Internal Inspection:
Four allen head screws hold the enclosure together, and with those removed we can take a look at the inner workings of this solid state drive. The back of the PCB is shown in the image below, and the first thing I noticed was the Intel logo stamped at the very top. There are no memory chips to be found on this side, and I assume the printing is there in order to use this PCB for a higher capacity drive if populated fully.
On the front of the PCB we see Intel's second generation controller and the five Intel 34nm MLC (Multi Level Cell) NAND flash memory chips. The PCB can hold up to 20 memory chips, so even with a single sided configuration you could get up to 80GB, and I assume a 160GB SSD would be possible by filling every blank with the same chips.
The one chip not discussed so far is the Micron brand 32MB cache memory module located just below the controller chip in the above right image.
Test Setup:
The
Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB solid state drive was tested using a system with the following specifications:
» Intel Core i7-920 quad-core processor
» Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R Motherboard
» 6GB G.Skill 1600MHz triple channel memory kit
» Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB hard drive (system drive)
» ASUS Dark Knight GeForce GTS 250 1GB video card
» Nesteq Silent 700W modular power supply
» Windows 7 Pro operating system
The testing portion of the review will have the Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB solid state drive matched up against two other SSDs...
» Super Talent UltraDrive 32GB FTM32GX25H [
at eWiz.com]
» Kingston SSDNow V Series 128GB [
review link]
The Super Talent drive offers fairly impressive specifications (Sequential Read Rate: 230 MB/s and Sequential Write Rate: 160 MB/s), but the 32GB capacity just proved to be too small for practical purposes. The Kingston drive offers 8GB more space, which isn't much, but it could make a big difference when trying to squeeze an install of Windows 7 on to a new system.
