At first, we would like to thank KIOXIA for sending us a sample of the EXCERIA G2 NVMe Gen3 1TB SSD for testing and reviewing.

 

 

 

About KIOXIA:

 

“KIOXIA Europe GmbH (formerly Toshiba Memory Europe GmbH) is the European subsidiary of KIOXIA Corporation, a leading worldwide supplier of flash memory, solid state drives (SSDs) and software solutions. We are uniquely positioned with our broad product range to enable our customers to really drive their storage transformation. By working together with our customers across all growing markets like mobile, edge, cloud, data center and automotive, we provide our leading memory technology and are able to help accelerate the development of transformational solutions that really add value to end-users, creating new ways for them to interact and benefit from this technology, and create uplifting experiences that ultimately help to change the world.

From the invention of flash memory in 1984 to today’s breakthrough BiCS FLASH 3D technology, KIOXIA continues to move the industry forward and has carved out a path to a new era. Whatever the digital future demands, we will keep developing the right solutions for our customers.

KIOXIA Europe GmbH maintains offices in Germany, France, Spain and Sweden.”

 

Product Features:

 

Performance Made Affordable

The KIOXIA EXCERIA SSD series redefines mainstream storage for everyday users that feel held back by SATA-based hardware. Say goodbye to hard drive lag and get a computing experience worthy of your applications. Compared to SATA SSDs, the EXCERIA G2 SSD series delivers balanced performance and value that will transform your system.

Small and Compact for an Easy Upgrade

Featuring a thin, single-sided M.2 2280 form factor, the EXCERIA G2 SSD series plugs directly into the motherboard, reducing additional cable clutter for a sleeker and an easy system upgrade.

NVMe Technology

Why keep using an interface that was designed for hard drives? Utilizing the NVMe 1.3c technology, EXCERIA G2 SSD series reduce latency in your system’s I/O path between your SSD and your CPU, resulting in smooth and responsive performance.

Cutting-Edge 3D Flash Memory

Each EXCERIA SSD is built with BiCS FLASH™ and a vertically stacked cell structure, delivering a cutting-edge storage experience.

SSD Utility Management Software

The SSD Utility management software was designed to help your KIOXIA drive thrive and lets you be in control of maintenance, monitoring, SSD tuning and more!

We highly recommend you install and update to the latest version to maximize your drive’s performance and check its Percentage Life Left using the health gauge.

 

Product Specifications:

 

Capacity: 1TB

Form Factor: M.2 Type 2280-S2-M

Interface: PCI Express® Base Specification Revision 3.1a (PCIe®)

Flash Memory type: BiCS FLASH™ TLC

Interface Maximum Speed: 32 GT/s (PCIe® Gen3x4)

Dimension (Max: LxWxH): 80.15 x 22.15 x 2.23 mm

Interface Command: NVM Express™ Revision 1.3c command set

Weight: 6.8 g (typ.)

Performance:

Max Sequential Read Speed: 2,100 MB/s

Max Sequential Write Speed: 1,700 MB/s

Max Random Read Speed: 400,000 IOPS

Max Random Write Speed: 400,000 IOPS

Endurance: TBW -> 400 TB

MTTF: 1.5 million hours

Operating environment / protection performance

Operating Temperature: 0 degrees Celsius (Ta) to 85 degrees Celsius (Tc)

Storage Temperature: -40 degrees Celsius to 85 degrees Celsius

Shock Resistance: 9.806 km/s2 {1,000 G} 0.5 ms half sine wave

Vibration: 196 m/s2 {20 G} Peak, 10~2,000 Hz, (20 min / Axis) x 3 Axis

Supply Voltage: 3.3 V ±5 %

Power Consumption:

PS3: 50 mW (typ.)

PS4: 5 mW (typ.)

Power Consumption (Active): 3.5 W (typ.)

Compatibility: PCI Express

Compatible with PCI Express® Base Specification Revision 3.1a and NVM Express™ Revision 1.3c command set

Connector Type: M.2 M key Socket

Target Applications: Client desktops and laptops

Services and Support: 5-year manufacturer's warranty

Performance Optimization: TRIM, Idle Time Garbage Collection

 

After trying out the KIOXIA EXCERIA PRO Gen4 SSD, it is time to look at the cost-effective Gen3 EXCERIA G2 NVMe SSD, which is packing BiCS TLC Flash ICs with capacities up to 2TB and rated speeds specific to entry-level to mainstream SSDs in the PCIe 3.0 area.

 

The product is shipped inside a compact cardboard enclosure, which does show the rated reads speeds of the product right on the front, along with the total capacity:

 

 

 

On the back side, we will learn that the drive is backed by a 5-year warranty, but also here we will note a sticker with the product code name, the manufacturing month, but also its serial numbers:

 

 

 

The packaging does also inform the user of the EU/UK KIOXIA office contact details:

 

 

 

Besides the EXCERIA G2 drive, we will find in the box the Quick Start Guide, but also a small leaflet which shows how to lift the product from the protective enclosure:

 

 

 

The EXCERIA G2 consists of 4 TLC NAND packages, covered by a small sticker, while the controller and the DRAM cache can be easily identified:

 

 

 

On the back of the drive, we will note an additional, larger sticker with the product code name, its capacity, the power rating but also logos of the supported standards:

 

 

 

The ICs can be easily revealed by removing the sticker:

 

 

 

The DRAM used for mapping tables does come with the k4a8g165wc-bctd ID, has a capacity of 1GB, while the supported standard is DDR4-2666:

 

 

 

The controller is a Toshiba TC58NC1202GST-02-BB, which is a rebranded Phison E12C model:

 

 

 

The four BiCS TLC ICs carry the inscription on the side as TH58LKT1T25BA8C:

 

 

 

Test Bench:

The test system did incorporate a AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 6-core CPU, a Sabrent Rocket 2x16GB DDR5 4800MHz C40 memory kit, a PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon RX 5700 video card but also a Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus NVMe 4.0 2TB SSD; all these were connected to the BIOSTAR X670E VALKYRIE AM5 motherboard. As a power supply we have chosen a Cooler Master 850W non-modular and the system was running the latest Windows 11 OS build as well.

The drive has arrived unformatted, but for testing purposes, we have formatted it NTFS:

 

 

With the help of AIDA64, we could extract more information regarding the drive:

 

 

 

The Tests

 

HDTach Short Test

Blank SSD

 

HDTach Long Test

 

Blank SSD

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

 

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

 

PCMark05 HDD Test Suite

 

PCMark 8

 

HDTune Test Suite

Blank SSD

 

PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite

 

PCMark 7

 

Anvil [Read]

Anvil [Write]

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

Blank SSD

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

Blank SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Blank SSD

CrystalDiskMark

Blank SSD

 

 

 

Before jumping to the second stage of our tests, we have had to fill the drive over 50% and monitor its behavior during this time; the IDLE temp was shown as 46 degrees Celsius in IDLE mode:

 

 

 

The write workload started at optimal speeds:

 

 

 

The temperature has quickly raised to 51 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

After writing just about 30GB of data, we’ve seen a notable drop in transfer speed:

 

 

 

The temperature has reached only 56 degrees Celsius at this time:

 

 

 

The speed has stabilized further and did raise to about 750-850MB/s:

 

 

 

The temperature has raised at the same time to about 63 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

Thanks to the TLC BiCS Flash ICs, the drive performance did not drop further, and we only noted a maximum temperature of about 68 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

The Tests

 

HDTach Short Test

Filled SSD

 

HDTach Long Test

 

Filled SSD

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

 

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

 

PCMark05 HDD Test Suite

 

PCMark 8

 

HDTune Test Suite

Filled SSD

 

PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite

 

PCMark 7

 

Anvil [Read]

 

Anvil [Write]

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

Filled SSD

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

Filled SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Filled SSD

CrystalDiskMark

Filled SSD

 

 

Despite being an entry-level to mainstream PCIe 3.0 drive, the EXCERIA G2 drive from KIOXIA does incorporate BiCS TLC Flash, which means that we are getting much better performance versus the QLC variants, but also increased endurance, the TBW being set at 400 TB. On this particular drive, we noted the most notable performance drop after about 30GB have been written continuously to the drive, which tells us that the pseudo-SLC cache is quite small.

 

Given the lower read/write speeds, the controller is not as stressed as on other models and the EXCERIA G2 could easily function on devices with less-than-ideal aiflow, such as laptops! In our HD Tune Writes workload, it can be seen how the drive behaves while the cache is not completely depleted:

 

 

 

The drive can be had in both 1TB and 2TB variants; the 1TB model is available for just about 51.88 Euros, while the 2TB model can be purchased for about 108 Euros. These are good prices considering that we are getting a TLC drive, while the 2TB has practically double TBW in terms of endurance!

 

KIOXIA EXCERIA G2 NVMe Gen3 1TB SSD is Recommended for:

 

 

 

We would like to thank again to KIOXIA for making this review possible!