Kingston SSDNow UV400 120 GiB SSD Review

The Kingston SSDNow UV400 120 GiB

Figure 1 shows the package of the SSDNow UV400 120 GiB, which uses the blister format. This model can also be found as a desktop kit, with adapters and cables.

Figure 1: UV400 120 GiB package

On Figure 2, we see the SSDNow UV400 120 GiB, which has an aluminum case.

Figure 2: the SSDNow UV400 120 GiB

On the bottom of the drive, there is a sticker with unit info, as seen in Figure 3.

Figure 3: bottom side

Opening the SSDNow UV400 (which is a difficult task because it requires a very specific and hard to find screwdriver), we see the PCB. At the component side, we see eight flash memory chips, a DDR3 memory chip that works as a buffer, and the controller chip.

Figure 4: component side of the PCB

On the solder side, there is not any chip.

Figure 5: solder side of the PCB

The controller used by the SSDNow UV400 120 GiB is the Marvell 88SS1074, presented in Figure 6.

Figure 6: controller chip

There is a DDR3-1600 memory chip, with 256 MiB capacity, model Nanya NT5CC128M16FP-DI, that works as a data buffer.

Figure 7: buffer memory

The flash memory chips are from Kingston, and unfortunately they don’t publish the chip specs.

Figure 8: flash memory chip