Kingston’s new products in portable flash-based external storage spaces have been well received in the market over the past year or so. In particular, two products (Kingston XS2000 and DataTravelerMax) remain unique on the market and no other equivalent products are widely available.
The XS2000 is the only portable SSD with a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20Gbps) interface with a native flash controller (which offers cost and power efficiency advantages over bridge-based solutions). The Kingston DataTraveler Max USB Flash Drive (UFD) -another product with a native flash controller-was introduced in August 2021. 1GBps class speed, low power consumption, and Type-C interface all advertised in thumb drive format-elements. Today, Kingston is expanding the DT Max series with three new drives-all with a USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A interface.
This review delves into all three capacity points (256GB, 512GB, and 1TB) of the new DTMAXA series sampled by Kingston. Let’s take a look at DTMAXA’s performance, power efficiency, and value proposition. I also cracked and opened the drive to determine the hardware difference between the original DT Max and the new DTMAXA product.
Introduction and impression of the product
Bus-powered external storage devices have grown in both storage capacity and speed over the last decade. Palm-sized flash-based storage devices are being introduced on the market thanks to rapid advances in flash technology (including the advent of 3D NAND and NVMe) and faster host interfaces (such as Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3.2 Gen 2×2). increase. It can provide speeds of 2GBps and above.
The thumb drive form factor is attractive for a variety of reasons. There is no separate cable for carrying, and the casing can be designed to include a key ring group that is convenient to carry. Vendors such as Corsair and Mushkin have briefly experimented with the SATA SSD behind the USB bridge chip, but the thermal solution and size made the UFD a bit awkward. Last year, the introduction of high-performance native UFD controllers from Phison and Silicon Motion made this category viable again.
Kingston’s DTMax series retains the traditional DataTraveler thumb drive form factor. However, it takes full advantage of the USB 3.2 Gen2 connector by promising a speed of 1GBps. Kingston states that it is available in three capacities of 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB, and that both Type-C and Type-A connector versions can provide these high speeds for all six SKUs. Last year, we thoroughly investigated the 1TB capacity points of the DTMax Type-C version. Kingston said that the addition of the new Type-A to the DT Max series is the same as the corresponding Type-C in terms of performance, capacity, and form factor, except for minor changes in color and Type-A connectors. Claims to be. We set out to confirm those claims.
The new Type-A series shares the same sliding cap design to protect the connector. The blue LED power indicator and Key Ring group are retained. With the new connector, the UFD needs to be slightly longer, adding a few grams to its weight. Details of the table at the end of this section.
The disassembly process was similar to the Type-C version of the process. Everything is held in small plastic tabs because the design has no screws. Except for the connector changes, the only difference I found on the board was the updated flash package part number. Last year’s Type-C version used FPxxx08UCM1-7D (using Micron’s 96L 3D TLC), while the new DTMAX series uses FBxxx08UCT1-AF (using Toshiba’s BiCS5 112L 3D TLC). It’s not clear if the flash parts have shifted in the new production process for the Type-C version. You can only comment on the review sample. Kingston will continue to hold the SiliconMotionSM2320 native UFD controller.
Since the publication of the DataTraveler Max Type-C review, we’ve been processing different drives with updated testbeds and test suites. For comparison, we selected some direct storage (DAS) devices that are less than 1TB in size.
CrystalDiskInfo provides an overview of the capabilities of internal storage devices. The program treats each bridge chip / controller differently, and because the SM2320 has not yet reached the controller to be tracked, many of the entries are marked vendor-specific and some features (interfaces, etc.) are correctly decrypted. not. .. However, as with the Type-C version, temperature monitoring worked fine.
| SMART Passthrough-CrystalDiskInfo | |
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The following table shows a comparison of the various storage bridge specifications presented in this review.
| Comparison of configurations of directly connected storage devices | ||
| side | ||
| Downstream port | Native flash | Native flash |
| Upstream port | USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A (male) | USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C (male) |
| Bridge tip | Silicon Motion SM2320 | Silicon Motion SM2320 |
| Power | Bus power | Bus power |
| Use case | 1GB ps class compact USB thumb drive with retractable cover for Type A connector | 1GB ps class compact USB thumb drive with retractable cover for Type-C connector |
| Physical dimensions | 91.2 mm x 22.3 mm x 9.5 mm | 82.6 mm x 22.3 mm x 9.5 mm |
| weight | 14.5 grams | 12.5 grams |
| cable | Not applicable | Not applicable |
| SMART pass-through | yes | yes |
| UASP support | yes | yes |
| TRIM pass-through | yes | yes |
| Hardware encryption | out of service | out of service |
| Evaluated storage | Toshiba BiCS5 112L 3D TLC | Micron 96L 3D TLC |
| price | US $ 180 | US $ 180 |
| Review link | Kingston DTMAXA / 1TB Review | Kingston DT Max 1TB Review |
Before reviewing the benchmark numbers, power consumption, and effectiveness of your thermal solution, we’ll show you how to set up and evaluate your testbed.
Testbed setup and evaluation methodology
Directly connected storage devices (including thumb drives) are evaluated using the Quartz Canyon NUC (basically the Xeon / ECC version of the Ghost Canyon NUC). 2x 16GB DDR4-2667 ECC SODIMM And PCIe 3.0×4 NVMe SSD- IM2P33E8 1TB From ADATA.
The most attractive aspect of the Quartz Canyon NUC is the presence of two PCIe slots (electrically x16 and x4) for add-in cards. If you don’t have a discrete GPU (not required for DAS testbeds), you can use both slots. In fact, to avoid the DMI bottleneck when evaluating Thunderbolt 3 devices, we also added a spare SanDisk Extreme PRO M.2 NVMe SSD to the CPU direct connection M.222110 slot on the baseboard. This allows you to continue to use two add-in cards that operate on x8 (x16 electricity) and x4 (x4 electricity).Quartz Canyon NUC doesn’t have a native USB3.2Gen 2×2 port, so Silverstone’s SST-ECU06 The add-in card is installed in the x4 slot. All devices except Thunderbolt are tested using the Type-C port enabled by SST-ECU06.
The testbed specifications are summarized in the table below.
| 2021 AnandTech DAS testbed configuration | |
| system | Intel Quartz Canyon NUC9vXQNX |
| CPU | Intel Xeon E-2286M |
| memory | ADATA Industrial AD4B3200716G22 32 GB (2x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 ECC @ 22-22-22-52 |
| OS drive | ADATA Industrial IM2P33E8NVMe1TB |
| Secondary drive | SanDisk Extreme PRO M.2 NVMe 3D SSD 1TB |
| Add-on card | SilverStone Tek SST-ECU06 USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C Host |
| OS | Windows 10 Enterprise x64 (21H1) |
| Thanks to ADATA, Intel and SilverStoneTek for providing the build components. | |
Testbed hardware is just one segment of evaluation. Over the last few years, the common direct-attached storage workload for memory cards has also evolved. High bitrate 4K video at 60fps has become very popular and 8K video is beginning to emerge. Game install sizes are also steadily growing on portable game consoles, thanks to high resolution textures and artwork. With these in mind, portable SSD and UFD evaluation schemes include multiple workloads detailed in the corresponding sections.
- Synthetic workload using CrystalDiskMark and ATTO
- Actual access trace using PCMark 10 storage benchmark
- A custom robocopy workload that reflects typical DAS usage
- Sequential write stress test
The next section gives an overview of Kingston DTMAXA drive performance in these benchmarks. Before making any conclusions, we will also look at some UFD power consumption and thermal solutions.
