Kingston 256GB SSDNow V+ Series SSD Review

Inside The SSDNow V+ Drive

Since we have never seen what components are being used inside the Kingston SSDNow V+ series we opened up the 256GB drive to see what the internals look like.

After removing the four Allen head screws that hold down the Kingston SSDNow V+ Series cover we were able to lift off the cover and see what makes this little SSD tick. With the cover removed we see a total of ten Samsung MLC NAND Flash memory chips, but that is just this side of the drive.

Here is a closer look at the Samsung K9MDGZ8U5M-SCK0 MLC NAND Flash memory that is being used on the drive. This 256GB SSD consists of sixteen K9MDGZ8U5M-SCK0 Multi-Layer Cell (MLC) flash chips that are all double stacked. This drive with these chips is pretty much bullet proof as it has an operating vibrating tolerance of 2.7G! The non-operating vibration tolerance is 20G, which is amazing when you think about how much force that would be.

Removing the drive from the housing and flipping it over we can take a look at the other side, which has the Samsung branded controller, six more Samsung MLC NAND Flash chips and a Samsung DRAM chip for cache usage.

The heart and soul of all Kingston V+ Series SSDs is the Samsung S3C29RBB01-YK40 controller pictured above. This little controller handles all the read and write operations across all the channels.

Below the Samsung controller is a single Samsung memory IC that is used for the cache of the drive. The chip is labeled K4X1G323PD-8GC6, which is a 128MB DDR memory chip. That means this drive has a 128MB cache size!

The life expectancy of the Kingston SSDNow V+ series drives is 1.0 million hours mean time before failure (MTBF). This means that the drive should easily live longer than the 3-year warranty that comes with it. Kingston Technology backs their SSDs with 24/7 tech support on top of the three-year warranty, which is nice when you need help during odd hours or on the weekend.