Kingston KC3000 2TB

Specifications

Capacity

2000GB

M.2 length

2280

Interface

m2-nvme

What a buyer needs to know

New brand in the catalog. Gen4, M.2 2280, Phison E18 + 3D TLC, and the ONE drive here whose maker prints 'DRAM Cache: Yes' on its own page. 7,000/7,000 MB/s, 1,600 TBW at 2TB (~$140-160). No known SteamOS/Sanitize issue documented. Specs read off Kingston's own KC3000 product page. 🔴 DO NOT BUY A WD BLUE SN550 INSTEAD. THE STEAMOS INSTALLER FAILS OUTRIGHT ON IT: the drive 'does not support the NVMe Sanitize command… the installation fails' (SteamOS issue #2515, still open). It is ALSO kernel-quirked for a broken MSI and a bad deepest power state. Two independent reasons. SYMPTOM TO RECOGNISE on any bad NVMe: `nvme0: I/O timeout, reset controller` → `failed to set APST feature (-19)` → Btrfs goes read-only — which is exactly what SteamOS and Bazzite run on. CAUTION, NOT CONDEMNATION, on two others: the SK hynix Platinum P41 is fine (the Solidigm P44 Pro is the same drive and IS kernel-quirked, but the kernel quirks Solidigm's PCI ID, not SK hynix's); and WD SN770 / SN580 / SanDisk have a vendor-confirmed HMB firmware bug that firmware 731130WD fixes. AND THE FOLKLORE WE WILL NOT REPEAT: 'Phison/SMI controllers are flaky on Linux' is FALSE — the kernel quirk table shows only a benign BOGUS_NID identify quirk, no power-state bug. That matters, because the best 2242 drive IS Phison, and we nearly warned people off the right part.

Where to buy