480GB SSD was connected
to first SATA port on the ASUS X99-A motherboard. All power saving features
were disabled during all of my synthetic benchmarks.

The
SATA 6Gbps drivers used on our review PC were Intel Rapid Storage Technology
(RST) Version 14.5.0.1081.

Test applications

To test the performance of the Kingston
UV400 480GB SSD, I will be using the following test applications in this
review.

• HD Tune
  Pro
• ATTO
• Iometer
• AS SSD
  Benchmark
• CrystalDiskMark
• Anvil’s
  Storage Utilities
• PCMark

Test procedures

I will start off our testing procedures
explanation by stating that I did not run many synthetic benchmarks on the Kingston
UV400 480GB SSD. You may ask why I have run so few synthetic benchmarks.

SSD technology has moved so fast in the
last couple of years, that basic synthetic benchmarks alone are now of very
limited use, as they don't really tell us much about performance and how the
drive will behave in the real world. I have therefore decided to show some
basic benchmarks for the Kingston UV400 480GB SSD, and will complement this
with advanced benchmarks using IOMeter and AS SSD benchmark. I will also show
how the Kingston UV400 480GB SSD performs in the real world.

The reality of SSD performance

While I can easily show you which SSD is
technically the faster, when you use one of these modern SSDs as an operating
system drive it becomes very difficult to tell them apart as far as performance
is concerned.

A typical use of a small capacity SSD at
the moment is to have your operating system and applications installed onto the
SSD. The performance difference compared to a traditional HDD is enormous,
however when you start to compare SSD to SSD the difference becomes almost
impossible to detect.

Let’s look at why this is the case.

Drive A can boot to the desktop in 8.11
seconds, and drive B can boot to the desktop in 8.12 seconds, the difference in
time is milliseconds, and can one really tell the difference?

The fact is, all modern SSDs are only
ticking over when they are only running the OS and launching applications, it’s
only when you get to some of the larger capacity SSDs, with enough free space
to be able to hold the actual data that you’re going to be working with, be
that video, audio or pictures, for example, that you actually get a tangible
difference in performance. This is where the SSDs with the better sequential
performance start to pull well ahead of the SSDs which have lower sequential
read/write performance.

Small file random IOPS vs sequential performance

IOPS

This is a fairly complex subject, but I
will do my best to explain things in a manner that is easy to understand.

The term IOPS is the amount of input or
output transactions that can take place in a one second interval, so for
example, if an SSD is quoted as being able to cope with 20,000 4K random write
IOPS, then the SSD should be able to cope with 20,000 input transactions in a
period of one second. If the same SSD is said to be able to produce 20,000 4K
random read IOPS, then the same SSD should be able to produce 20,000 4K random
read output transactions in a one second interval.

Ok, now we have some figures to work with,
the next question is how many IOPS are actually required?

This will depend on your usage pattern. If
you are a typical desktop user who browses the internet, does some word
processing or perhaps some audio or video editing, and perhaps plays a few
games, then in actual fact, you don’t need to have massive 4K random read/write
performance. The actual amount of 4K random performance that is required for a
fast and smooth running system for a desktop user with a usage pattern similar
to the above will be well under 1,000 4K IOPS.

On the other hand, if the SSD is being used
for running a large and complex database server, then 4K random performance is
the absolute measurement of how fast that server will run, as this type of
application does most of its input and output transactions in the 4K domain.

So why would I need an SSD with 80,000 4K
IOPS for a desktop?

In fact you don’t need this type of
performance for a desktop, but an SSD which is capable of coping with 80,000 4K
IOPS will be faster than an SSD which can only cope with 20,000 4K IOPS.

OK, I just said if under 1,000 4K IOPS are
actually required for typical desktop usage, why is an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS
faster than an SSD with only 20,000 4K IOPS, confused?

You may ask, if I only require 1,000 4K
IOPS surely the rest is wasted?

While you may never need 80,000 4K IOPS,
IOPS is all about latency. The reason that an SSD can cope with as much as 80,000
4K IOPS is because latency in this domain is very low. With 4K files, even if
you require to process 500 of them at the same time, you are not talking about
a huge amount of data, it has far more to do with how long it takes the SSD to
process a single file, and the amount of time required to process a single 4K
is all about how long it takes for the SSD to access or store that data before
it can move on to the next transaction.

In other words an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS
performance will handle those 500 files faster than the SSD with 20,000 IOPS.

So how will a desktop user even notice this
faster speed if so little 4K random IOPS and data are actually used?

Multitasking is a good example. The more
tasks you run at the same time, you more you will notice the speed difference.

Sequential performance

I have always maintained that sequential
performance was every bit as important as small random file performance for a
desktop SSD. Some highly regarded people on other sites found this statement
quite funny a couple of years ago when I made it, but my, how times have
changed in the world of SSD reviewing.

To me this was always so obvious for a
desktop user. For example, let’s say you want to launch an application or game.
Both have some fairly large files to load, and also a great many small files,
but the point is, even the smaller files are sequential in nature. Now let’s
say you’re into audio or video editing. Video files tend to be huge, and the
files are written or read sequentially. Isn’t this how many users are using
their PCs these days?

Summary

So how does this shape up in the real
world? Which is better, massive 4K IOPS or massive sequential performance?

In an ideal world you want both, as an SSD
with massive random 4K IOPS and sequential performance will always be faster
than an SSD that has high sequential performance and moderate 4K random IOPS performance,
and the same applies to an SSD that has massive 4K random performance and
moderate sequential performance. The SSD which has high performance in both
patterns will always be the faster SSD.

However, you can still have an SSD that is
very fast for desktop use that has moderate random 4K performance and massive
sequential performance, the same can be said about a drive having massive
random 4K performance and moderate sequential performance, as it is about
getting the balance right if you have to compromise on one or the other.

Drive preparation for running the tests

All the SSDs used in this article were in a
clean and fresh state when the testing period started. From then on, each drive
had to rely on its own NAND cleaning effectiveness for the remainder of the
tests.

• Both our spinning HDD drives were
  defragged before the start of each test.

• All SSD and HDD used in this article had
  their partitions aligned to the Windows 7 x64 defaults.

Where I use graphs in this article to
display results, I will use the following colours to make it easier, for our
readers to see which drive we are reviewing.

 Kingston
UV400 480GB SSD

 Comparison
SDD

 

Now let's head to the next page, where I
look at some basic benchmarks...

Reading Benchmarks

HD Tune

HD
Tune Test – Sequential reading test

The result is okay for TLC SSD, but
slightly higher numbers would have been welcomed.

ATTO disk benchmark

ATTO has become a standard tool for
measuring the data throughput of HDDs and SSDs. It measures the reading and
writing performance, using different file sizes and block sizes.

ATTO is the test in which almost every SSD
is able to achieve its maximum rated speed, and the Kingston UV400 SSD follows
that rule, as you can see from the above graph.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0

CrystalDiskMark is quite a handy
benchmarking application, as it focuses on the file sizes that can cause problems
for a system drive.

In this test the Kingston UV400 480GB SSD gives
a very good overall result.

The two graphs below will give a more
detailed view of how the Kingston UV400 480GB SSD compares with other SSDs that
I have retested.

Here I present the graph for the read speed
tests. You can compare the Kingston UV400 performance with other drives I have
tested.

Finally the results for the Kingston UV400
SSD for write speed, and again you can compare it with other drives.

AS SSD Benchmark

AS SSD benchmark is a benchmarking tool
specifically designed to test SSDs. The application tests sequential reading
and writing performance, 4K random reading and writing performance.

AS SSD benchmark also tests 4K threaded
performance. This is very exciting, as this test is the first available test
that I am aware of, that simulates how a PC operating system actually works. A
modern PC and OS, such as Windows Vista/7 does not just run a single thread at
a time, it runs many threads. The AS SSD benchmark "4K 64Thrd" tests
run 64 threads simultaneously throughout the test. If this result is good, then
you can be pretty sure the drive will perform extremely well as a system drive.

After the tests complete, AS SSD benchmark
derives a total score for the drive being tested. This is based on all aspects
of the test results, and gives an indication of how the drive is performing
overall.

Now let’s look at the results for the Kingston
UV400 480GB SSD in the form of a screenshot. All our other comparison drives’
results are presented in the form of a graph.

OK this is a very good result for the
Kingston UV400 480GB SSD which occupies the middle of the chart. A very good
performance.

Let's head to the next page and run some
tests using PCMark 8.....

 

PC Mark 8 - HDD Suite

We have built quite a close relationship
with FutureMark software, the authors of the PCMark PC benchmarking software
that we use in our tests. I decided I would use PCMark Vantage as stopgap
measure until the more up-to-date PCMark 8 benchmarking suite became available.
I'm pleased to say that PCMark 8 is now available, and it gives me great
pleasure to introduce you all to the results obtained by this new 'real world'
benchmarking suite.

I will describe the basic way that each
test is carried out, above the graph for each test.

PC Mark 8 HDD suite results

Here
is a screenshot displaying the results for the Kingston UV400 480GB SSD.

The result for the Kingston UV400 SSD is
not as good as I would have hoped, but still 200.65 MB/Sec is okay for daily
users that have a very light workload.

The result for the Kingston UV400 SSD is
average in this test.

Here is the result for the Kinston UV400
SSD in the adobe indesing test of PCMark 8.

If you are a heavy Photoshop user then this
isn’t the drive for you.

Here I present the result for the Adobe
Illustrator test in PCMark 8.

No surprises here, the Kingston UV400 SSD
is the slowest in this test.

The result again speaks for itself.

Here is the result for the World of
Warcraft, PCMark 8 test.

The result for the Kingston UV400 SSD in the
Microsoft Word test of PCMark 8.

The result for the Excel test in PCMark 8

Finally the result for the Powerpoint test
of PCMark 8.

Summary:

It clear that if you are into video, audio,
or image editing then this is not the drive for you, but for simple daily tasks,
such as Word and Excel, it does a nice job.

Let's head to the next page for our
IOMeter test results.....

 

I/O Performance

There is little point in having an SSD
drive that has blazing sustained reading and writing speeds, if the drive can't
handle reading and writing of small random files. If you intend to use your new
SSD drive to store and run your operating system, then the drive must be able
to cope with the many small random files that Windows will write to the drive
continually. So I feel it is very important to test how many of these random
files that a drive can handle in one second. I believe that anything over 1,000
I/O’s per second would be enough for most users running a consumer grade
mainstream PC, and should provide a smooth running system. But obviously, the
more I/O's that a drive can handle, the faster the drive will feel and leave
more headroom for those huge multitasking sessions that users sometimes engage
in.

The things that I will look at are the
total I/O per second and total MB/s.

Partition alignment and sector boundaries

Windows 7 and Vista will automatically
align a partition to 4k boundaries during partition creation, Windows XP won’t.
It is imperative that an SSDs partition is aligned. Windows XP is also
restricted to sector boundaries, while Windows 7 will use 4k boundaries if it
can. The Kingston UV400 480GB SSD is 4k boundary aware, and will use these
boundaries if possible. Of course it will also remap LBAs for compatibility
with the sector boundaries so that the drive can be used with Windows XP.

IOMeter allows us to set the sector
boundaries for conducting the tests, and I have therefore set the sector
boundaries at 4K, which means the IOMeter tests are valid for Windows 7 and
Windows Vista users. XP users will not be able to obtain such results.

I will provide a screenshot of the tests on
the review drive for those of you who like to see the actual test result. All
the comparison drive results are represented in the form of graphs.

If any of you would like to see a
screenshot from any IOMeter test on a particular drive, please feel free to
request one, and I’ll post the screenshot in the forum thread.

All the IOMeter tests create a 10GB data
set on the target drive, and each test is run for a duration of 3 minutes.

IOMeter 4K random write test with repeating data.

The first test involves creating continual
4KB random files on the target drive with IOMeter. I use a 4KB file size, as it
is believed that Windows will create and modify many of this size of file
constantly in the background during a typical Windows session. It is said that
most 4K random writes take place at a queue depth of only one.

Queue depth 1

Kingston UV400 480GB SSD (Queue depth 1)

As expected the result is okay for a TLC
SSD.

Queue depth 4

Kingston UV400 480GB SSD (Queue depth 4)

This result is again okay for a TLC SSD,
but a little extra speed would be welcomed.

Queue depth 32

Kingston UV400 480GB SSD (Queue depth 32)

Nothing has changed, the result is okay, but
those that do a lot of writes should be looking at other drives.

4K random write queue depth profile

For this
test I used various queue depths from 1 – 32 to give you an idea how this SSD
performs at different queue depths. For a normal desktop user, with lightweight
multitasking, the queue depth will rarely rise above 2. For heavy multitasking,
the queue depth is unlikely to rise above a value of 8.

Not much can be said about the write
performance of the Kingston UV400 SSD, it shows the same speed problems that
TLC drives share.

IOMeter 4K random read test.

If there are many 4k files created, then
that must also mean that many 4k files need to be read. This test measures 4k
reading performance.

Queue depth 1

Kingston UV400 480GB SSD (Queue depth 1)

This is a very good result for the Kingston
UV400 SSD.

Queue depth 4

Kingston UV400 480GB SSD (Queue depth 4)

At this queue depth the drive gives an
average result.

Queue depth 32

Kingston UV400 480GB SSD (Queue depth 32)

Again the result is okay for the Kingston
UV400 SSD .

4K random read queue depth profile.    

This test
shows how the review drive scales with increasing queue depths.

Here is how the Kingston UV400 scales with various
queue depths.

IOMeter 512KB write test with repeating data.

Sequential writing performance is also very
important, and in this test I will be measuring the sequential writing
performance of the drive.

Kingston UV400 480GB SSD - 512K Sequential write with repeating data

Again the write performance of the Kingston
UV400 puts it in the last few places of the chart.

IOMeter 512KB read test.

This test measures 512k sequential reading
performance.

Kingston UV400 480GB SSD – 512K sequential reading test

Okay, this time the drive might have last
place, but the result is good for a TLC SSD.

IOMeter Workstation simulation (outstanding I/Os = 64).

When running applications you will find
that there is a mixture of small random files and larger sequential files,
being created and read. Not only that, it isn’t just one file at a time. In
this test I measure a simulated workstation pattern, with a queue depth of 64
(threaded).

Kingston UV400 480GB SSD – Workstation simulation

In this test again the Kingston UV400 SSD
is giving a result that is just acceptable, but it managed to stay ahead of the
HyperX Savage SSD.

Summary

All of my tests show that this drive
doesn’t have impressive performance when it comes to write speed, however the
read results are okay, and for casual users it should be more than enough, as it's
a big step forward from any mechanical drive it might be replacing. If you are
more demanding, especially with writes, then you need to look for another
drive.

Let's head to the next page for our
power consumption test results.....

Power requirements and efficiency

Storage device manufacturers by law must
provide power consumption specifications with their storage device products.
Quite often these specifications are quite vague, and rarely, if ever, publish
the power efficiency of their storage devices with regard to how much work a
storage device can do for a given amount of energy consumed. In this article we
will disclose with unprecedented precision, the energy efficiency of some
popular storage devices. 

Myce has now secured a piece of 'state of
the art' test equipment, which takes a sample every four micro-seconds, that I will
be using to measure the power consumption of consumer grade SSDs and HDDs. I'm so
very proud to be able to announce that Myce.wiki, in partnership with Quarch Technology, now aims to bring our
readers the most comprehensive, and accurate, power consumption tests ever
carried out on consumer grade storage devices, to be found anywhere on the
Internet.

Myce’s Power Testing will be carried out using
Quarch Technology products. More specifically we are privileged that Quarch has
allowed us to use their latest Programmable Power Module (‘PPM’) and we would
also like to take this opportunity to give a huge 'thank you' to Quarch for
providing this equipment. The PPM is specifically designed for testing low
power sleep states on modern SSDs and as such has a remarkably accurate low
level current measurement, down to 100μA (micro amps,
or millionths of an amp). Please click here
for details.

Quarch Technology is a world leader in the
supply of testing solutions for the data storage industry and if you would like
any further information please visit their website by clicking here. 

Let's take a closer look at the Quarch PPM
box in a bit more detail.

Quarch
Technology PPM

The Quarch Technology PPM is able to provide
two power supply rails to the target SSD. A 12V (volt) rail is required for
PCIe based SSDs, and also for SATA HDDs, SATA HDDs also require the 5V rail to
function. All the power requirements of a SATA SSD are handled by the 5V rail.

The Quarch Technology PPM can switch
between 5V and 3.3V on the secondary power output channel as required. So for
SATA based SSDs it is set to 5V, and for PCIe based SSDs, it is set to 3.3V.  

On the right of the Quarch PPM, you can see
the socket where the main power injection lead connects.

On the rear of the box (not shown) you will
find a USB 2 socket, a power socket (to supply power to the unit) and a
Torridon connection interface, for connecting to external equipment.

My setup.

Although the Quarch Technology PPM can be
used on a single PC, which can act both as host and measurement system, I will
be using two PCs to run the tests. One PC will handle the measurements, and the
second PC will act both as a host for the target SSD, and will also be used to
load the target SSD with data. This will allow me to do some pretty fancy power
consumption tests.

 

I will first show the type of workload
being used to load the SSD during the power consumption test. I will then
present the power consumption graph, and power consumption statistics of the
SSD.

I will display the results in the form of
bar graphs, at the end of each test carried out in this article, so one can
compare the results obtained on all the SSDs featured in this article.

I will use the following IOMeter test
patterns to load the SSD or HDD.

• 4K random read and write at a queue depth
  of 1 (to emulate a lightweight consumer workload).
• 4K random read and write at a queue depth
  of 4 (to emulate a medium workload).
• 4K random read and write at a queue depth
  of 32 (to emulate a heavy workload).
• 512K sequential read (to emulate reading
  a sequential file from the storage device).
• 512K sequential write (to emulate writing
  a sequential file to the storage device).

Power requirements for a lightweight consumer workload. -
4K random read and write QD1

A typical lightweight consumer workload
will generally be at very low queue depths. Typically at a queue depth of one
or less. I'm testing random data at a block size of 4 Kilobytes, as this block
size of small random files is generally accepted as the most frequently
occurring in the consumer environment.

I will show the chart generated by the
Quarch PPM for the drive that I have tested. I will then show the results in
the form of bar graphs, so one can easily compare with other recently tested
SSDs.

There will actually be two bar graphs for
each test. The first graph will show the average power consumption during the
test run. The second graph, which is much more important, will indicate the
power efficiency of the storage device, showing how much work the storage
device can do for each Watt of energy it consumes.

4K Random Read - queue depth 1

Kingston
UV400 480GB – 4K random read QD1

This is a good result for the UV400 SSD.

Again the result is good.

 

4K Random Write - queue depth 1

Kingston
UV400 480GB – 4K random write QD1

The result is within acceptable limits.

On the other hand the IOPS per WATT isn’t
that impressive.

Power requirements for a medium weight consumer workload.
- 4K random read and write QD4

A typical medium weight consumer workload
will generally be at a queue depth of four or lower. This workload would
typically involve some multitasking, with perhaps two or three applications
running, and processing data simultaneously.  I'm testing random data at a
block size of 4 Kilobytes, as this block size of small random files is
generally accepted as the most frequently occurring in the consumer
environment.

I will show the charts generated by the
Quarch PPM, for the drive that I have tested. I will then show the results in
the form of bar graphs, so one can easily compare with other recently tested
SSDs.

4K Random Read - queue depth 4

Kingston UV400 480GB – 4K random read QD4

Once again the Kingston UV400 is close to
the middle of the chart, another acceptable result.

The UV400 SSD continues to show acceptable results
even on the IOPS per WATT chart.

4K Random Write - queue depth 4

Kingston
UV400 480GB – 4K random write QD4

The result is surprisingly very good for
the Kingston SSD.

But as we can see the above good result
doesn’t translate that well to the IOPS per WATT chart.

Power requirements for a heavyweight consumer workload. -
4K random read and write QD32

Whilst this workload is unlikely arise for
the casual consumer PC user, it could well appear in a semi-professional
consumer environment, such as in a graphics workstation. This workload would
usually involve heavy multitasking, and having several processes running
concurrently that require constant access to small files located on the storage
device for input or output.

I'm testing random data at a block size of
4 Kilobytes, as this block size of small random files is generally accepted as
the most frequently occurring in the consumer environment.

I will show the chart generated by the
Quarch PPM, for the drive that I have tested. I will then show the results in
the form of bar graphs, so one can easily compare with other recently tested
SSDs.

4K Random Read - queue depth 32

Kingston
UV400 480GB – 4K random read QD32

Another good result for the UV400 SSD.

Once again we see that the good result in the
power test doesn’t translate that well to the IOPS per WATT chart.

4K Random Write - queue depth 32

Kingston
UV400 480GB – 4K random write QD32

Another good result for the Kingston UV400
SSD.

The story remains the same for the IOPS per
WATT chart, as we see that the drive is in the lower part of the chart.

Power requirements of a storage device when reading and
writing sequential data

Not all of a consumer workload is based around
the reading and writing of small random files. Many files are sequential in
nature, and can vary in size from a few Kilobytes to several Gigabytes, so your
storage device will spend a lot of time reading and writing sequential data.

I'm testing sequential data at a block size
of 512 Kilobytes.

512KB Sequential read

Kingston
UV400 480GB – Sequential read

The result is good in this test.

Also the IOPS per WATT result is good.

512KB Sequential write

Kingston
UV400 480GB – Sequential write

This result is excellent but let's also see
how it translates to the IOPS per WATT chart.

As I feared the IOPS per WATT result tells another
story for the Kingston UV400 SSD.

Power requirements of storage devices when they are idle
and doing no work at all

The practical reality relating to power
consumption is that it can be quite erratic and sometimes unpredictable. Some
of us will invest in the most powerful PC we can afford, only to find that the
PC can spend quite a lot of time running and doing absolutely nothing. Storage
devices are no different.

Often we can be sitting idly pondering what
to do next, or perhaps browsing the Internet. When we arrive at a page that
interests us, we will read it, and that can take a fair amount of time to
complete. During this period the storage device will most likely be idle, but
still consuming energy.

In this test, I'm measuring how much energy
the storage device consumes when doing no work at all and with link power
management disabled.

Kingston
UV400 480GB – Drive idle

In this test, and with the specific setting
that I use, the Kingston UV400 SSD is okay.

I will now show one more test, and this
should be regarded as for information purposes only.

Power requirement trace of an SSD booting Windows 10, in
real time.

This test is for interest only, and shows
the power requirements of the review SSD booting Windows 10 to the desktop.

Kingston
UV400 480GB – Real time trace of the drive booting Windows 10 to the desktop.

Again the result for the Kingston UV400 SSD
is okay.

Summary

The UV400 SSD is not the most power
efficient drive, and also the IOPS per WATT chart isn’t showing an impressive
result, but overall this is a should be much more efficient than any mechanical
drive, and should be okay as a replacement for that. Unfortunately it’s a drive
that is aimed at those who are light users.

 

Now let’s head to the next page where we
will look at how the Kingston UV400 SSD performs using Anvil's Storage
utilities....

 

 

Anvil’s Storage Utilities

As well as performing SSD endurance tests.
Anvil’s Storage Utilities has a very nice SSD benchmarking application. The SSD
benchmark tests many different aspects of SSD performance, including 4K random
at different queue depths, and also sequential performance, but more importantly
than this, all using real test data.

Another very nice feature of Anvil’s SSD
benchmark is the fact that you can change the compression levels of the test
data. The compression levels of the data sets used for the tests can be varied
from 0% compression right up to 100% compressed data, and there are even a few
data profiles already included, such as database (8%) compression, and also an
application profile (46%) compression, which is designed to simulate real
application data being read and written to the SSD.

Anvil’s Storage Utilities is still in beta
at the moment, but the application is currently solid enough to use in this
article, and I have already verified the results obtained using an SATA
analyser.

I will include a screenshot of the review
drive, and all comparison results will be presented in the form of graphs. If
you would like to see screenshots of the test results obtained on the other
SSDs in this article, you can do so by following the link here.

I will also be testing three different
compression profiles, which are as follows.

• 0 fill (100% compressible data)
• Application simulation profile (46%
  compressed)
• 100% (non compressible data)

 So let’s begin the tests.

0 fill

Kingston UV400 480GB SSD (0 fill)

Results
are ranked by highest total score.

Compressible data is something that the
Kingston UV400 does not like that much.

Application profile

Kingston UV400 480GB SSD (application profile)

Results are ranked by highest total score.

In this test the Kingston UV400 SSD gave a
good result, and it managed to stay in the middle of the chart.

100% incompressible

Kingston UV400 480GB SSD (100% incompressible)

Results are based on the highest total score.

With incompressible data the Kingston UV400
SSD gave a very impressive performance for a TLC drive.

Summary

It’s clear that the Kingston UV400 SSD
likes incompressible data, and in that part of the test it was able to achieve
a very good result.

 

Now let's head to the next page for some
real world tests....

 

It has become clear that simply conducting
endless benchmarks on SSD drives is pointless. Real users may run a few
benchmarks when they first fit their SSD drive, but most users just want a
drive that performs well in the real world. They want their drive to work
"out of the box" and work fast and smoothly.

Most of the latest SSD drives can deliver
very fast sustained reading and writing speeds, but these alone tell you very
little about how the drive will perform in the real world.

If you intend to use your SSD as your
primary system drive, with an operating system and applications installed and
running from the drive, real world performance becomes much more important than
just fast sequential read and write speeds, in this case I felt that it was
time to move into a different method of testing.

From now on I will only use the log files
from the Event Viewer to measure the start-up and shutdown of the system, and
also use filecopy to measure all my copy tests from a RAM disk to the selected
storage drive that I will be testing. For these tests I will also enable all
power savings features that are available, since I believe that this is the way
that the majority of the users will have them set on their PC.

Real
world copy tests

---

I will now conduct some real world copy
tests so that you can have a much better view of how the drive will perform. In
these simple tests I try to simulate what a real user does with their drives. I
will be copying some mp3 files, various picture and MKV files, and finishing by
installing MS Office 2007.

As I said earlier from now on all my test
files will be stored in a RAM disk and copied/pasted to the destination drive
using filecopy. The filecopy utility will be used from now on for all my tests,
and I’ll be using it this way to measure the time that it takes to copy the
files.

Before I move on to the test, I want to
give you an idea on how fast your RAM is. Below you can find the results.

As
we can clearly see speed isn’t going to be an issue in these tests.

Read write tests – 259 MP3 song files (1.36GB total)

I will start this set of tests by copying
259 MP3 files from the RAM disk to the destination SSD and also from the SSD to
the RAM disk.

Both read and write results are very good.

Read write tests – 3,377 JPEG picture files (2.56GB total)

Continuing my set of tests, but this time I
will be copying 2.54GB of pictures that are stored in the RAM disk to the
currently testing SSD and vice versa.

Here we start to see the write limitation of
the drive, but the read result also isn’t as high as for other TLC drives.

Read write tests – 1 MKV and 1 SRT file (3.46GB)

Copying a movie is very common task for all
of us, and in this test there are two files that will be copied from the RAM
disk to the SSD and again from the SSD to the RAM disk.

To my surprise both read and write results
are very good for the Kingston UV400 SSD.

Read write tests – ISO (7927MB)

For this test, I copied ISO of the 'Iron
Man' movie from the RAMDisk to the SSD and vice versa.

This is the part where we can clearly see
that when the drive is pushed into writing large files it slows down, as seen in
the above graph. Read speed is again good.

Read write tests – Small files (533MB)

I have decided to adapt the very small
files test that I am using as part of my USB3 flash tests, so this time I will
be also copying all the files from the RAM disk to the SSD, and again from the
SSD to the RAM disk.

The Kingston UV400 SSD isn’t very fast at
writing small files, but read speed is once again good.

Windows start-up based on the Boot Racer 5.00

Start-up time

On the next screen shot you can compare the
current tested SSD and compare it to other drives that I have tested. Below I
present the results.

30.2 seconds, that’s all the time that the
Kingston UV400 SSD needed to boot, and this is a very good result.

Installing applications

---

Installing applications is possibly something
you don't do that often. But should you replace your system disk, then you will
most likely have to re-install your applications. Most of the SSD drives I have
tested up until now are quite slow at installing applications, most likely
because their I/O performance was quite limited.

For these tests, we picked some popular
applications and copied the entire contents of the CD or DVD media to the RAM disk.
We did this to make sure that the reading speed of our CD/DVD reader would not
hamper the performance of the target drive.

We then installed these applications onto
our comparison HDD drives, which were all running mirror image installations of
our Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit installation, and timed the amount of time
taken to install the application with a stopwatch on each of the drives.

MS Office 2007 Enterprise (full install)

Now let’s see
how the Kingston UV400 480GB SSD performs with the installation of MS Office
2007 Enterprise Edition.

The procedure
followed was very simple. I copied all the files from the CD to the RAM disk and
used the virtual drive as a source for the installation files.

 

This result is the slowest that I have seen
so far, thankfully you only have to install Office once.

Speed degradation after heavy testing

On this page I will measure how the SSD
performs after heavy testing and usage.

I will run an AS SSD benchmark test when
the OS is freshly installed so that we can get a good view of how the drive
performs with the OS. After that I will fill the drive up to 50% of its
capacity, use the drive for a few days, and then re-run the AS SSD benchmark.
The same procedure will be followed once again, but this time the drive will be
filled close to 90% or higher of its capacity. To finish this test, I will
simply delete all the extra data and leave the PC idle for a few hours so that
the controller has the time to perform any necessary cleaning, then see how the
drive performs.

In this picture you can see the test files
that I will be copying to fill the drive with data, as you can see files vary
from 8GB ISOs to very small text files.

In the picture below you will find all the
applications that were installed for this test using Ninite, and I have also installed Microsoft
Office 2007.

Now let’s start our tests.

 

Here is the first test with only the OS and
Office 2007 installed on the drive.

With the drive having less than 4GB of free
space we start to see some slowdown with AS SSD, but in real life, copying
files becomes a difficult job, so you might want to delete some files that you
don’t need and leave more room for the drive to work.

50% free space, and in the AS SSD test the
drive gives a very good result.

With everything deleted the drive returns
to its normal performance level.

Write Speed test

At this moment I would like to say that HD
Tune write speed test was the very first test that I ran on this drive right
after I got it out of the box, the file size was set to 4MB.

By now it’s clear that once the SLC cache
that most TLC drives use is finished, which on the UV400 480GB is close to
48GB, the performance drops, and in this case we see that it stays close to
100MB/Sec.

This concludes our review. To read the final
thoughts and conclusion, click the link below....

 

The cons:

The main reason for complaints will be the
slow write speed of the TLC, but this SSD is not aimed at those that look for
the best write performance from a drive, but at people that want to have a cost
effective SSD to replace their mechanical drive, and most of these probably are
casual users.

The pros:

As with most TLC drives the price is the
main reason to buy one, but the capacity of the drive can also be another, as
there’s a lot of storage for the daily user, and if they decide to allocate
some extra space on the drive, for over-provisioning, they should also gain
some extra performance.

Read speed was very good for a value drive,
and power consumption is okay for a TLC drive.

The real world performance was also acceptable,
so overall the Kingston UV400 480GB SSD is a nice compromise when it comes to
performance and price.

To sum up, this is what I would say:

The Kingston UV400 480GB is a good SSD
to replace your old mechanical drive, and most casual users will benefit from
this move.

Therefore, I give the 'Good' award to the Kingston
UV400 SSD

 

Thanks to:

---

 

You may comment on this review here, you
can also post your benchmarks in our forum.