Kingspec XG 7000 (PRO) 2TB PCIE 4.0 NVMe SSD

Totally Average Gameplay · March 8, 2023

There is an interesting NVMe drive out there that is has little to no information, yet it is being sold out there.

The XG 7000 (sometimes labelled as XG 7000 Pro) is part of the XG Series PCIe 4.0 drives from Kingspec, a Chinese company making notorious DRAMless SSDs, but they also sell memory sticks.

Curiously, there is no further technical specs included anywhere on the site except for the writes and read speeds and is branded as a PS5 storage product.

I have the product received and here's what I can say about the drive. The package is that small, borrowing the package and heatsink style of another Chinese company, NETAC and their NV7000 lineup (see review).

Opening the heatsink requires effort to either remove the small screws pre-installed in the heatsink or keep the delicate screwdriver bit in one piece. After that, unfortunately the camera hates small letters so it is blurred on everything.

Right away I connected it to my PC to check the manufacturers of each of the components.

CPU Controller is an IG5236 RanierPC from Innogrit Corp, a PCIE Gen 4.0 with peak read/write speeds of 7.4/6.4 GB per sec and max 4k random read/write of 1M IOPS / 0.8M IOPS (whether it is attainable or not remains to be seen). Also used on other PCIE 4.0 drives from brands you are more familiar with: Plextor M10P, Adata's Premium SSD for PS5 (don't ask me, that's literally what it says on their site)

Yes, it has DRAM, it is made by SK Hynix, model is H5AN8G6NDJR-VKC 8GB. The NVME is double sided so there's a total of 2 of them making this a 16GB Dram.

NAND info is a bit tricky.

The flash itself has no info but according to FlashID, the maker is YMTC (Yangtze Memory Technologies Co.) it is 3d 128-layer tlc Nand.

Here's the murkier part of the information, there is nowhere on the English sites and seller sites that has any detail on what are the random 4k specs on this thing, nor do the TBW rating these have, except for the more obscure Russian sites.

According to Yandex:

Read (Mbps): 512gb - 7500, 1tb & 2tb - 7400, (4tb unknown most likely also 7400)

Write (Mbps): 512gb - 6800, 1tb & 2tb - 6600, (4tb unknown most likely also 6600)

Random Read: No info on all capacities, 2tb was found to have 680k IOPS.

Random Writes (in K IOPS): 512gb - 390, 1tb - 600, 2tb - 660 (but was tested to be 550), (4tb - unknown).

TBW: 512gb - 300, 1tb - 600, 2tb - 1200, (4tb unknown most likely 2400 by linear scaling)

Finally, I tested what its SLC cache size would be, so I fired up AIDA 64's Linear Write Test to write the entire 2TB.

Around 17% (or 340GB) its 5.7gbps staggered between 5.8 and 1.5 gbps from 18% to 45% it was going down as low as 300mbps towards the end of the test. This can be considered as its SLC cache size and speed.

I bought the 2tb drive for $135 in the Philippines, so PH members check out this link over here while it is still in stock if you feel like it's worth it.

Pros:

Genuine Components, Low Price for TLC+PCIE 4.0+DRAM+2TB compared to local pricing in Philippines.

Cons:

Lack of technical spec sheets, apparent lack of reviews, dubious about some of the critical info needed such as TBW, lackluster packaging, tightly screwed-in if you want to remove the heatsink or motherboard already has one, warranty issues present on other products provided by the company, and actual results measured due to differences in tests, also lack of software for firmware updates & overprovisioning.

Edited March 8, 2023 by Totally Average Gameplay
(edit 1) forgot that this company doesnt have ssd software too. (edit 2) changed the assumed 4tb sustained write speed

qwertymonster · May 2, 2023

I am no PC guru, but does this mean this is a better product than most of the mainstream high performance products out there?

Would you recommend this over SN850 or SN770?

Totally Average Gameplay · May 8, 2023

On 5/3/2023 at 12:57 AM, qwertymonster said:

I am no PC guru, but does this mean this is a better product than most of the mainstream high performance products out there?

Would you recommend this over SN850 or SN770?

Given that this has little to no review or comprehensive testing done on this, I'm not confident with this on the reliability side because it has no software or technical data sheet available. For safety, stick to the ones you are familiar with and has good reviews. Sellers lists this drive primarily as a PS5 storage drive for all the games, and it legitimately passes the test as being up to speed and pcie 4 compliant, as a main drive tho it is ambiguous to say that it will handle it. 4k random reads and writes are on par with more mainstream 4.0 drives, its cache is actually impressive as it has around 340 gb of sustained writes but after that it goes on a roller coaster until it fades to less than 1000 mbps writes.

TLDR: If you are looking to use this as a game drive, it is excellent in that aspect. As an OS drive, it may or may not accomplish that task especially dealing with write sizes that are way past its cache size, but no one would transfer over 300gigs in one go or at least regularly.