Kingston E50 480GB SSD $81.29

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keybored

Active Member
May 28, 2016
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Probably OK as cheap boot drives but they don't seem to hold well under sustained load.
Kingston SSDNow E50 240GB SSD Review - Page 7
As you can see once the E50 is placed into more realistic scenarios the performance deflated faster than a helium balloon with a pin stuck in it.

We must admit that the results up to now seemed almost too good to be true and we get no pleasure in showing how much of a performance drop you can expect from the SSDNow E50 series after using them for a few months. The SF2581 controller is getting rather long in the tooth and even with Enterprise-orientated firmware the controller simply cannot keep the drive from entering a degraded state. Once in such a state the lack of extra over-provisioning – another critical omission – means it will take a long intervals of idle time to return to higher performance levels.
Another review: http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/kingston-ssdnow-e50-240gb-review-e100s-little-brother/4/
 

logan893

Member
Aug 12, 2016
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It would seem that SF-2581 is the enterprise version of the consumer version SF-2281 (mentioned in the Hardware Canucks review, and speculated already here: ADATA Shows Off Enterprise SSDs, RAM, NAND, etc.). Intel SSD 520 and OCZ Vertex 3 use this consumer version (SF-2281) Sandforce controller. The only difference seem to be that the SF-2581 comes with support for super capacitors to protect data in flight.

Check out the Storage Review test of the Intel SSD 520 with 20% over-provisioning:
Intel SSD 520 Enterprise Review | StorageReview.com - Storage Reviews

Their tests show both Intel SSD 520 and OCZ Vertex 3, using the SF-2281 controller, retain decent speed in steady state tests with 20% over-provisioning.

Doing the same manual over-provisioning with Kingston E50 I would expect to yield similar performance retention. Of course then you're looking at a 400 GB drive instead of 480 GB.

Doesn't sound too bad, considering the 3 DWPD endurance rating.