Specification
| Form factor | M.2 2280 |
| Interface | PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe |
| Capacities | 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB |
| Controller | Phison E18 |
| NAND | 3D TLC |
| Sequential read/write | 500GB – 7,300/3,900MB/s 1TB – 7,300/6,000MB/s 2TB – 7,300/7,000MB/s 4TB – 7,300/7,000MB/s |
| Random 4K read/write | 500GB – up to 450,000/900,000 IOPS 1TB – up to 900,000/1,000,000 IOPS 2TB – up to 1,000,000/1,000,000 IOPS 4TB – up to 1,000,000/1,000,000 IOPS |
| Total Bytes Written (TBW) | 500GB – 500TBW 1TB – 1.0PBW 2TB – 2.0PBW 4TB – 4.0PBW |
| Power consumption | 500GB – 5mW idle / 0.34W avg / 2.7W (MAX) read / 4.1W (MAX) write 1TB – 5mW idle / 0.33W avg / 2.8W (MAX) read / 6.3W (MAX) write 2TB – 5mW idle / 0.36W avg / 2.8W (MAX) read / 9.9W (MAX) write 4TB – 5mW idle / 0.36W avg / 2.7W (MAX) read / 10.2W (MAX) write |
| Storage temperature | -40°C~85°C |
| Operating Tempetemperaturerature | 0°C~70°C |
| Dimensions | Heat spreader: 80mm x 22mm x 2.21mm (500GB-1TB) 80mm x 22mm x 3.5mm (2TB-4TB) Heatsink: 80mm x 23.67mm x 10.5mm |
| Weight | Heat spreader: 500GB-1TB – 7g 2TB-4TB – 9.7g Heatsink: 500GB-1TB – 32.1g 2TB-4TB – 34.9g |
| Vibration operating | 2.17G peak (7-800Hz) |
| Vibration non-operating | 20G peak (20-1000Hz) |
| MTBF | 1,800,000 hours |
| Warranty/Support | Limited 5-year warranty with free technical support |
Features
- Incredible PCIe Gen 4×4 NVMe performance
- Available with heat sink or low-profile heat spreader
- Slim M.2 2280 form factor
- High capacities of up to 4TB
- PS5™ ready
The Renegade SSD has specifications close to the previously reviewed KC3000 SSD. The main difference is the maximum sequential bandwidth which is up to 300MB/s higher in the Renegade SSD. As you can see in the previous reviews, we could reach 7300MB/s also on the KC3000 SSD. From a product placement perspective, the KC3000 SSD is dedicated to professionals and power users, while the Renegade series is dedicated to the most demanding gamers. This also suggests the list of features and compatibility with PS5 consoles.
The SSD supports all the latest technologies to improve stability, data protection, and performance. At least for now, it’s one of the fastest SSD available in stores. It may change in some months when PCIe 5.0 start appearing on the market.
Like the previous Kingston NVMe SSD series, the Renegade SSD is also covered by a 5-year warranty or TBW (terabytes written). The 2TB SSD has a very high TBW rating of 2PBW, so it will easily last five years in a home or office PC. The TBW is even higher than that of the reviewed KC3000, which has 1.6PBW. I wonder what made Kingston limit TBW in these two series to the values in the specifications, as both seem very similar.
One more thing worth mentioning is that the 2TB and 4TB versions of both, so KC3000 and Renegade SSD will be double-sided. It means it won’t be possible to install them on some computers like very thin ultrabooks (for example, the latest Lenovo Carbon X1 series).
The heat sink version can be problematic on some motherboards with pre-installed thermal pads for both sides of the M.2 SSD or heatsinks directly on the motherboards’ PCB. This was the case in most of our test motherboards, where installing the Renegade SSD was impossible. For example, Gigabyte Master series motherboards won’t support it without removing pre-installed thermal pads on all M.2 sockets. Also, ASUS Crosshair or Maximus motherboards can’t use the Renegade SSD with the heat sink on M.2 DIMM/Gen-Z.2 cards.
As long as compatibility issues may occur, they are related almost only to top series motherboards with their own SSD cooling solutions. I recommend checking the motherboard’s specifications before purchasing the Renegade SSD, as Kingston offers two versions, with or without the heat sink so that everyone can pick the version compatible with their computer or gaming console.
Kingston provides SSD Manager software that checks the SSD’s health and lets us update its firmware. As you can see above, our SSD arrived with the latest firmware and was in perfect condition.
Below is also a screenshot from CrystalDiskInfo, as it’s one of the most popular universal diagnostic programs.
Depending on the load, the drive’s temperature is typically between 40-60°C. The maximum specified temperature is 70°C, so we can expect that the throttling point is not much above that. In fact, when the SSD was installed under the graphics card – the first M.2 socket below the graphics card, when the graphics card heatsink was blocking the airflow for the SSD, then we could see throttling under a high SSD load. This was the only case when the SSD throttling was noticed. All other spots on the motherboard gave us up to 60-65°C with a typical airflow from slow-spinning fans in the PC case.
The typical temperature was about as high or lower than that of competitive M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD. In short, all available SSDs that are rated at 7GB/s or higher bandwidth have maximum temperatures close to the throttling point, and some show a performance decrease under a more extended high load. It doesn’t happen with SSD that use built-in motherboard heat sinks, or manufacturer-pre-installed heat sinks like the reviewed Kingston Renegade SSD.
