I have previously made the mistake of buying an A400 over other similarly priced drives, simply because I trusted the brand. Good to know the AData is the go-to if I need more cheap drives.
Not a terrible mistake but I had the feeling these were not the best. So AData it is for the very budget builds. I've been doing some calculations and feel that it's better to push the boat out and get a 1TB SSD that start off with a 240GB SSD and 1TB HDD. It's much easier for people if all their stuff is on the one drive and much better if they don't jam the SSD too full.
I used an A400 in a Core 2 duo laptop that was limited to SATA 1 so I wasn't worried about top performance. It was great in that system and is still running years later after being moved around to a few systems.
Great review man. You should take a look at the Patriot Burst and Burst Elite as well. Apparently, they even have dram cache for the about the same price (at least here in my country). Keep up with the great content.
From the information what i know, the burst (or the old one and maybe the production replaced by the elite version) has dram cache, and the burst elite doesnt have the dram cache and its newer and probably the most available now. But that was in my country market, SEA region
They don't have DRAM cache, they have 32MB of SRAM cache, which is a common feature of the controller they're based on, the Phison S11. OCZ Trion, PNY CS900, Mushkin Source, all cheap SATA TeamGroup SSDs (GX2, L3 Evo among them) and GIGABYTE SSD are all based on the S11 like the Patriot drives you mention, and let me tell you: that 32MB of SRAM doesn't improve performance.
@@juanignacioaschura9437 is it same with slc cache? In term of performance? I have klevv ssd in my pc, and they are same controller with what you said. Im just curious what inside them😀
@@arelh No. SLC cache is used by DRAM-less SSD manufacturers to bump up the sequential read and write speeds and that is a part of the TLC cells. SLC won’t replace any SRAM or DRAM cache, in fact looking at the benchmarks here (and in Haven’s other video) you can see how much you benefit from having cache separate from SLC. SRAM Does nothing here not because it’s ineffective, but because 32MB is too small of a capacity and can only work for write cache, not for mapping the drive and metadata as your standard DRAM cache does. So you end up with similar performance as DRAM-less drives with no SRAM (the SM2258XT drives, for example).
Drive is ok for installing OS and some essential programs like browser, office and other applications. Basically the drive will be mostly for reading than writing and system speed. Decent to pair it with a cheap 1TB HDD for all your storage needs at an affordable price.
Thanks! I was waiting for this update, the KingstonA400 is the only SSD I've ever used so far it's been going strong for 5 years. For the price I'm more than happy with it as a boot drive, but when it eventually fails I know to look towards the Adata, I'd never heard of Adata when purchasing my drive so the brand recognition of kingston 100% swayed my choice.
Appreciate it! I’m sure you’ve seen them, but I can at least recommend budget builds official and randomgaminginhd as also being really enjoyable budget channels
Really glad I went the the AData drive! Ended up picking that one when I saw that it was the only option, within that price range, that had DRAM cache. Was considering the Kingston A400 at the time, but really glad I didn't pick that one.
There is one major weakness of the a400 that not that many people talk about. The write endurance. I have no idea what kind of flash storage that Kingston use but the write endurance are much lower than most other drive. The 120GB a400 only have write endurance of 40TBW. That means if I use that drive, it'll probably fail after 3 or 4 years of use. For comparison the silicone power TBW for the 128GB version is 65TB. That's over 50% better. So I'll avoid Kingstone ssd for now. (Their entire ssd lineup seems to have low endurance too)
but TBH, people who buy 120GB SSD is going to use it as boot drive only. 40TBW for a boot drive is more than enough. It will last you until your next major PC upgrade
@@neoroxx Well, the problem is other Kingston ssd have the same issue. I want to buy ssd a bit while ago and Kinston NV1 seems like a good option.... until I see the endurance rating. I ended up with Team Group mp33 512GB which have write endurance of 300TBW (or was it 350TB? i dont remember). NV1 only have something like 120TBW.
@@neoroxx As a boot drive in a PC with an HDD, in which case you can do things to keep excessive writes down, and it will probably write less than 4TB per powered on year, or in an old laptop only used occasionally, or for all sorts of other things where you don't want to pay for a premium drive. It's unlikely to wear out before it becomes obsolete. I wouldn't buy it because I've never liked Kingston products, and think you can get better value elsewhere.
Maybe I'm unlucky but out of the 120+ ssd we have bought for the company I work for... like 5 of them have been Adata. 3 of them have failed and 0 of the kingston. And reading reviews... is more common for them to fail too. So... I'll stick with kingston, but good review!
Thanks for these videos, I have looked at all these ssds online or at stores. Managed to find the Silicon Power at 1TB for a better price than any of the other drives on the list and feel pretty decent.
I've been buying PNY CS100 (iirc that's the model) for my servers where the boot drive size doesn't really matter, just needs to have a reasonable startup speed and can handle being powered on and read from for extended periods of time. It was the cheapest I could find at best buy when I got the first one when I was experimenting with RAID configurations and now it's become a fairly reliable drive.
We've used the Kingston 120 and 240 heavily to carry large files back and forth ..filled and spilled hundreds of times and they both still work perfect ..wont be fast as a os drive because of no dram but as a portable drive they are great
I actually use the 480GB version of the A400, but as a tertiary mirror to my work-related files (which are on a thumb drive 24/7 plugged into my computer, which is mirrored to an offsite backup, to my other computer, to my office-issue hard drive, and to the said A400). It would have been better for me to have seen this video before having bought that drive, but with limited choices in my local computer shop (they sell WD, Samsung, Seagate, and Kingston drives), I bought this one as I was just looking for more space and not R/W speeds. But I would go for the ADATA to be honest if only it's sold here. And before you cancel me on the comments, I have several SSDs from WD and Samsung where most of my more important files (video projects, photos, music project files) are saved; the office-issued WD hard drive serves as the main project drive for work. Which means that if the Kingston drive becomes Kings-done, I'm somehow alright from the fallout.
Nice video, exactly what I'm looking for. My office PC uses a 240GB Kingston A400 and I've been using it heavily as a download machine for more than a year. After using it for about a month, I've brought three Kingston A400 for personal use. 1TB for my main unit and used it for a year so far so good. The other two I brought to bring new life into two of my 5 year old Acer laptops. Honest opinion, it slows down a lot when playing games while transferring (any)files in the background OR if a pesky windows update slips through. Not sure about the reliability but I hope it will outlast what it advertises... (was always a 7.2k HDD user until it died 6 years later). Only after I brought the 1TB I knew that it didn't have any DRAM (lol) but the price difference to jump to a DRAM SSD is just too high, like about 30usd more where I live.
The A400 is a perfectly fine drive. She's a runner! We have sold a ridiculous amount at work as replacement drives and also in use for systems in shop, none of them failed. They are not as fast as drives with DRAM but it's good enough. They are more reliable than they say. TBW ratings are just numbers, time is the only test that matters.
For me it was more about the warranty. Kingston warranty in Egypt is 3 years and Adata/hikvision/WD ssds are 1 year. Since I already have a Hikvision SSD failing right on the 369th day, I was attracted to the long warranty that Kingston ssds had and bought 2 (240gb for my pc and 120gb for my laptop)
@@HardwareHaven bro...i got new MX500 ssd from Flipkart and crystal benchmark speed test is good but actual - real world usage - iam getting only speed from 50 to 100mbps and it's fluctuating and not even consistent 👀👀👀what is the issue here...! AND ITS CONNECTED TO MOTHER BOARD ONLY....NOT IN CADDY
Thanks for the video. I use Samsung, WD, Sandisk and kingston, in the companie's computers but No SP or Adata. 5 years ago I used a SP for a new build and data would be corrupted on and off. It finally died after the warranty expired. Adata was a DOA.
I have never understood why the Kingson drive is so popular. It's usually more expensive than any of the above drives and any reviews usually show that it's slower. Maybe it's us old people - a lot of us bought Kingston Value Ram back in the day when memory was really expensive. It worked well, so maybe it's brand recognition. I have several of the Adata SU800s in different sizes. I love them. If the SP drives are a lot cheaper, I will pick up one of those.
My ex boss had 1 fail from 3 sold, so - lottery. He's a max profit cheapskate, what makes the risk worth it for you and more importantly - your clients?
@@em0_tion I've had two doa samsungs, and a handful of 850 evo failures. (Samsung at least honors the warranty) The A400 has trust with me as a budget option. I also stock WD and Samsung SSDs, the customers pick their parts and the lower price is attractive to them. I have no reason to distrust the A400 lineup. But I always buy the 240GB+ variants. I don't trust any 120GB ssd because they tend to only have a single NAND chip.
SU800 is the best value 2.5 inch boot drive. I bought the 1TB model and haven't stopped since 2018. Samsung EVO, Crucial MX, Sandisk Ultra Plus, OCZ/Kioxia, TeamGroup, all of them have one flaw (price, price, reliability, performance, cheapness), but the SU800 had almost no issue. It hits a smart balance of durability, price, and performance that none seem to have.
I've used a lot of kingston a400, all aged well. Except that for the dataloss. After a year of using a400s, most of them had become corrupted, but still usable.
a400 between 200-250 units 120's 240's 480's no doa's, no fails. the inlands (micro center house brand) 300+ units of the 120's and 240's 1 doa (thanks to amazons amazing shipping department) no fails. The ADATA name was a huge name of the past, I've had old externals with wd drives from the early 2000's still in operation. That being said all of the ssd's i have had with them have failed at a year or less or just over a year, customer service is null, hence why i have switched to the a400's or the inlands. ymmv but i will not count on adata ssd's for a coaster, and certainly not for data. The kingstons and inlands are ALL USED DAILY for misc tasks in all kinds of environments. Thanks for the videos and your time, you were randomly shown to me to view, i did watch the other video with the other drives, but i have no experience with them so i can not comment on them.
My guess is that these cheaper SKUs have decent component variance depending on when they were manufactured. I've seen comments very similar to yours, but with the opposite result haha. Although, the bad customer support seems to be a common thread. Appreciate the info!
You can't very easily test how long a drive actually lasts, but most manufacturers do give ratings for how long their flash is supposed to last in the form of Terabytes Written or total capacity and that's also what it will be covered under warranty for, it isn't always easy to find, but usually it'll be under the specs on their own website if not listed anywhere else. The Kingston A400 for example is rated at a pedestrian 40TB, that doesn't sound too bad, but Adata rated their 128GB drive for 100TB and for context in fairly normal desktop use, my new m.2 ssd has gotten nearly 9TB of writes in its first year, so based at a similar rate you could expect the A400 to last 4-5 years compared to 11 years on the SU800, quite a modest life difference at a minimal price difference. They may also give something like MTBF for expected power on hours, often something like 1 or 2 million hours seems standard.
The only SSDs I've ever had break are WD Green SATA, WD Green NVMe and WD Black NVMe. Most unreliable HDD is also the WD Green in my experience. All storage systems hate getting hot. I think that's why the WD Black failed, too close to the GPU. Unlike a CPU a drive can't cool itself down or work less hard.
switching from an HDD to an SSD, the A400 helped a lot making my machine feel more responsive. but it is a shame that i didn't come across this video sooner haha
@@aspirewot8408 if ur coming from a hard drive or old laptop ssd you might notice some improvement. Playing open world games is definitely smooth and no problem but for example copying a clean gta v folder took 10min while my pretty modern school laptop copies that in less then 5. Im pairing it on a asrock 970 pro3 amd fx 6350 oced to 4.8ghz
@@НААТAs long it's last and fast for boots and stuff I'm okay with it. I don't have problem with that kind if download speed. 10 mins is enough for me to do other stuff while waiting rather than seating. But it's different for everyone especially if you work using computers that 10 mins can cost someone
One point I'd like to note is the pricing, here in Indonesia, a Kingston A400 240GB only costs Rp325,000 ≈ $22 whereas with that amount of money you'd only get the 120GB model in the US vs Adata SU 256GB costing Rp586,000 ≈ $38, a $16 dollar difference. One reason I didn't compare the 128GB model is because Adata doesn't sell their SU800 model in 120GB capacity here, it only comes with the SU650 model which doesn't have a DRAM cache and only costs Rp210,000 ≈ $14 vs Kingston A400 120GB for Rp150,000 ≈ $9.8, a significant difference vs the price in the US. So for me at least, a Kingston A400 still gets a lot of bang for the buck.
There are too many brands of SSD these days and too many variables that can effect them to get wrapped up in 100% certain brand loyalty, It's not like with mechanical drives where you can say a Western Digital or Toshiba will easily out perform and outlast a Seagate. The best anyone can do is buy what they can in small samples and hope they don't get screwed... like I was with Inland.
I bought the Kingston A400 48gb for a cheap laptop. The Adata SU800 512gb is $70, while the A400 480gb is $30. So it's an easy choice for me. If the laptop is more powerful, I probably would've went with the Crucial MX500.
I bought the Kisgston SSD, because it's the most reputable brand unlike Siliconpower. I'm using it as a boot drive for Zorin OS on my notebook and so far it is fast and stable. Would recommend 10/10.
I ordered an A400 (240gb). Worked fine on arrival, but it was dead a two months later. Yes, this is anecdotal, but that was my random experience, similar to yours. Wasn't worth RMAing, as the shipping cost was prohibitive, given it was only $60 new. Never actually knew anyone who had an SSD fail when new or near new.
It's not that important if you're relying on a reputable brand to begin with. But here we are, in a cheapo SSD video comment section. 🤷♂️😂 In any case, upgrading to the latest FW is always a good idea. 👍
@@em0_tion Well, I had a Samsung 840 EVO that was very slow over time, updated the firmware and it was as new again, so if the firmware had some bugs, yes, it makes a difference. I don't think it's that important but it could be the reason for the difference between two drives of the same model and that's why I left the original comment.
I just have a question, I thought for so long about what to choose (my head is almost boiling), and in the end I ordered this disk because I heard that it rarely gives errors. Right now I'm moving from a bad HDD to a not-so-new laptop that mostly uses the browser and a few games. I plan to use it for another 1-2 years maximum. Is this disc enough to feel a big effect and do I need to worry a lot about lost profits?
Back when I was reading about the best ssd I could get, one thing always stand out - Kingston isn't very reliable and it fails a lot. If you can get older model of Crucial MX 500 or Adata with MLC that will be good deal for you. You play a lottery with the unknown brands, you could waste your time with them.
Yep, everything after MLC, i.e. QLC based cheapos, get major failures quick. No one buys an SSD "for a (art) project", it's for using it daily. I love cheap buys that actually have a high value and save me a buck, but this isn't a risk worth taking.
@@itstheweirdguy I don't have Kingston drive, but during my research I found abnormal amount of bad reviews for this brand of SSD's. You may never have issues, they could have improved the quality in the newer batches. I don't want to say they aren't good brand, just saying what I found about them.
I've used a Kingston a400 (at 240gb) and it's never been one way or another - consider that good or bad. I have a Team Group (1TB) in the machine I'm typing this on that also seems to be just fine as well. I'm not sure what to make of it, but most of the ones I have are PNY CS900s - from 120G to 1T - in fact, in looking at my previous orders to see what I had purchased in the past - I noticed the 120G drive was $17. The 240G was less than a dollar a gig, and the 480G was even less (so I bought one). But really, at $17 you should pick one up and add it to your test data.
Where I work we have purchased many many Kingson A400 SSD's, 240 and 480GB. NONE of them have failed. They are slower than the Adata SU800, which is a better drive, but I have sold a lot of the SU800 and some of them were defective, only a few though. PNY, and Silicon Power are total garbage. Adata's SU6xx line is horrible and I've had dozens of those bad, and handful of SU7xx too. I've had more bad Samsung drives than Kingston. I did have one bad Kingston NVME drive though but it was just one and it as DOA so that's better than failing. Also I've noticed that lately the newer A400's seem to clone faster, in the 20 GB/min (clonezilla) range instead of in the sub 10GB/min range depending on fullness. Crucial BX500 and MX500 are OK, but do have a higher failiure rate than say Samsung or SK Hynix overall.
I've had some fail since then. 1 or 2 died fully! The rest I was able to clone off and was able to RMA them. Overall, still a much better experience than the drives I was trashing in my orignal post. They're cheap drives what do you expect. I had to do a mad dash to get rid of the ADATA drives those cheap QLC sata drives really drop like flies, I do have some that are fine though as far as ADATA, but I had to RMA a bunch of them.
I've ordered the Kingston 512 SSD for my wife's 10 yr old Lenovo B575 laptop that I'm taking over full use. The the HDD in the Lenovo has slowed down quite a bit. She just bought a brand new laptop that comes with a SSD and she loves it. I have an 8 yr old ASUS laptop that has a slower cpu that's why I'm taking over the Lenovo and upgrading the HDD to SSD. And, since I will only use it from time to time to surf and watch video the Kingston's price and abilities are just fine for me. As for my ASUS, I'm removing the HDD and selling it as is...
I think Im gonna go with a ' WD Blue ', they are pretty cheap £45 for 250gb and from what I understand, they have the dram cache malarkey. It might be twice the price, but still, ya cant complain at £45 for a fastish SSD.
Out of curiosity, how many of these SSDs that were tested using management software such as Samsung's Magician for Overprovisioning and such? Are we talking about raw testing with drive management and optimization only done by the OS???🤔...and how might these tests do under a different operating system such as Linux with an EXT4 file system?
ADATA (SU800) are the best and you can sometimes get them at the same or a lower price thant the others. When they do go on sale I stock up. It would be good if you did a test between the different ADATA models.
Very organized review, I love it. You should look into the PNY CS900 250GB, I got it on sale for $28 from Amazon. Also, I saw you were using Chrome have you heard of Brave? It’s so much better than Chrome
Unfortunately I rely on some browser plugins, and I’m just lazy at times haha. I’d be interested to try it out on some low end hardware or something though!
What about SU650? Are they good compared to a400? I heard that adata have overheating issue ontheir budget SSD.. i don't have the budget for SU800 because it's much more expensive here..
@@PinotNoir_ In a case with normal airflow, no SATA SSD should be able to generate that much heat. Since the sequential speeds are miles from NVMe drives
@@PinotNoir_ From a quick glance, it looks like some people just had defective drives, probably with a bad controller that would always overheat. Either way, you should avoid going any lower than SU800 because of unknown problems like these and lackluster performance in general.
I bought one for my late 2013 imac and I'm running it as an external drive as no way I'm trying to operate on this machine and take it to pieces, it has made it feel like a new machine in performance.
Happen to have used a kingston a400 and an ADATA 800 for years of normal use. Both have been reliable. Anecdotally, I think the performance and price make the ADATA 800 better from my perspective. I've seem a few tech tubers talk about the fatty dove brand SSD and comment that it is a good buy because it has a dram cache with a lower price. Would you possibly consider that in a mix for another vid? -------------- Update.... just read that fatty dove no longer ships with a dram cache. but it is the cheapest SSD on amazon.
Curious about the PNY drives. They're the most common super-cheap drives at my local computer store (best buy) so I have a pile of them in different cheap computers.
Nice comparison. It might be worth noting the amount of data written, hours, power cycles at the beginning of each test. Also, methodology of wiping data, and if a vendor tool for securely wiping data and updating firmware exists.
I bought the adata su800 cause when I was searching for it on a site I saw it was the cheapest, best one and I don't regret it completely not after watching this video
I just installed a Kingston KC600 256GB mSATA ssd but it apparently begins with a fixed size partition. I don't know how to clone the existing bootable HD onto this device due to that oddball partition. --edit-- used DISKPART to clean the ssd and eliminate the unwanted partition.
Try and test the gigabyte 120GB SSD next GP-GSTFS31120GNTD. They are even more popular and sometimes cheaper than the kingston A400 where I live. Personaly have been using one (gigabyte) since 2019 on my main PC as a system drive. I am surprised at how snapy it feals despite it having slower speeds 500/380 than the ones you tested and no cache. It runs about 50~70% full.
The A400 was my very first option but now I'm looking for the Crucial MX500 or a WD Blue SSD, both are the same price on where am I and I wonder if there's any noticeable difference, iirc, both have DRAM. I'm discarding the A400 now since I saw it's not that good despite being cheap. Gotta invest more
Odd, I have yet to have a single A400 fail, during daily use for the last 6-7 years (200+ drives) Yet all 10 AData we have tried died in 1-2 years (similar workloads, just the drive was different) :) And for the record, most of them are in work-tops (mixed desk and lap tops), and not highend rendering etc.
Just curious, when did you buy the ADATAs? Seems like that’s pretty common, but not as much recently. (Just based off of other messages and comments I’ve seen). Thanks for the comment!
@@HardwareHaven To be honest, we bought the last of them around 2 years ago, it will please me if the quality has been stepped up and might give them another try then.
I've read several review about how the Adata failed on them after only few months. Meanwhile my kingston 2018 a400 and another bought v400 2016 are still alive. would be great if the adata is sturdy enough though.
I have used a 250GB A400 for the past 3 years as a boot drive and in terms of longevity it is not performing so well as I verified it in HDD Sentinel saying that life is at 12% and I have 90TB of writes left until it hits the bucket . Currently it is sitting in my laptop to give it a well deserved boost since I am not using it often. Now I have a 500GB A55 in my main PC for 2 months so I cannot give my final thoughts on it. Regardless, it is performing well for now but after seeing your videos I regret that I didn't pay a little more extra for an Adata since I think in terms of longevity it will outperform the two thanks to the DRAM cache.
Both drives are tlc nand flash…rated tbw for adata su800 is higher for all range of capacities…both provides 3 years of warranty.. adata su800 has slc and dram caches…
the one note there as well the Adata su800 actually does have a dram cache it's not a ;large cache however it does have witch gives it a leg up in performance and may allow it better longevity
Just saying, my oldest Kingston drive is 12 years old and still runs great ;) , never had one fail at all and they have been re-used in many systems. As a tech I have had to replace tons of aData crap, the drives from them give you about 2 years at best :/ It's not always about the speed, but more the quality of the product. I personally recommend Kingston Ram and SSD's to all my customers and over the last 30 years, have never had an issue yet. Just some food for thought :)
Appreciate the input! Yeah it’s definitely not all about speed. That’s just the thing I can actually test somewhat accurately. I’m curious what years you’ve had issues with the ADATA stuff? I’m sort of trying to compile anecdotes from people like you that work with many of these.
@@HardwareHaven First case I seen was 2012, I personally got an aData drive in my MDG i7 Computer, it lasted about 7 months under my regular use. I replaced that drive with a Kingston Hyper X and it's still running to this day. 2014 is when I started seeing lots of customers aData ssd's starting to fail, most only in use for about a year. I have promptly moved them all to Kingston and not one issue since. I have had new customers, up to 2021 with the same issues, but in aData's defense, haven't had any dead drives in 2022 yet ;) :)
Interesting. I’m wondering if ADATA has potentially improved in terms of quality and Kingston has gotten a little worse. Seems like a lot of the positive ADATA comments I’ve received are based off of experiences within the last 5 years or so, and a lot of the negative Kingston comments are more recent as well. I really wish I had a good way to test it
@@HardwareHaven I'm sure aData has Improved, as most SSD companies have. I can say aData has gotten better over the last 3 years or so :) As for Kingston, I've had no issues at all and I service a few thousand computers every year. I'm sure a dud could come off the line, just like any company, but nothing seen from my area :) I personally have used the same companies in all my builds and have had next to no issues. I use Enermax for power, Kingston for memory products, Western Digital for Hard Drives, Noctua for fans/cooling, Nvidia for video, Asus for the motherboards, Creative for sound and LG For Optical Drives. As for the peripherals, normally Altec Lansing & Harmon Kardon for sound and the rest is Logitech :)
I just picked up a PNY CS900 120GB SSD from the -large big box electronics retailer- I work at; want me to do the same tests on it to add to your charts? I haven't used it yet, so it is still fresh. Bought it to put into my new Socket A build; it was $15.
I bought an A400 because of Kingston reputation in delivering reliable ram sticks. I will turn to Adata for my next purchase. I only use 256GB SSD to install Linux on my rigs, I'm not a Windows user anymore, and all my important data are on NAS replicating each other
Over here locally, I have only 2 of the options: Kingston A400 or the Lexar, and the Adata is only available in the variant without DRAM and is similar price to A400. I always used to pick the A400 but I end up getting the Lexar this time around, and the performance on the Lexar is indeed a fair bit better even on my 2 identical Dell Precision M4300's with 60% filled space and Windows 10 and only running on SATA2 speeds. I am not fond of the plastic build of the Lexar though
can you compare with real fast samsung ssd evo sata3 series.. the comparation between cheap and expensive ssd.. also compare with vgen platinum, its cheaper than adata but some tester say its good..
Hey! I have a Kingston 240gb ssd and it words fine for me, in my country its about 65 to 70 dollars. its speeds are fine for me but for people who has alot of data of course not.
Didn't they've changed all internals without telling anyone and now just sail on good reviews from when it was released? Just like adata and someone else.
Yeah when I was 16 I had my entire PC setup around the a400 as my boot SSD... I am replacing it with some no name NVME drives soon so hopefully my boot performance gets a bit better as it's on its last 1-2 years of life
M.2s are only worth when chasing high performance, otherwise SATA ones remain king price and compatibility wise. Also easier for data recovery when the cheap choice finally becomes obvious to the owner. 😂
I have the Kingston A400 120GB SSD and it is absolute garbage. Worst SSD I own. I use it for abusive tasks that I don't want to wear out good drives with. The best 120-128GB class SATA SSD I own is the SK Hynix SL308. It's a dream to use. I haven't tried the newer SK Hynix drives but I'd definitely consider them.
The Kingston is fine but interesting that you can do a lot better for the same money. I've been using MX500 for budget system boot drives and the system feels a lot faster than with Kingston 400. The MX500 seem faster when booting and loading programs as well as drive cloning and large backups. An SSD is a significant factor in how fast and smooth a computer feels along with a separate GPU and CPU of at least 8 threads.
For me any SSD will do as long as it is much faster than HDD. The difference between SSD models is not very noticeable when casually using a PC. Makes sense to consider for intensive or professional use, but for gaming or light use any will do.
i picked the a400, but just for something to store my games on, the 1tb 1400 is actually much cheaper than the su800, so the lower speeds of a400 make sense
My thoughts are on top of the synthetic benchmarks of crystal disk mark you should test the time it takes to transfer a large amount of data. That should give a good real world estimate of speed performance
What about life of drive / durability if you want to store files on drive and put away for safe keeping of files over hdd wich read head can become stuck causing files to become inaccessible
Seeing the photos of the bare PCBs inside the SSDs makes me thing there is no way an SSD uses anywhere near as much as power as a 3.5" HDD - even a 5400RPM one. I've read about drive power usage and a lot of people seem to think there isn't much difference. Doesn't make sense to me.
I just upgraded from a 223gb intel ssd, to a sandisk 1tb ssd at the recommendation of the folks from best buy. And I've noticed that my load times are significantly slower. I'm trying to look up and figure out what causes these differences, (disclaimer: I am new to upgrading and working on PCS)
I have previously made the mistake of buying an A400 over other similarly priced drives, simply because I trusted the brand. Good to know the AData is the go-to if I need more cheap drives.
Not a terrible mistake but I had the feeling these were not the best. So AData it is for the very budget builds. I've been doing some calculations and feel that it's better to push the boat out and get a 1TB SSD that start off with a 240GB SSD and 1TB HDD. It's much easier for people if all their stuff is on the one drive and much better if they don't jam the SSD too full.
I hear those heat up too much.
kingston is krap
@@Randorandom232yup i have adata ssd and it reaches 70c regularly even doing light work, Adata sucks
in germany the a400 costs half the price of the adata su800...
I used an A400 in a Core 2 duo laptop that was limited to SATA 1 so I wasn't worried about top performance. It was great in that system and is still running years later after being moved around to a few systems.
Great review man. You should take a look at the Patriot Burst and Burst Elite as well. Apparently, they even have dram cache for the about the same price (at least here in my country). Keep up with the great content.
Yeah, I'd like to see how Patriot Burst performs
From the information what i know, the burst (or the old one and maybe the production replaced by the elite version) has dram cache, and the burst elite doesnt have the dram cache and its newer and probably the most available now. But that was in my country market, SEA region
They don't have DRAM cache, they have 32MB of SRAM cache, which is a common feature of the controller they're based on, the Phison S11. OCZ Trion, PNY CS900, Mushkin Source, all cheap SATA TeamGroup SSDs (GX2, L3 Evo among them) and GIGABYTE SSD are all based on the S11 like the Patriot drives you mention, and let me tell you: that 32MB of SRAM doesn't improve performance.
@@juanignacioaschura9437 is it same with slc cache? In term of performance?
I have klevv ssd in my pc, and they are same controller with what you said. Im just curious what inside them😀
@@arelh No. SLC cache is used by DRAM-less SSD manufacturers to bump up the sequential read and write speeds and that is a part of the TLC cells. SLC won’t replace any SRAM or DRAM cache, in fact looking at the benchmarks here (and in Haven’s other video) you can see how much you benefit from having cache separate from SLC. SRAM Does nothing here not because it’s ineffective, but because 32MB is too small of a capacity and can only work for write cache, not for mapping the drive and metadata as your standard DRAM cache does. So you end up with similar performance as DRAM-less drives with no SRAM (the SM2258XT drives, for example).
Drive is ok for installing OS and some essential programs like browser, office and other applications. Basically the drive will be mostly for reading than writing and system speed. Decent to pair it with a cheap 1TB HDD for all your storage needs at an affordable price.
Thanks! I was waiting for this update, the KingstonA400 is the only SSD I've ever used so far it's been going strong for 5 years. For the price I'm more than happy with it as a boot drive, but when it eventually fails I know to look towards the Adata, I'd never heard of Adata when purchasing my drive so the brand recognition of kingston 100% swayed my choice.
Don't buy Adata, they are also crap, i have used Adata it heats a lot
Great job man! Lots of budget PC videos but never seen content like yours!
Appreciate it! I’m sure you’ve seen them, but I can at least recommend budget builds official and randomgaminginhd as also being really enjoyable budget channels
Thanks coming back and including the Kingston! The few I have work well, but seeing it up against the Adata is very interesting indeed.
Really glad I went the the AData drive! Ended up picking that one when I saw that it was the only option, within that price range, that had DRAM cache. Was considering the Kingston A400 at the time, but really glad I didn't pick that one.
been two years, hows the drive held up so far?
@@braydenferguison4584 Held up quite well, actually!
On top of everything, *the Kingston A400 240GB has a measly-rated endurance of 80TB* ... Whereas the SU800's rated endurance is 200TB.
SU800 TBW: 128Gb - 100TB, 256Gb - 200TB, 512Gb - 400TB, 1TBb - 800TB
@@yourpcmd I missed the TBW in the spec sheet somehow and it wasn't stated anywhere else, thanks, I'll update my comment.
There is one major weakness of the a400 that not that many people talk about. The write endurance. I have no idea what kind of flash storage that Kingston use but the write endurance are much lower than most other drive. The 120GB a400 only have write endurance of 40TBW. That means if I use that drive, it'll probably fail after 3 or 4 years of use. For comparison the silicone power TBW for the 128GB version is 65TB. That's over 50% better. So I'll avoid Kingstone ssd for now. (Their entire ssd lineup seems to have low endurance too)
The data sheet says they use tlc nand too…Su800 128gb tbw 100tb..xD…
but TBH, people who buy 120GB SSD is going to use it as boot drive only. 40TBW for a boot drive is more than enough. It will last you until your next major PC upgrade
@@neoroxx Well, the problem is other Kingston ssd have the same issue. I want to buy ssd a bit while ago and Kinston NV1 seems like a good option.... until I see the endurance rating. I ended up with Team Group mp33 512GB which have write endurance of 300TBW (or was it 350TB? i dont remember). NV1 only have something like 120TBW.
@@neoroxx As a boot drive in a PC with an HDD, in which case you can do things to keep excessive writes down, and it will probably write less than 4TB per powered on year, or in an old laptop only used occasionally, or for all sorts of other things where you don't want to pay for a premium drive. It's unlikely to wear out before it becomes obsolete.
I wouldn't buy it because I've never liked Kingston products, and think you can get better value elsewhere.
Do you have any hands on experience with the A400?
Maybe I'm unlucky but out of the 120+ ssd we have bought for the company I work for... like 5 of them have been Adata. 3 of them have failed and 0 of the kingston. And reading reviews... is more common for them to fail too. So... I'll stick with kingston, but good review!
Thanks for these videos, I have looked at all these ssds online or at stores. Managed to find the Silicon Power at 1TB for a better price than any of the other drives on the list and feel pretty decent.
I've been buying PNY CS100 (iirc that's the model) for my servers where the boot drive size doesn't really matter, just needs to have a reasonable startup speed and can handle being powered on and read from for extended periods of time. It was the cheapest I could find at best buy when I got the first one when I was experimenting with RAID configurations and now it's become a fairly reliable drive.
We've used the Kingston 120 and 240 heavily to carry large files back and forth ..filled and spilled hundreds of times and they both still work perfect ..wont be fast as a os drive because of no dram but as a portable drive they are great
I actually use the 480GB version of the A400, but as a tertiary mirror to my work-related files (which are on a thumb drive 24/7 plugged into my computer, which is mirrored to an offsite backup, to my other computer, to my office-issue hard drive, and to the said A400). It would have been better for me to have seen this video before having bought that drive, but with limited choices in my local computer shop (they sell WD, Samsung, Seagate, and Kingston drives), I bought this one as I was just looking for more space and not R/W speeds.
But I would go for the ADATA to be honest if only it's sold here.
And before you cancel me on the comments, I have several SSDs from WD and Samsung where most of my more important files (video projects, photos, music project files) are saved; the office-issued WD hard drive serves as the main project drive for work. Which means that if the Kingston drive becomes Kings-done, I'm somehow alright from the fallout.
Nice video, exactly what I'm looking for.
My office PC uses a 240GB Kingston A400 and I've been using it heavily as a download machine for more than a year. After using it for about a month, I've brought three Kingston A400 for personal use. 1TB for my main unit and used it for a year so far so good. The other two I brought to bring new life into two of my 5 year old Acer laptops.
Honest opinion, it slows down a lot when playing games while transferring (any)files in the background OR if a pesky windows update slips through. Not sure about the reliability but I hope it will outlast what it advertises... (was always a 7.2k HDD user until it died 6 years later). Only after I brought the 1TB I knew that it didn't have any DRAM (lol) but the price difference to jump to a DRAM SSD is just too high, like about 30usd more where I live.
The A400 is a perfectly fine drive. She's a runner! We have sold a ridiculous amount at work as replacement drives and also in use for systems in shop, none of them failed. They are not as fast as drives with DRAM but it's good enough. They are more reliable than they say. TBW ratings are just numbers, time is the only test that matters.
You gained my like with the kings done
For me it was more about the warranty. Kingston warranty in Egypt is 3 years and Adata/hikvision/WD ssds are 1 year. Since I already have a Hikvision SSD failing right on the 369th day, I was attracted to the long warranty that Kingston ssds had and bought 2 (240gb for my pc and 120gb for my laptop)
That makes sense!
@@HardwareHaven bro...i got new MX500 ssd from Flipkart and crystal benchmark speed test is good but actual - real world usage - iam getting only speed from 50 to 100mbps and it's fluctuating and not even consistent 👀👀👀what is the issue here...! AND ITS CONNECTED TO MOTHER BOARD ONLY....NOT IN CADDY
@@kindhuman4198 connected MX 500 in sata 3 ? If you connected it in sata 2 port it would have significant decrease in performance
@@nikhil3299 bro...I connected it to the motherboard directly (means the place where the old HDD was there) and moved the HDD to caddy
@@kindhuman4198 I mean the sata port on your motherboard is sata 3 or sata 2?
Thanks for the video. I use Samsung, WD, Sandisk and kingston, in the companie's computers but No SP or Adata. 5 years ago I used a SP for a new build and data would be corrupted on and off. It finally died after the warranty expired. Adata was a DOA.
I bought it for my old 2013 laptop at 28.12.2021, still works fine
I have never understood why the Kingson drive is so popular. It's usually more expensive than any of the above drives and any reviews usually show that it's slower. Maybe it's us old people - a lot of us bought Kingston Value Ram back in the day when memory was really expensive. It worked well, so maybe it's brand recognition. I have several of the Adata SU800s in different sizes. I love them. If the SP drives are a lot cheaper, I will pick up one of those.
Kingston is expensive because their cells and driver are stable as they can be, and last A LOT, one of these could last you even more than a decade
I've installed dozens of these, never had a DOA, and never had one fail yet. It's reliable.
My ex boss had 1 fail from 3 sold, so - lottery. He's a max profit cheapskate, what makes the risk worth it for you and more importantly - your clients?
@@em0_tion I've had two doa samsungs, and a handful of 850 evo failures. (Samsung at least honors the warranty) The A400 has trust with me as a budget option. I also stock WD and Samsung SSDs, the customers pick their parts and the lower price is attractive to them. I have no reason to distrust the A400 lineup.
But I always buy the 240GB+ variants. I don't trust any 120GB ssd because they tend to only have a single NAND chip.
Mostly replying for algorithm juice for you! Great video!
SU800 is the best value 2.5 inch boot drive. I bought the 1TB model and haven't stopped since 2018. Samsung EVO, Crucial MX, Sandisk Ultra Plus, OCZ/Kioxia, TeamGroup, all of them have one flaw (price, price, reliability, performance, cheapness), but the SU800 had almost no issue. It hits a smart balance of durability, price, and performance that none seem to have.
Great review, love your content.
one good channel in the making keep it up
I've used a lot of kingston a400, all aged well. Except that for the dataloss. After a year of using a400s, most of them had become corrupted, but still usable.
great video I bet your going to be getting more attention in future
a400 between 200-250 units 120's 240's 480's no doa's, no fails. the inlands (micro center house brand) 300+ units of the 120's and 240's 1 doa (thanks to amazons amazing shipping department) no fails. The ADATA name was a huge name of the past, I've had old externals with wd drives from the early 2000's still in operation. That being said all of the ssd's i have had with them have failed at a year or less or just over a year, customer service is null, hence why i have switched to the a400's or the inlands. ymmv but i will not count on adata ssd's for a coaster, and certainly not for data. The kingstons and inlands are ALL USED DAILY for misc tasks in all kinds of environments. Thanks for the videos and your time, you were randomly shown to me to view, i did watch the other video with the other drives, but i have no experience with them so i can not comment on them.
My guess is that these cheaper SKUs have decent component variance depending on when they were manufactured. I've seen comments very similar to yours, but with the opposite result haha. Although, the bad customer support seems to be a common thread. Appreciate the info!
great channel continue with the good work
You can't very easily test how long a drive actually lasts, but most manufacturers do give ratings for how long their flash is supposed to last in the form of Terabytes Written or total capacity and that's also what it will be covered under warranty for, it isn't always easy to find, but usually it'll be under the specs on their own website if not listed anywhere else.
The Kingston A400 for example is rated at a pedestrian 40TB, that doesn't sound too bad, but Adata rated their 128GB drive for 100TB and for context in fairly normal desktop use, my new m.2 ssd has gotten nearly 9TB of writes in its first year, so based at a similar rate you could expect the A400 to last 4-5 years compared to 11 years on the SU800, quite a modest life difference at a minimal price difference.
They may also give something like MTBF for expected power on hours, often something like 1 or 2 million hours seems standard.
The only SSDs I've ever had break are WD Green SATA, WD Green NVMe and WD Black NVMe. Most unreliable HDD is also the WD Green in my experience. All storage systems hate getting hot. I think that's why the WD Black failed, too close to the GPU. Unlike a CPU a drive can't cool itself down or work less hard.
Did you fill both the new ssds completely before testing? ssd write speed is best when the ssd is new and unwritten...
All were tested straight out of the box after formatting them in windows, except for the ADATA #1, because I have used that drive previously.
switching from an HDD to an SSD, the A400 helped a lot making my machine feel more responsive. but it is a shame that i didn't come across this video sooner haha
Tell me about it.... Mine came in just today
@@НААТhow was it
@@aspirewot8408 if ur coming from a hard drive or old laptop ssd you might notice some improvement. Playing open world games is definitely smooth and no problem but for example copying a clean gta v folder took 10min while my pretty modern school laptop copies that in less then 5. Im pairing it on a asrock 970 pro3 amd fx 6350 oced to 4.8ghz
@@НААТAs long it's last and fast for boots and stuff I'm okay with it. I don't have problem with that kind if download speed. 10 mins is enough for me to do other stuff while waiting rather than seating. But it's different for everyone especially if you work using computers that 10 mins can cost someone
One point I'd like to note is the pricing, here in Indonesia, a Kingston A400 240GB only costs Rp325,000 ≈ $22 whereas with that amount of money you'd only get the 120GB model in the US vs Adata SU 256GB costing Rp586,000 ≈ $38, a $16 dollar difference. One reason I didn't compare the 128GB model is because Adata doesn't sell their SU800 model in 120GB capacity here, it only comes with the SU650 model which doesn't have a DRAM cache and only costs Rp210,000 ≈ $14 vs Kingston A400 120GB for Rp150,000 ≈ $9.8, a significant difference vs the price in the US. So for me at least, a Kingston A400 still gets a lot of bang for the buck.
There are too many brands of SSD these days and too many variables that can effect them to get wrapped up in 100% certain brand loyalty, It's not like with mechanical drives where you can say a Western Digital or Toshiba will easily out perform and outlast a Seagate. The best anyone can do is buy what they can in small samples and hope they don't get screwed... like I was with Inland.
I bought the Kingston A400 48gb for a cheap laptop. The Adata SU800 512gb is $70, while the A400 480gb is $30. So it's an easy choice for me. If the laptop is more powerful, I probably would've went with the Crucial MX500.
I bought the Kisgston SSD, because it's the most reputable brand unlike Siliconpower. I'm using it as a boot drive for Zorin OS on my notebook and so far it is fast and stable. Would recommend 10/10.
I ordered an A400 (240gb). Worked fine on arrival, but it was dead a two months later. Yes, this is anecdotal, but that was my random experience, similar to yours. Wasn't worth RMAing, as the shipping cost was prohibitive, given it was only $60 new. Never actually knew anyone who had an SSD fail when new or near new.
Did you check all the dives had the same firmware? In SSDs the firmware is very important for speed and endurance.
It's not that important if you're relying on a reputable brand to begin with. But here we are, in a cheapo SSD video comment section. 🤷♂️😂 In any case, upgrading to the latest FW is always a good idea. 👍
@@em0_tion Well, I had a Samsung 840 EVO that was very slow over time, updated the firmware and it was as new again, so if the firmware had some bugs, yes, it makes a difference. I don't think it's that important but it could be the reason for the difference between two drives of the same model and that's why I left the original comment.
Great video I think the price has gone up. I remember getting a 240gb for $24
They might be used for office prebuilt pc.
For personal use 512-1024gb is most popular
I just have a question, I thought for so long about what to choose (my head is almost boiling), and in the end I ordered this disk because I heard that it rarely gives errors. Right now I'm moving from a bad HDD to a not-so-new laptop that mostly uses the browser and a few games. I plan to use it for another 1-2 years maximum. Is this disc enough to feel a big effect and do I need to worry a lot about lost profits?
Back when I was reading about the best ssd I could get, one thing always stand out - Kingston isn't very reliable and it fails a lot. If you can get older model of Crucial MX 500 or Adata with MLC that will be good deal for you. You play a lottery with the unknown brands, you could waste your time with them.
Yep, everything after MLC, i.e. QLC based cheapos, get major failures quick. No one buys an SSD "for a (art) project", it's for using it daily. I love cheap buys that actually have a high value and save me a buck, but this isn't a risk worth taking.
What Kingston drive did you own and how did it fail
@@itstheweirdguy I don't have Kingston drive, but during my research I found abnormal amount of bad reviews for this brand of SSD's. You may never have issues, they could have improved the quality in the newer batches. I don't want to say they aren't good brand, just saying what I found about them.
or buy Samsung 870
@@mortuus4601 QCells? Never!
I've used a Kingston a400 (at 240gb) and it's never been one way or another - consider that good or bad. I have a Team Group (1TB) in the machine I'm typing this on that also seems to be just fine as well. I'm not sure what to make of it, but most of the ones I have are PNY CS900s - from 120G to 1T - in fact, in looking at my previous orders to see what I had purchased in the past - I noticed the 120G drive was $17. The 240G was less than a dollar a gig, and the 480G was even less (so I bought one). But really, at $17 you should pick one up and add it to your test data.
Where I work we have purchased many many Kingson A400 SSD's, 240 and 480GB. NONE of them have failed. They are slower than the Adata SU800, which is a better drive, but I have sold a lot of the SU800 and some of them were defective, only a few though. PNY, and Silicon Power are total garbage. Adata's SU6xx line is horrible and I've had dozens of those bad, and handful of SU7xx too. I've had more bad Samsung drives than Kingston. I did have one bad Kingston NVME drive though but it was just one and it as DOA so that's better than failing. Also I've noticed that lately the newer A400's seem to clone faster, in the 20 GB/min (clonezilla) range instead of in the sub 10GB/min range depending on fullness. Crucial BX500 and MX500 are OK, but do have a higher failiure rate than say Samsung or SK Hynix overall.
I've had some fail since then. 1 or 2 died fully! The rest I was able to clone off and was able to RMA them. Overall, still a much better experience than the drives I was trashing in my orignal post. They're cheap drives what do you expect. I had to do a mad dash to get rid of the ADATA drives those cheap QLC sata drives really drop like flies, I do have some that are fine though as far as ADATA, but I had to RMA a bunch of them.
I've ordered the Kingston 512 SSD for my wife's 10 yr old Lenovo B575 laptop that I'm taking over full use. The the HDD in the Lenovo has slowed down quite a bit. She just bought a brand new laptop that comes with a SSD and she loves it. I have an 8 yr old ASUS laptop that has a slower cpu that's why I'm taking over the Lenovo and upgrading the HDD to SSD. And, since I will only use it from time to time to surf and watch video the Kingston's price and abilities are just fine for me. As for my ASUS, I'm removing the HDD and selling it as is...
I think Im gonna go with a ' WD Blue ', they are pretty cheap £45 for 250gb and from what I understand, they have the dram cache malarkey. It might be twice the price, but still, ya cant complain at £45 for a fastish SSD.
Yeah, definitely a solid deal!
Out of curiosity, how many of these SSDs that were tested using management software such as Samsung's Magician for Overprovisioning and such? Are we talking about raw testing with drive management and optimization only done by the OS???🤔...and how might these tests do under a different operating system such as Linux with an EXT4 file system?
I’m considering an ext4 revisit 👍🏻
As far as the first question, all drives were tested and formatted only using windows drive management
Any new updates on the best cheap ssd for mid 2023? Looking around at ordering a 1tb but not sure which brand / mode will be most reliable
ADATA (SU800) are the best and you can sometimes get them at the same or a lower price thant the others. When they do go on sale I stock up. It would be good if you did a test between the different ADATA models.
I used an ADATA SP550 for years before replacing it with an Intel 665p, the ADATA drive lives on in a retro pc.
Kingston for life i got one of thier HyperX SSD since 6 year and never die still run my os on
Very organized review, I love it. You should look into the PNY CS900 250GB, I got it on sale for $28 from Amazon. Also, I saw you were using Chrome have you heard of Brave? It’s so much better than Chrome
Unfortunately I rely on some browser plugins, and I’m just lazy at times haha. I’d be interested to try it out on some low end hardware or something though!
@@HardwareHaven
Brave is built from Chromium so Chrome extensions should work it, glad to see you might try it out. Brave is awesome
Ohhh 🧐 Interesting haha
oh my goodness back when I was a Brave browser stan haha use whatever browser u want tho I’d recommend any Firefox
What about SU650? Are they good compared to a400? I heard that adata have overheating issue ontheir budget SSD.. i don't have the budget for SU800 because it's much more expensive here..
No idea.. sorry 😞
@@HardwareHaven ah okay, but did those a400 and SU800 have any thermal issue when testing?
@@PinotNoir_ In a case with normal airflow, no SATA SSD should be able to generate that much heat. Since the sequential speeds are miles from NVMe drives
@@TheJocadasa i do some research and some people said that their SU650 have overheating issue..
@@PinotNoir_ From a quick glance, it looks like some people just had defective drives, probably with a bad controller that would always overheat.
Either way, you should avoid going any lower than SU800 because of unknown problems like these and lackluster performance in general.
I bought one for my late 2013 imac and I'm running it as an external drive as no way I'm trying to operate on this machine and take it to pieces, it has made it feel like a new machine in performance.
Happen to have used a kingston a400 and an ADATA 800 for years of normal use. Both have been reliable. Anecdotally, I think the performance and price make the ADATA 800 better from my perspective.
I've seem a few tech tubers talk about the fatty dove brand SSD and comment that it is a good buy because it has a dram cache with a lower price. Would you possibly consider that in a mix for another vid?
--------------
Update.... just read that fatty dove no longer ships with a dram cache. but it is the cheapest SSD on amazon.
Su800 has DRAM iirc. A su600 series would be more similar to the a400
Curious about the PNY drives. They're the most common super-cheap drives at my local computer store (best buy) so I have a pile of them in different cheap computers.
Nice comparison. It might be worth noting the amount of data written, hours, power cycles at the beginning of each test. Also, methodology of wiping data, and if a vendor tool for securely wiping data and updating firmware exists.
Should’ve noted it. All drives were brand new except for ADATA #1
Kingston: "I'll save you some time and effort..."
HH: "Let's order another one, gotta be sure."
🤣
I bought the adata su800 cause when I was searching for it on a site I saw it was the cheapest, best one and I don't regret it completely not after watching this video
These drives are for running games off of .. not your actual Operating System. You want to have DRAM-Cache at least for your dedicated OS /boot SSD.
coming off a 10 yesr old HDD this thing runs like a dream my pc has never booted so fast
I just installed a Kingston KC600 256GB mSATA ssd but it apparently begins with a fixed size partition. I don't know how to clone the existing bootable HD onto this device due to that oddball partition. --edit-- used DISKPART to clean the ssd and eliminate the unwanted partition.
Try and test the gigabyte 120GB SSD next GP-GSTFS31120GNTD. They are even more popular and sometimes cheaper than the kingston A400 where I live. Personaly have been using one (gigabyte) since 2019 on my main PC as a system drive. I am surprised at how snapy it feals despite it having slower speeds 500/380 than the ones you tested and no cache. It runs about 50~70% full.
My chosen SSD is the Crucial MX500
Its cheap but also has DRAM.
The A400 was my very first option but now I'm looking for the Crucial MX500 or a WD Blue SSD, both are the same price on where am I and I wonder if there's any noticeable difference, iirc, both have DRAM. I'm discarding the A400 now since I saw it's not that good despite being cheap. Gotta invest more
It’s a laptop chip if that helps, but yeah I get it haha
Odd, I have yet to have a single A400 fail, during daily use for the last 6-7 years (200+ drives)
Yet all 10 AData we have tried died in 1-2 years (similar workloads, just the drive was different) :)
And for the record, most of them are in work-tops (mixed desk and lap tops), and not highend rendering etc.
Just curious, when did you buy the ADATAs? Seems like that’s pretty common, but not as much recently. (Just based off of other messages and comments I’ve seen).
Thanks for the comment!
@@HardwareHaven To be honest, we bought the last of them around 2 years ago, it will please me if the quality has been stepped up and might give them another try then.
That’s a bummer. I hope so as well. Thanks for responding!
I've read several review about how the Adata failed on them after only few months. Meanwhile my kingston 2018 a400 and another bought v400 2016 are still alive. would be great if the adata is sturdy enough though.
I have used a 250GB A400 for the past 3 years as a boot drive and in terms of longevity it is not performing so well as I verified it in HDD Sentinel saying that life is at 12% and I have 90TB of writes left until it hits the bucket . Currently it is sitting in my laptop to give it a well deserved boost since I am not using it often. Now I have a 500GB A55 in my main PC for 2 months so I cannot give my final thoughts on it. Regardless, it is performing well for now but after seeing your videos I regret that I didn't pay a little more extra for an Adata since I think in terms of longevity it will outperform the two thanks to the DRAM cache.
lets go buy it a Samsung
How does it compare to a regular HDD on windows XP?
I've been using my 480GB A400 for about 2.5 years now. It's a little slow, but it's fine, does the job as a boot drive.
same! I use in my cheap hp laptop around 2 months , and this drive pretty usable
Both drives are tlc nand flash…rated tbw for adata su800 is higher for all range of capacities…both provides 3 years of warranty.. adata su800 has slc and dram caches…
the one note there as well the Adata su800 actually does have a dram cache it's not a ;large cache however it does have witch gives it a leg up in performance and may allow it better longevity
I thought I mentioned that.. maybe I didn’t.
Just saying, my oldest Kingston drive is 12 years old and still runs great ;) , never had one fail at all and they have been re-used in many systems. As a tech I have had to replace tons of aData crap, the drives from them give you about 2 years at best :/ It's not always about the speed, but more the quality of the product. I personally recommend Kingston Ram and SSD's to all my customers and over the last 30 years, have never had an issue yet. Just some food for thought :)
Appreciate the input! Yeah it’s definitely not all about speed. That’s just the thing I can actually test somewhat accurately. I’m curious what years you’ve had issues with the ADATA stuff? I’m sort of trying to compile anecdotes from people like you that work with many of these.
@@HardwareHaven First case I seen was 2012, I personally got an aData drive in my MDG i7 Computer, it lasted about 7 months under my regular use. I replaced that drive with a Kingston Hyper X and it's still running to this day. 2014 is when I started seeing lots of customers aData ssd's starting to fail, most only in use for about a year. I have promptly moved them all to Kingston and not one issue since. I have had new customers, up to 2021 with the same issues, but in aData's defense, haven't had any dead drives in 2022 yet ;) :)
Interesting. I’m wondering if ADATA has potentially improved in terms of quality and Kingston has gotten a little worse. Seems like a lot of the positive ADATA comments I’ve received are based off of experiences within the last 5 years or so, and a lot of the negative Kingston comments are more recent as well. I really wish I had a good way to test it
@@HardwareHaven I'm sure aData has Improved, as most SSD companies have. I can say aData has gotten better over the last 3 years or so :) As for Kingston, I've had no issues at all and I service a few thousand computers every year. I'm sure a dud could come off the line, just like any company, but nothing seen from my area :) I personally have used the same companies in all my builds and have had next to no issues. I use Enermax for power, Kingston for memory products, Western Digital for Hard Drives, Noctua for fans/cooling, Nvidia for video, Asus for the motherboards, Creative for sound and LG For Optical Drives. As for the peripherals, normally Altec Lansing & Harmon Kardon for sound and the rest is Logitech :)
I just picked up a PNY CS900 120GB SSD from the -large big box electronics retailer- I work at; want me to do the same tests on it to add to your charts? I haven't used it yet, so it is still fresh. Bought it to put into my new Socket A build; it was $15.
I bought an A400 because of Kingston reputation in delivering reliable ram sticks. I will turn to Adata for my next purchase. I only use 256GB SSD to install Linux on my rigs, I'm not a Windows user anymore, and all my important data are on NAS replicating each other
Over here locally, I have only 2 of the options: Kingston A400 or the Lexar, and the Adata is only available in the variant without DRAM and is similar price to A400. I always used to pick the A400 but I end up getting the Lexar this time around, and the performance on the Lexar is indeed a fair bit better even on my 2 identical Dell Precision M4300's with 60% filled space and Windows 10 and only running on SATA2 speeds. I am not fond of the plastic build of the Lexar though
What Lexar you got? NM100? Does it have DRAM and Temperature sensor?
i have a question why cant i use my a400 240gb in full when 1 reach 120gb my pc stop working and hang
can you compare with real fast samsung ssd evo sata3 series..
the comparation between cheap and expensive ssd..
also compare with vgen platinum, its cheaper than adata but some tester say its good..
Hey! I have a Kingston 240gb ssd and it words fine for me, in my country its about 65 to 70 dollars. its speeds are fine for me but for people who has alot of data of course not.
Didn't they've changed all internals without telling anyone and now just sail on good reviews from when it was released? Just like adata and someone else.
is the Crucial P3 Plus 1TB M.2 PCIe Gen4 good?
Yeah when I was 16 I had my entire PC setup around the a400 as my boot SSD... I am replacing it with some no name NVME drives soon so hopefully my boot performance gets a bit better as it's on its last 1-2 years of life
M.2s seam to be getting about the same size per dollar. You should round them up next.
M.2s are only worth when chasing high performance, otherwise SATA ones remain king price and compatibility wise. Also easier for data recovery when the cheap choice finally becomes obvious to the owner. 😂
I have the Kingston A400 120GB SSD and it is absolute garbage. Worst SSD I own. I use it for abusive tasks that I don't want to wear out good drives with. The best 120-128GB class SATA SSD I own is the SK Hynix SL308. It's a dream to use. I haven't tried the newer SK Hynix drives but I'd definitely consider them.
The Kingston is fine but interesting that you can do a lot better for the same money. I've been using MX500 for budget system boot drives and the system feels a lot faster than with Kingston 400. The MX500 seem faster when booting and loading programs as well as drive cloning and large backups. An SSD is a significant factor in how fast and smooth a computer feels along with a separate GPU and CPU of at least 8 threads.
For me any SSD will do as long as it is much faster than HDD. The difference between SSD models is not very noticeable when casually using a PC. Makes sense to consider for intensive or professional use, but for gaming or light use any will do.
Have 2 of theses kingstons, one i a laptop one in a desktop, boots faster than your test by a long shot. about 3 years old now.
i picked the a400, but just for something to store my games on, the 1tb 1400 is actually much cheaper than the su800, so the lower speeds of a400 make sense
Picked up a PNY 500 for $46 at best buy! Why would you want anything smaller??
I talk about it in the first SSD video. But essentially for small projects, server boot drives, etc..
It all depends on the needs, only reading should not have a significant difference, writing has a significant difference and needs D-RAM
My thoughts are on top of the synthetic benchmarks of crystal disk mark you should test the time it takes to transfer a large amount of data. That should give a good real world estimate of speed performance
i have a a400 as a boot drive right now it isnt really that bad for a 16 dollar ssd but i dont really trust it so i put all of my data on a 1tb hdd
What about life of drive / durability if you want to store files on drive and put away for safe keeping of files over hdd wich read head can become stuck causing files to become inaccessible
got a kingston a400 started dying after a few months of use stuff will stutter badly compared to a spinning drive with the os on it
what about the crucial bx 500,can you do a review
Seeing the photos of the bare PCBs inside the SSDs makes me thing there is no way an SSD uses anywhere near as much as power as a 3.5" HDD - even a 5400RPM one. I've read about drive power usage and a lot of people seem to think there isn't much difference. Doesn't make sense to me.
I have a couple of those cheap Kingston SSDs. They're all right for giving a boost to a 12 year old or a 15 year old pc.
what controller model is inside?
I just upgraded from a 223gb intel ssd, to a sandisk 1tb ssd at the recommendation of the folks from best buy. And I've noticed that my load times are significantly slower. I'm trying to look up and figure out what causes these differences, (disclaimer: I am new to upgrading and working on PCS)
Did you do a fresh install of windows or just clone the drive? Sometimes just cloning your boot drive can cause some issues.
Is that an Authentic kingston Product?