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Klevv's CRAS C930 is a midrange Gen 4 SSD based around an Innogrit 8-channel controller and 176-layer 3D NAND. We put it through its paces today and see how it stacks up against the competition.
The CRAS C930 line-up consists of just two capacities at the time of writing: 1TB and 2TB, the latter being the drive we are looking at here. The C930 is based around an InnoGrit IG5236 8-channel controller combined with Essencore-branded 176-layer 3D TLC NAND. There is also a 2GB DRAM cache IC.
Performance-wise, Klevv rates the Sequential read performance of the 2TB drive as up to 7,400MB/s with writes up to 6,800MB/s. The 1TB drive gets the same 7,400MB/s Sequential read performance with writes rated as up to 6,400MB/s. Random performance for both drives is rated as up to 1,000K for both reads and writes.
Klevv rates the 2TB drive's TBW endurance at 1,500 (the 1TB drive gets 750 TBW), and the drives are backed by a 5-year warranty.
Physical Specifications:
- Usable Capacities: 2TB.
- NAND Components: 176-layer 3D TLC NAND.
- NAND Controller: InnoGrit IG5236.
- Cache: 2GB LPDDR4-4266.
- Interface: PCIe Gen 4 x4, NVMe 1.4.
- Form Factor: M.2, 2280.
- Dimensions: 80 x 22 x 3.2mm (without heatsink), 80 x 23.6 x 8.7mm (with heatsink)
- Drive Weight: 7g (without heatsink), 23g (with heatsink).
Firmware Version: 3.U.J.LW
The Klevv CRAS C930 ships in a compact box with a clear image of the drive in the centre. Above this image, in the top right-hand corner, is a sticker holding the drive's capacity (2TB). Under this are two icons for the attachable heatsink and PS5 support. Below the drive's image is a row of five icons for 3D NAND, NVMe 1.4, SLC Caching, Backup software, and a limited warranty. The rear of the box has a detailed feature list, under which is a multilingual statement about transmission speed, stable performance, and the drive's capabilities. Under this is a performance table for both C930 drives displaying Sequential read/write speeds.
Inside the box is a plastic tray which holds and protects the CRAS C930 and the stick-on full-width stick-on aluminium heatsink.
The 2TB CRAS C930 is built on a single-sided M.2 2280 format, meaning that all the major components sit on one side of the PCB. Along with the InnoGrit IG5236 controller, there are two 1TB Essencore-branded 176-layer 3D TLC NAND packages and a 2GB DDR4-4266 DRAM cache IC.
InnoGrit's IG5236 controller (code name Rainier) is aimed at high-end client solutions. Built on a 12nm process, the 8-channel, NVMe 1.4 controller supports up to 8TB of SLC, MLC, TLC, and QLC NAND flash with either ONFI 4.1 or Toggle 2.0/3.0/4.0. It has a NAND interface running at up to 1200MT/s, which equates to a maximum Sequential performance of up to 7,400MB/s and 6,400MB/s for reads and writes, respectively.
For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real-world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system.
This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits.
Main system:
AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, 16GB DDR4-2400, Sapphire R9 390 Nitro and an Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master motherboard
Other drives
2TB +
Corsair MP600 GS 2TB
Corsair MP600 PRO 2TB
Corsair MP600 PRO XT 2TB
Corsair MP600 Elite Heatsink 2TB
Crucial P310 2280 2TB
Crucial T500 2TB
Gigabyte AORUS 7000e 2TB
HP FX900 Pro 2TB
Kingston Fury Renegade Heatsink 2TB
Kingston KC3000 2TB
Kioxia Exceria Plus 2TB
Kioxia Exceria Plus G3 2TB
Kioxia Exceria Pro 2TB
Klevv CRAS C925 2TB
Lexar NM790 4TB
Lexar NM790 with Heatsink 4TB
Lexar Professional NM800PRO Heatsink 2TB
MSI Spatium M480 2TB
Netac NV7000-t 2TB
Patriot Viper VP4300 2TB
Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2TB
Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 4TB
Samsung SSD990 PRO 2TB
Samsung SSD990 EVO Plus 2TB
Solidigm P41 Plus 2TB
Seagate Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda 2TB
Seagate FireCuda 530 2TB
WD Black SN850X Heatsink 2TB
WD_Black SN770M 2TB
Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark 4.
CrystalMark 8.0.0.
AS SSD 2.0.
IOMeter.
UL Solutions PC Mark 10.
UL Solutions 3DMark Storage Benchmark.
Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark.
All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration. This ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active.
CrystalDiskMark is a useful benchmark to measure the theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSDs. We are using v8.0.
The 2TB CRAS C930 read score of 65.16MB/s in CrystalDiskMark 8's 4K QD1 test sees it near the bottom of the results chart as the second slowest we've seen. It's write result of 227.21MB/s is the third slowest we've seen.
A glance at the benchmark result screens shows that using the default test, we could confirm both official Sequential figures (7,400MB/s reads, 6,800MB/s writes) with test results of 7,459MB/s for reads and 6,970MB/s for writes.
The sequential read test result sees the drive in the fifth place on our result chart, although its write score of 6,970MB/s is the fastest we've seen for a Gen4 drive to date in this particular test.
Peak Performance Profile
The drive is officially rated at up to 1,000K IOPS for both random reads and writes. Using the Peak Performance profile of CrystalDiskMark8, we couldn't hit these maximum figures; the best read figure from the default test was 772,590.33 IOPS, while the best write figure was 668,375.49 IOPS.
As with the default test, we could confirm both the official maximums (7,400MB/s reads, 6,800MB/s writes) for Sequential performance with test results of 7,461 MB/s for reads and 6,969MB/s for writes.
Real World Profile
In the Real World profiles test, the drive's Sequential read result of 3,496MB/s sees it in the bottom half of the results table, but its write performance is much stronger at 5,924MB/s.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage system's performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customise your performance measurement, including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturer's RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
We are using version 4.1 for our NVMe disk tests.
With the ATTO benchmark results, the drive fell short of both of the official maximums with a read test of 6,950MB/s and writes at 6.500MB/s which sees the drive drop into second place on the results chart.
AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benchmarking Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. It uses incompressible data samples, which many drives struggle with, so results can be viewed as the worst-case scenarios.
AS SSD includes a sub-suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms, but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.
The 2TB CRAS C930 read score of 2891 sees the drive slot into a mid-table position.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the Sequential read and write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below.
128KB Sequential Read / Write.
Transfer Request Size: 128KB, Thread(s): 1, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
With our 128KB Sequential tests, we could confirm both read and write maximum figures ( 7,400MB/s and 6,800MB/s, respectively). The best read figure we saw was 7,455.8MB/s (QD32), while the peak write figure we saw was 6,968.94MB/s at QD16.
128KB Sequential Read v QD performance compared
Compared to drives around it, the CRAS 930 performed best at QD1 where its test result of 3,439MB/s puts the drive into fourth place in the results chart. At QD's 2 and 4 the drive drops down the chart before staging a recovery at QD32.
128KB Sequential Write v QD performance compared
The poorest performance in the Sequential write tests comes at QD1, where the drive sits in second place in the table. At QDs 2, 4 and 32, the drive is the fastest Gen 4 drive we've seen to date for these tests.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the 4K random read performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below.
Transfer Request Size: 4KB, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
Officially, the 2TB CRAS C930 is rated as up to 1,000K IOPS for 4K random reads. With our four-threaded tests, we couldn't get close to the official figure with a peak test result of 366,909 IOPS (1,502.86MB/s) at QD16.
4K Random Read v QD performance compared
The drive's best performance, compared to the drives around it, happens at QD4 while its slowest occurs at QD1. The drive is placed in the bottom half of the results table for QDs 2 and 32.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the 4K random write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below.
Transfer Request Size: 4KB, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
As with the random reads, Klevv rates the 4K random write performance of the 2TB CRAS C930 as up to 1,000K IOPS. With our four-threaded tests, the best we saw from the drive was 324,401 IOPS (1,328.75MB/s) at QD32.
4K Random Write v QD performance compared
The CRAS C930 sits in the bottom half of the results table at QD1, but as the queue depth deepens, the performance improves.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8’s custom settings to test the 4K 70/30 mixed read/write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths using a single thread and four threads.
In our 4K 70/30 tests using a single thread, the 2TB CRAS C930 produced results from 19,850 IOPS (81.30MB/s) at QD1 up to a peak of 121,977 IOPS (499.69MB/s) at QD16 before dropping back to 121,850 IOPS (499.09MB/s) at QD32.
Switching up to four threads, the performance climbs steadily from 78,940 IOPS (323.34MB/s) at QD1 to peak at 357,915 IOPS (1,466.02MB/s) at QD16 before dropping back to 356,860 IOPS (1,461,7MB/s) at the end of the test run at QD32.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8 to test the random performance of the drive at lower queue depths (QD1 – QD8, where most of the everyday workloads occur) using 1 to 4 threads.
Random Read
In the QD1-QD8 random read tests, the CRAS C930 produced smooth increases in performance as the queue depth deepened without any noticeable dramas. At QD1, the drive speed ranges from 15,881 IOPS (65.05MB/s) using a single thread up to 63,353 IOPS (259.49MB/s) using four threads. At the end of the test run at QD8, the single-threaded performance had risen to 117,031 IOPS (479.35MB/s) while the four-threaded performance rose to 361,579 IOPS (1,481.03MB/s).
Random Write
In the random write test, the single and two-threaded performance plateaued out after QD2, while the other two threaded tests saw the performance start to level off at QD4.
In our read-throughput test, the 2TB CRAS C930 peaked at 5,591.62MB/s at the 16MB block mark, which is 1,809MB/s short of the official maximum of 7,400MB/s.
The test result of 5,591.62MB/s sees the drive in a mid position in the results chart.
In the write throughput test, the drive peaked at 6,141.85MB/s at the end of the test which is just 659MB/s short of the official maximum.
The test result of 6,141MB/s, puts the 2TB CRAS C930 into third place in the results chart.
The PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to fully test the performance of the fastest modern drives. The benchmark is designed to measure the performance of fast system drives using the SATA bus at the low end and devices connected via PCI Express at the high end.
The goal of the benchmark is to show meaningful real-world performance differences between fast storage technologies such as SATA, NVMe, and Intel’s Optane. The Full System Drive Benchmark uses 23 traces, running 3 passes with each trace. It typically takes an hour to run.
Traces used:
Booting Windows 10.
Adobe Acrobat – start the application until usable.
Adobe Illustrator – starting the application until usable. Adobe Premiere Pro – starting the application until usable.
Adobe Photoshop – starting the application until usable.
Battlefield V – starting the game until the main menu.
Call of Duty Black Ops 4 – starting the game until the main menu.
Overwatch – starting the game until the main menu.
Using Adobe After Effects.
Using Microsoft Excel.
Using Adobe Illustrator.
Using Adobe InDesign.
Using Microsoft PowerPoint.
Using Adobe Photoshop (heavy use).
Using Adobe Photoshop (light use).
cp1 Copying 4 ISO image files, 20 GB in total, from a secondary drive to the target drive (write test).
cp2 Making a copy of the ISO files (read-write test).
cp3 Copying the ISO to a secondary drive (read test).
cps1 Copying 339 JPEG files, 2.37 GB in total, to the target drive (write test).
cps2 Making a copy of the JPEG files (read-write test).
cps3 Copying the JPEG files to another drive (read test).
Klevv's 2TB CRAS C930 performs well enough in PCMark10's Full System Drive Benchmark without anything standing out. The six Adobe startup traces produced an average of 250MB/s, with the fastest being the Adobe Premiere Pro startup trace at 309MB/s, with the Lightroom trace the slowest at 210MB/s. For the five usage traces, the fastest was, as usual, the Photoshop heavy usage trace at 1,018MB/s, and including this result, the drive averaged 451MB/s for the five traces.
The three gaming traces produced an average result of 641MB/s, the fastest being Battlefield V at 909MB/s. Next came Call of Duty Black Ops 4 at 640MB/s followed by Overwatch at 375MB/s.
When it came to the file transfers, the fastest was the cp3 Write test at 3,536MB/s with the drive averaging 1,985MB/s for the six file transfer tests.
With an overall bandwidth figure of 428.28MB/s, the 2TB Klevv CRAS C930 sits in the lower half of the results table.
The 3DMark Storage Benchmark uses traces recorded from popular games and gaming-related activities to measure real-world gaming performance.
Traces used –
Battlefield V
Loading Battlefield™ V from launch to the main menu.
Call of Duty Black Ops 4
Loading Call of Duty®: Black Ops 4 from launch to the main menu.
Overwatch
Loading Overwatch® from launch to the main menu.
Game Move
Copying the Steam folder for Counter-Strike®: Global Offensive from an external SSD to the system drive.
Game Recording
Recording a 1080p gameplay video at 60 FPS with OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) while playing Overwatch®.
Installing Game
Installing The Outer Worlds® from the Epic Games Launcher.
Game Saving
Saving progress in The Outer Worlds game.
Battlefield V
The Klevv CRAS C930 test result of 812.24MB/s sees it in the bottom half of the results chart.
Call of Duty Black Ops 4
The drive handled the Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4 test a little better than the Battlefield V and Overwatch ones, but not by much.
Overwatch
The Overwatch game loading test finds the drive in the bottom half of the results chart, faster than the CRAS C910 but slower than the C925, which is further up the results chart.
Game Move
The CRAS C930 doesn't handle this test very well at all, sitting in last place on the results chart by quite some distance.
Game Recording
In the Game Recording test, the Klevv drive sits in a mid-table position.
Installing Game
The Game Installation test is another that the Klevv drive doesn't handle very well at all. It sits in last place on the results table by a long way.
Game Saving
As with the Game Move and Installing Game tests, the drive doesn't seem to handle the Game Saving test too well either.
Overall
Further proof of how the Klevv CRAS C930 struggled with the 3DMark Storage Benchmark tests is its overall bandwidth figure, which puts it into last place in the table, 114.69MB/s behind the next slowest drive.
The Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark uses actual maps and playable characters to assign a score to your PC and rate its performance, including scene loading times.
The benchmark gives an overall load time as well as loading times by scene.
Klevv's 2TB CRAS C930 drive displays pretty good consistency during the Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker benchmark, ending up in a mid-table position overall. It has the fastest overall loading time of the three C series Klevv drives we've tested to date.
We took note of the drive’s temperature during some of our benchmarking runs. Klevv's CRAS C930 comes with an optional stick-on full-width aluminium heatsink, using this in conjunction with enhanced thermal management (thermal throttling) to keep the drive thermally stable. We did all of our testing with this heatsink in place. The drive got fairly hot during our testing, with the hottest coming during the CrystalDiskMark 8's Sequential Write tests at 79° C, but despite this, we didn't see any thermal throttling occurring. The drive averaged 63° C for the bulk of the testing, with the 4K tests averaging 54° C.
To get a measure of how the drive deals with real-life data transfers, we used a series of folder and file transfers to and from a 2TB Kioxia Exceria Plus drive.
Transfer Details
Windows 10 backup – 118GB.
Data file – 100GB
BluRay Movie – 42GB.
Windows 11 iso – 5.4GB.
File folder – 50GB – 28,523 files.
Movie demos 8K – 21GB – (11 demos).
Raw Movie Clips 4K – 16GB – (9 MP4V files).
Movie folder – 12GB – 15 files – (8 @ .MKV, 4 @ .MOV, 3 @ MP4).
Photo Folder – 10GB – 304 files – (171 @ .RAW, 105 @ JPG, 21 @ .CR2, 5 @ .DNG).
Audio Folder – 10GB – 1,483 files – (1479 @ MP3, 4 @ .FLAC files).
Single large image – 5GB – 1.5bn pixel photo.
3D Printer File Folder – 4.25GB – (166 files – 105 @ .STL, 38 @ .FBX, 11 @ .blend, 5 @ .lwo, 4 @ .OBJ, 3@ .3ds).
AutoCAD File Folder – 1.5GB (80 files – 60 @ .DWG and 20 @.DXF).
The 2TB CRAS C930 averaged 421.69MB/s when writing the contents of the 13 real-life transfer tests, with the fastest being the 1,580MB/s (3 secs) for the 3D Print files folder and the slowest the 114MB/s (94 secs) for the 10GB Photo folder transfer. Reading the data back, the drive averaged 2,398MB/s with the fastest performance coming with the 4K folder transfer at 3,140MB/s (5 secs), with the 50GB file transfer the slowest, at 620MB/s (87 secs).
Klevv's CRAS C930 Gen 4 SSD is aimed at the mainstream end of the market and sits in between the company's C925 and C910 models. Interestingly, all three SKU use different controllers. The C925 uses a Maxio MAP1602, the C910 a Realtek RTS5772DL (or InnoGrit IG5220) and the C930, an InnoGrit IG5236. At the time of writing this review, only two capacities make up the C930 product line: 1TB and 2TB, the latter being the focus of this review.
InnoGrit's IG5236 8-channel PCIe 4.0 x4 controller is built on a 12nm process using ARM 32-bit Cortex-R5 architecture and supporting NVMe 1.4. It supports up to 8TB of SLC, MLC, TLC, and QLC NAND flash with either ONFI 4.1 or Toggle 2.0/3.0/4.0 with an interface running at up to 1200MT/s, which equates to a maximum Sequential performance of up to 7,400MB/s and 6,400MB/s for reads and writes, respectively. For the CRAS C930, Klevv has combined the IG5236 with Essencore-branded 176-layer 3D TLC NAND, the 2TB drive using two NAND packages along with a 2GB DDR4-4266 DRAM cache IC.
Klevv rates the maximum Sequential performance of the 2TB CRAS C930 as up to 7,400MB/s for reads and 6,800MB/s for writes, while random 4K performance is quoted as up to 1000K IOPS for both reads and writes.
Using the ATTO benchmark, we couldn't quite hit either Sequential maximums with test results of 6,950MB/s for reads and 6.500MB/s for writes. Switching over to the CrystalDiskMark 8, we could confirm both Sequential figures with test results of 7,459.78MB/s for reads and 6,970.83MB/s for writes. Using the compressible data test saw no real difference in the scores, so it seems the InnoGrit controller doesn't have a preference when it comes to the type of data it's being asked to handle.
When it came to random performance, we couldn't get close to the official figures with our 4-threaded tests. The peak read figure we achieved was 366,909 IOPS (QD16) with peak writes at 324,401 IOPS at QD32. Switching over to the default Peak Performance Profile in CrystalDiskMark 8, we still couldn't confirm the official random figures; the best we saw using these tests were 772,590 IOPS for reads and 668,375 IOPS for writes.
To help keep the CRAS C930 cool, Klevv uses enhanced thermal management, including thermal throttling, and a DIY stick-on thin aluminium heatsink option that is bundled with the drive. The drive did get hot under heavy and prolonged benchmarking but we didn't see any sign of thermal throttling
The Klevv CRAS C930 comes with a useful official license for Acronis True Image HD which is downloadable from the Klevv website.
To put another fly in the ointment, we haven't found it for sale anywhere in the UK. We did see it listed on Amazon US for $125.99, but that's not much help to those of us on this side of the Atlantic. Klevv also confirmed to us that the US MSRP for the 1TB model is $79.99, while the 2TB model MSRP is $143.99.
Pros
- Reasonable performance.
- Endurance.
- Bundled aluminium heatsink.
Cons
- Write speeds in some benchmark tests.
- Got hot under certain benchmarking tests.
- UK availability is scarce.
KitGuru says: Klevv's 2TB CRAS C930 isn't the fastest Gen4 drive we've seen overall by a long way but it does have its moments. Unfortunately, the 2TB Gen4 drive market segment is a very crowded one and there are better performing options than the C930.
