If you browse through eBay, you’ll find a tempting listing ($199.99) for a 2TB Gen5x4 NVMe SSD drive from an unknown brand called Kanani.Tech.
Is it worth it?
Well, I got one of those drives to find out.
Truth be told, I’ve never heard of this brand before, so I was extremely skeptic. I stripped off the nice Kanani.Tech sticker to see what’s underneath.
Lo and behold:
This looked very similar. I’ve seen it before.
Take a look at these two other drives:
The first one is the Sabrent Rocket 5, the second is the Gigabyte Aorus. The Kanani.Tech KTP2000 and these two drives are visually identical. I believe they are all Phison’s reference drives for the Phison E26 controller, sold and packaged to these brands by Phison themselves, with the brand sticker on top.
Try and see reviews for other drives with the Phison E26 controller and the 232-layer 3D TLC NAND flash by Micron. They all look exactly the same device.
The Aorus and the Sabrent cost around $100 more than the Kanani, unless you can find them for a good deal (for instance, the Aorus currently sells for $230 on Amazon instead of the $280 usual). In such case, you have to ask yourself if the Aorus is worth the 15% extra over the Kanani, because the Kanani comes with only two years of warranty, versus the usual five years from the big brands.
NVMe failure rate is a low single digit, definitely not 15%. Therefore, I’d probably still get the Kanani over these two brands. HOWEVER, the Crucial T705 (Crucial is Micron’s in-house brand) sells for the same price as the Kanani, but comes with a 5-year warranty. It also goes on sale frequently. I’d get that.
If I were Kanani.Tech, I’d drop the price of the KTP2000 a little and offer a 6-7 year warranty. Then it’s a no-brainer. KIA did the same with their cars, offering a 7-year warranty compared to only 3 by their competitors, and overturned the perception that their cars aren’t reliable. Today, they’re a bestseller in many countries.
If Kanani.Tech can do that, I’d recommend this drive over any other Phison E26 drive.
Phison E26 vs SM2508
I tested the Kanani vs the ADATA XPG 980 Blade with the new Silicon Motion SM2508 controller. This controller is built using TSMC’s 6nm process vs the 12nm FinFET process (also by TSMC) building the Phison E26.
Temperatures were very similar, about 4c higher (for Max Temps recorded) on the Phison for the same test. However, I managed to reduce the Phison’s max temps by almost 20c (!!!), to a healthy 55c. I did this because I noticed there was some wobble to the drive when mounted on the motherboard, so I figured the back NANDs weren’t touching the back thermal pad. So I scraped off that thermal pad, and then layered it on top of itself (that is, creating a 50% shorter, but 100% thicker thermal pad). That way, the drive’s back was leaning tight against the pad, and I think it also allowed some air to come in from underneath now. Anyway, results were fantastic.
* For cooling, I’m using the heatsink of my Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Master. Case is the Lancool 207.
Full Results
Kanani.Tech KTP2000
[Read]
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 12281.955 MB/s [ 11713.0 IOPS] < 681.53 ?s>
SEQ 128KiB (Q= 32, T= 1): 12026.188 MB/s [ 91752.5 IOPS] < 346.23 ?s>
RND 4KiB (Q= 32, T=16): 7169.754 MB/s [1750428.2 IOPS] < 260.90 ?s>
RND 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 87.975 MB/s [ 21478.3 IOPS] < 46.46 ?s>
[Write]
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 12005.766 MB/s [ 11449.6 IOPS] < 696.71 ?s>
SEQ 128KiB (Q= 32, T= 1): 11468.337 MB/s [ 87496.5 IOPS] < 362.95 ?s>
RND 4KiB (Q= 32, T=16): 6122.954 MB/s [1494861.8 IOPS] < 30.49 ?s>
RND 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 311.855 MB/s [ 76136.5 IOPS] < 13.05 ?s>
ADATA XPG 980 BLADE
[Read]
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 12202.569 MB/s [ 11637.3 IOPS] < 679.35 ?s>
SEQ 128KiB (Q= 32, T= 1): 12051.232 MB/s [ 91943.6 IOPS] < 340.83 ?s>
RND 4KiB (Q= 32, T=16): 6572.605 MB/s [1604639.9 IOPS] < 296.36 ?s>
RND 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 94.124 MB/s [ 22979.5 IOPS] < 43.43 ?s>
[Write]
SEQ 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 11169.513 MB/s [ 10652.1 IOPS] < 741.29 ?s>
SEQ 128KiB (Q= 32, T= 1): 11140.040 MB/s [ 84991.8 IOPS] < 368.28 ?s>
RND 4KiB (Q= 32, T=16): 6268.296 MB/s [1530345.7 IOPS] < 52.65 ?s>
RND 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 334.209 MB/s [ 81594.0 IOPS] < 12.18 ?s>
Turn Off Windows Write Cache Buffer-Flushing
It’s worth noting, I had some very strange behavior from the Gen 5 drives. They were capped at 5K sequential writes after moving them from Linux to Windows. After playing aound, I found out that turning off Windows Write-Cache Buffer-Flushing (Device Manager -> Right-click on the drive, then Properties and Policies) fixes the problem immediately. Then, you can re-enable that option.
Gen 5 vs Gen 4 vs Optane
Out of curiosity, I also tested the Kanani and the ADATA against my Intel Optane DC P4800X enterprise drive, and an MSI M480 Pro Gen 4 drive. The Optane gave 13.5?s latency at RND4K Q1T1, vs 43.5?s on the XPG and 46.5?s on the Kanani. The MSI gave similar results to the Gen 5 drives, but it’s sequentials of course were limited to 7K, vs 12K on the Gen 5 drives. Overall, the Optane is still the undisputed king when it comes to daily operations (which care mostly for random reads at Q1). However, it is extremely expensive, and require adapters to work on a consumer motherboard. I paid about $150 for a 375GB Optane + Adapter. For most people, this is not nearly enough storage. But you can pair them. I’m currently using the 375GB Optane as a boot drive, and a Steam drive to run games from. But my main storage drive is the Kanani.
We ran blind tests to see if we could tell the difference between the 13.5?s to the 46.5?s. We could. But both are plenty fast and snappy enough in daily use. I got the Optane because it’s able to load random game assets on the fly much faster than any NAND drive, so loading screens and random texture pop-ins are faster. But it’s a niche use, with some rather complicated setup. If you want just one drive and be happy with it, get a Gen5 like the Kanani, and be happy with it. It’s great.
Bottom line:
If you can find the Kanani.Tech KTP2000 for 10%+ cheaper than other Phison E26 or SM2508 drives, it’s a great deal that I highly recommend.