KingFast E-Drive Pro KF2510SCF 120GB SLC SSD Review – Blistering SLC Performance At The Enterprise Level

SSD EXTERIOR AND CLOSER LOOK

The KingFast E-Drive Pro KF2510SCF 120GB SLC 2.5″ SSD finally makes its appearance. The top of the unit has a sticker that basically has the same information and colour scheme as present on the box:

The back is completely barren, showing off the nice shiny silver aluminum frame. Note that the edges are clean and rounded, and that the four screws make it extremely easy to open. The versatility of mounting is evident as we have four holes by each screw as seen here, as well as four additional mounting holes on the sides (two on each side) for the 3.5″ adapter mount:

Opening the enclosure reveals the sea-blue PCB, a refreshing change from the usual green. Take a look at the excellent build quality; flawless in spacing of components and overall reliability. Note that since there are no data-based capacitors or DRAM cache buffer, there is no need for extra thermals pads or layers.

Zooming into the PCB, the reason for the previous statement is due to the popular SandForce SF-2281 SSD controller, which sits very close to the SATA pins, reducing performance latency. Alongside built-in thermal protection, the controller supports NCQ, TRIM, SATA 3.0 interface, and AES-128 data encryption just to name a few features:

Continuing, the second-generation SF-2200 Flash Storage Processors (FSPs) use LSI technologies such as DuraWrite, higher-level BCH ECC algorithm as mentioned previously (with up to 55 bits/512 Byte sector protection), and the unique LSI RAISE (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) technology; RAISE provides the protection and reliability of RAID on a single drive without the 2x write overhead of parity. All of these come together to provide a cooler, faster, more efficient and durable SSD, perfect for an enterprise environment.

Furthermore, we have the eight 25nm process Intel 29F16B16NCNE1 Single-Level Cell (SLC) NAND flash chips that are ONFI 2.2 compliant with 152-Ball BGA packaging, are synchronous in design, and with dual x8 device bus width. Intel’s most high end SLC flash memory, each module is 16GB each for a combined 128GB (8GB reserved for SandForce firmware). The packages are rated at 100,000 program/erase cycles, 33x more than most 2xnm consumer/commercial grade flash, with temperatures of up to 100 degrees Celsius; if you were worried about the lack of thermal cooling, that should put yours fears to rest!

The back of the PCB has nothing of note as all of the NAND packages are on the front. If the KingFast E-Drive Pro KF2510SCF 120GB SLC SSD was to get higher capacities, we would probably see the extended chips here; note that if there were a DRAM cache buffer present, it would also most likely be housed here.

All-in-all the picture is clear: the KingFast E-Drive Pro KF2510SCF 120GB SLC SSD is meant for always-on enterprise applications – clearly illustrated by the high quality components. A trusted controller in the SF-2281, alongside Intel  reliable SLC 29F16B16NCNE1 NAND chips equates to a solidly optimized and efficient SSD capable of handling the most aggressive procedures, while providing state-of-the-industry data protection.