Kingston SSDNow UV400 SSD Review (480GB)

REAL WORLD FILE TRANSFER

We also wanted to see how performance was in a real world use when transferring large files to the SSD. For this test we are going to simply stress write performance by transferring over a 30GB folder of movies off of a 512GB Samsung 950 Pro to the test SSDs and time how long it takes. Once complete we can calculate the average speed. For reference we have included both a 2.5″ and 3.5″ WD Blue HDD.

The above result is a bit disappointing considering how well the UV400 had done in our previous benchmarks. Write speeds averaged around 151MB/s during the 30GB transfer. This result places it ahead of the Crucial BX200 and 500GB 2.5″ WD Blue laptop HDD, but behind all other TLC drives on our chart as well as the 1TB 3.5″ WD Blue. Let’s see how well it performs in our power testing.

POWER CONSUMPTION

For our power consumption testing, we have the drive connected to the system as a secondary drive. To record the wattage, we are now utilizing a Quarch Technology Programmable Power Module. It allows us to accurately measure power consumption over time and is flexible enough to allow us to test any SSD that comes our way.

Our power analysis may change as time goes on, but for now we are looking at just a few metrics with the main goal of measuring our results against the manufacturer’s ratings. Because most consumer systems are at idle for about 80% of the time, idle power consumption is an important measure to look at when understanding the efficiency of a drive.

In the chart above we can see that SSDs are magnitudes more efficient than standard HDDs. At 0.682W, however, the Kingston SSDNow UV400 has a very high idle power consumption compared to many of its competitors. This is not great news for those who plan on using it in a laptop type PC, but this result is within spec and was expected.

POWER EFFICIENCY

Finally, we wanted to post up a graph of the power efficiency of the SSDs in comparison. We are looking at MB/s per Watt in this graph. The higher the result, the better.

In the chart above shows us similar results to that of the 30GB transfer speed chart. The UV400 is one of the most power inefficient drive under this specific workload. It is beat out by most other SSDs except, again, the Crucial BX200 and this time the Intel 540s.