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The GENUINE G560 from Klevv is the company's first-ever Gen 5.0 SSD. Powered by a Phison E26 controller and 232-layer NAND, the 2TB drive is rated at up to 14,000MB/s for Sequential reads, To help keep the drive cool, it's fitted with a passive aluminium heatsink.
Powered by a Phison PS5026-E26 8-channel controller, the GENUINE G560 uses 232-layer 3D TLC NAND together with a LPDDR4 DRAM cache chip ( size of which is based on drive capacity at the ratio of 1GB per 1TB). At launch, the G560 range consists of three capacities; 1TB, 2TB (the drive we are reviewing here) and a flagship 4TB model.
Klevv rates the Sequential performance of the range as up to 13,000MB/s for reads and up to 9,500MB/s for writes for the 1TB model with both the 2TB and 4TB models rated up to 14,000MB/s and 12,000MB/s for reads and writes respectively. Random reads for the 1TB drive are listed as up to 1,300,000 IOPS with the 2TB and 4TB drives getting up to 1,400,000 IOPS. All three drives have the same up to 1,400,000 IOPS ratings for writes.
The endurance of the 2TB model is quoted as 1400 TBW and Klevv backs the drive with a 5-year warranty,
Physical Specifications:
Usable Capacities: 2TB.
NAND Components: 232-layer 3D TLC NAND.
NAND Controller: Phison PS5026-E26.
Cache: 2GB LPDDR4.
Interface: PCIe Gen5 x4, NVMe 2.0.
Form Factor: M.2, 2280.
Dimensions: 80.5 x 23.35 x 17.8 mm (with heatsink).
Drive Weight: 68g.
Firmware Version: EQFM22.3
The Klevv GENUINE G560 ships in a compact box with a clear image of the drive in the front centre. Above this image, in the top right-hand corner, is a sticker which displays the drive's capacity (2TB) and maximum Sequential read speed (up to 14,000MB/s). Below the drive's image is a row of six icons for; 3D NAND, DRAM buffer, NVMe 2.0, SLC Caching, Backup software and a 5-year limited warranty.
The rear of the box has a detailed feature list under which is a multi-lingual statement about transmission speed, stable performance and what the drive is good for. Under this is a useful performance table for all three drives in the range displaying Sequential read/write speeds.
The 2TB GENUINE G560 is built on a dual-sided M.2 2280 format.
Klevv's heatsink design isn't quite as massive as some we've seen for a Gen5 drive, measuring 80.5 x 23.35 x 17.8mm and consists of two major parts. A rugged aluminium heatsink with an optimised fin design and a cradle that holds the drive. The drive sits in between two high-efficiency thermal pads and the whole assembly is held together by four tiny screws. This together with an advanced thermal throttling algorithm keeps the drive cool.
One side of the PCB holds the Phison PS5026-E26 8-channel controller, two 512GB Micron 232-layer (B58R) 3D TLC NAND packages and a 2GB LPDDR4 DRAM IC. The two remaining 512GB NAND packages are to be found on the other side of the PCB.
Phison's PS5026-E26 is built on a 12nm process in a 16mm by 16mm package. It uses dual Arm Cortex-R5 cores that work together with Phison’s CoXProcessor 2.0 specialised accelerators. It supports up to 32TB of TLC or QLC NAND flash memory with data transfer speeds of up to 2,400MT/s which running at full speed gives the up to 14GB/s performance of the G560. The controller supports the company's 5th Generation LDPC ECC engine and also provides AES 256-bit Hardware-based encryption support which Klevv has enabled on the G560.
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 7 7700X, 32GB DDR5-6000, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 and a Gigabyte AORUS X670E Xtreme motherboard.
Other drives
ADATA Legend 970 2TB
Corsair MP700 PRO SE 4TB
Corsair MP700 PRO 2TB
Crucial T705 2TB
Crucial T700 2TB
Crucial T700 with Heatsink 2TB
Gigabyte AORUS 10000 2TB
Seagate FireCuda 520 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 behaviour 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.
Klevv's GENUINE G560 drops into the third spot in the results chart for the CrystalDiskMark 8 4K QD1 T1 test with a test result of 87.97MB/s. However, its write result of 316.50MB/s is the slowest we've seen to date for a Gen 5 consumer drive.
One glance at the benchmark result screens confirms the official Sequential ratings of the drive of up to 14,000MB/s for reads and up to 12,000MB/s for writes. We could not only confirm the official figures we could better them, the tested drive produced a read result that was 538MB/s faster and the write performance was even better at some 932MB/s faster than the official figure.
That 14,538MB/s read result sees the G560 topping the table by 32MB/s from the heatsink version of Crucial's T705 drive. The write performance was better too, by some 193MB/s.
Peak Performance profile.
As we saw with the Sequential test results, the tested drive produced faster 4K random test results than the official maximums for the drive using the Peak Performance profile of CrystalDiskMark 8. At 1,782,201 IOPS the random read result figure is 382,201 IOPS faster while the write performance sailed past the official maximum of 1,400,000, finishing the test run at 1,602,801 IOPS.
Using the Peak Performance profile test, the Crucial T705 retains the top spot from the G560 by just 13MB/s. However, the write performance of the G560 is 191MB/s better than the Crucial drive.
Real World profile
In the Real World profile results chart the G560's Sequential read test figure is 45MB/s slower than the Crucial T700 drive. However, the Klevv's drive write performance is 766MB/s faster.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage system performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize 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.
Using the ATTO benchmark we couldn't hit the official Sequential read maximum of 14,000MB/s as the best we saw from the drive was 12,910MB/s. On the other hand, at 12,060MB/s, the write performance was bang on the money as the official maximum is 12,0000MB/s.
AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching 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.
With a read score of 4986, the G560 sits in second place behind Corsair's MP700 PRO SE drive but its write score of 7057 is the fastest we've seen to date for a consumer Gen.5 drive.
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.
Transfer Request Size: 128KB, Thread(s): 1, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
128KB Sequential Read / Write.
In this test, we couldn't quite confirm the official maximum Sequential read performance of 14,000MB/s figure for the G560 but got very close with a peak of 13,967MB/s at QD32. The write performance was a little erratic with a dip at QD8 (8,860MB/s) but the drive soon recovered peaking at 12,458MB/s, (confirming the official 12,000MB/s maximum) at QD16 before dropping back to finish the test run at 10,104MB/s (QD32).
128KB Sequential Read performance compared.
The Klevv GENUINE G560 shows very consistent read performance, sitting in second place in the results chart throughout all the tested queue depths,
128KB Sequential Write performance compared.
When it comes to the Sequential write test results the G560 seemed to perform best at QD4 where it sits fourth in the table. The worst performance comes at QD32 where it sits in penultimate place in the table. However, this is after it peaked at QD16 where it produced a result of 12,458MB/s, bettering the official maximum figure for the drive.
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.
Klevv's 2TB GENUINE G560 is rated as up to 1,400,000 IOPS for random reads. Using our 4-threaded tests we couldn't get close to that figure, the best we saw was 522,889 IOPS at QD16.
4K Random Read v QD compared.
In comparison to the drives around it, the G560 performs best at QD1 and QD4 where it sits fourth in the results tables. At QDs 2 and 32 it drops down to sixth spot.
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 random reads, the G560 is rated up to 1,400,000 IOPS for random writes. Once again we couldn't get close to that figure with our 4-threaded test with a best peak result of 442,926 IOPS at QD16.
4K Random Write v QD compared.
The drive sits in the bottom half of the results table for all of the tested queue depths, the highest position it gains is from the QD1 test. For the rest of the tested queue depths, only the Phison PS5031-E31T has a slower performance than it does.
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 the 4-threaded 4K 70/30 read/write test the results range from 102,836 IOPS (421MB/s) up to 493,660 IOPS (2,022MB/s) at the end of the test run at QD32. Switching to a single thread the performance ranges from 26,519 IOPS (108MB/s) at QD1 up to 174,559 IOPS (714MB/s) 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 Reads.
In the QD1-QD8 random read tests the drive produced smooth increases in performance as the queue depth deepened without any noticeable dramas. At QD1 the drive speed ranges from 21,389 IOPS (87.69MB/s) using a single thread up to 84,896 IOPS (347.73MB/s) using four threads. At a QD of 8, the single-thread performance had increased to 157,461 IOPS (644.95MB/s) while the four-threaded test reached 504,630 IOPS (2,066.97MB/s).
Random Writes
In the 4K write tests, the performance rose quickly from QD1 to QD2 for all four tested threads with the increase rising as the the thread count increased. For all the tested threads the performance began to plateau out after QD2 and remained that way until the end of the test at QD8.
In our read-throughput test, the 2TB GENUINE G560 peaked at 10,109.02MB/s at the end of the test run, which is 3,891MB/s off the official maximum of 14,000MB/s.
Even though the peak test result figure of 10,109.02MB/s is well short of the official maximum for the drive, it's still fast enough to put the drive at the top of the results chart, 234MB/s faster than the Corsair MP700 PRO SE in second spot.
In the write throughput tests, the drive peaked at the end of the test run (16MB block) at 11,757.16MB/s, just 243MB/s short of the official maximum of 12,000MB/s.
Klevv's 2TB GENUINE G550 is the fastest consumer Gen5 drive we've seen in this test to date, just edging out the heatsink-equipped version of Crucial's T705 drive.
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 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 – starting 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 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).
cps1Copying 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 GENUINE G560 dealt with the rigours of the PCMark10 Full System Drive Benchmark pretty well. For the six Adobe startup traces it averaged 357MB/s with the fastest performance coming from the Premiere Pro test trace at 448MB/s while the slowest figure came from the Lightroom startup trace at 283MB/s.
In the Adobe usage traces the Photoshop (Heavy) trace was the fastest at 1,527MB/s and including this one, the drive averaged 725.40MB/s for the five tests
The three gaming traces produced an average result of 1,209MB/s, the fastest being Battlefield V at 1,642MB/s, next came Call Of Duty Black Ops 4 at 1.286MB/s and last and quite some way back, Overwatch at 701MB/s.
When it came to the file transfers, the fastest was the cp1 Write test at 7,203MB/s with the drive averaging 4,120MB/s for the six file transfer tests.
With an overall bandwidth figure of 825.75MB/s, the drive sits in a second spot in the results table just behind Crucial's heatsinked equipped version of the T705.
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.
In 3DMark’s Storage Test, the drive had an average game loading bandwidth figure for the three games of 1,265.25MB/s (good enough for third place in the results table), with an average access time figure of 41µs (0.041m/s).
In the game moving, recording, installing and saving test traces the drive averaged 1,584.74MB/s with an average access time of 32µs (0.032m/s) for the four tests which see the drive in the penultimate spot in the table.
The average bandwidth figure for the 2TB GENUINE G560 for the complete benchmark run was 871.33MB/s, a result which sees the drive just top of the results table by the smallest amount.
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.
Although the Klevv GENUINE G560 tops the Scene 1 Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark load time chart it doesn't seem to handle the remaining Scene loads that well, being the slowest in one and in the bottom four for the other three tests, all of which sees it fourth slowest overall.
We took note of the drive’s temperature during some of our benchmarking runs. Klevv's GENUINE G560 comes with a well-designed heatsink which together with enhanced thermal management (thermal throttling) works well. The hottest the drive got was when being pushed hard during some of the CrystalDiskMark 8's Write tests where it got to 61° C. There's no information about the drive operating temperature on the Klevv website but the Phison controller's upper operating limit is 70° C. For the bulk of our testing the drive averaged 49° C with the 4K focussed tests averaging 40° C.
To test the real-life performance of a drive we use a mix of folder/file types and by using the FastCopy utility (which gives a time as well as MB/s result) we record the performance of the drive reading from & writing to a 256GB Samsung SSD850 PRO.
To get a measure of how much faster PCIe NVMe drives are than standard SATA SSD's we use the same files but transfer to and from a 2TB Kioxia Exceria Plus drive.
Transfer Details
Data file – 100GB.
Windows 11 iso – 5.4GB.
File folder – 50GB – 28,523 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.
21GB 8K Movie demos – (11 demos)
16GB 4K Raw Movie Clips – (9 MP4V files).
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 Klevv GENUINE G560 averaged 3,126MB when writing the 11 transfer tests, with the fastest being the 7,211MB/s for the 100GB Data file transfer followed by the 4K movie folder at 7,076MB/s. Reading back the data the average was 5,056MB/s with the 100GB again being the fastest at 6,893MB/s.
Klevv's range of SSDs covers Gen4 NVMe and 2.5in SATA drives and now they have added a Gen5 flagship drive to the range. The GENUINE G560 is available in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities. Klevv rates the performance of the 2TB GENUINE G560 as up to 14,000MB/s and 12,000MB/s for Sequential reads and writes respectively. The 4TB drive has the same ratings while the 1TB is slower at 13,000MB/s and 9.500MB/s for reads and writes respectively. As for random performance, all three drives are rated as up to 1,400,000 IOPS for writes with the 2TB and 4TB drives having the same 1,400,000 IOPS figure for reads with the 1TB getting 1,300,000 IOPS.
At the heart of the G560 is a Phison PS5026-E26 8-channel controller. Built on a 12nm process, the PS5026-E26 uses a combination of ARM Cortex-R5 architecture and Phison's own CoXProcessor 2.0 specialised accelerators which support a flash interface running at up to 2400 MT/s. The G560 has the controller and the Micron 232-layer 3D TLC NAND running at full whack, hence the headline 14,000MB/s Sequential read speed. The 2TB G560 is a dual-sided design using four 512GB NAND packages to achieve its capacity.
Using the default CrystalDiskMark 8 tests we could not only confirm the official 14,000MB/s and 12,000 Sequential read/write maximum figures but we got a bit more out of the drive with test results of 14,538MB/s for reads and 12,932MB/s for writes.
When it came to random performance we couldn't get close to the official 1,400,000 IOPS figure with our 4-threaded tests. The best random read figure we saw was 522,889 IOPS at QD16. Writes were even further away from the official figure at 442,926 IOPS at QD16. However, switching over to the default Peak Performance Profile in CrystalDiskMark 8 we could confirm both official random figures and indeed better them by decent margins with a random read test result of 1,782,201 IOPS. with writes at 1,602,801 IOPS.
To help keep the GENUINE G560 cool Klevv uses a well-designed passive cooler (80.5 x 23.35 x 17.8mm) and an advanced thermal throttling algorithm. The two-part cooler consists of a rugged aluminium heatsink that uses an optimised fin design which fits into a cradle that holds the drive. The cradle runs more or less the full length of the drive, the drive is sandwiched between two high-efficiency thermal pads, one at the top of the cradle and one under the heatsink and the two parts are held in place by four small screws. It seems to work well as the hottest the drive got under benchmarking was 61° C when it being pushd hard.
The KLEVV GENUINE G560 The Klevv CRAS C925 comes with an official license for Acronis True Image HD which is downloadable from the Klevv website.
Pros
- Overall performance
- Endurance.
- Well-designed heatsink.
Cons
- Write speeds in some benchmark tests.
KitGuru says: Klevv's first go at a Gen5 drive is pretty impressive with a narrow but useful range of capacities and very good overall performance. The aluminium heatsink works well at keeping the drive cool and although the drive did get hot during prolonged benchmarking we didn't see any sign of thermal throttling.
