Kingston Announces 40GB SSD Desktop Upgrade Kit

We just got our hands on a new product Kingston is announcing today, targeted at PC owners in the market for a relatively inexpensive SSD upgrade to boost system performance.

Kingston is marketing the new 40GB Desktop Upgrade Kit as a performance upgrade for existing system owners hindered by the performance of their spinning hard drives. Instead of offering a high-capacity SSD as part of the kit, however, Kingston went with an Intel-built, Kingston branded, low-capacity SSD. A representative from Kingston contended that SSDs were considered a performance upgrades by most PC enthusiasts, and not storage / capacity upgrades. As such, the Kingston 40GB Desktop Upgrade Kit is designed to replace a boot drive and host only the OS and perhaps the user's most commonly used applications, while complimented by a larger capacity drive for bulk storage.

  

 
Kingston's 40GB Desktop Upgrade Kit

The 40GB Desktop Upgrade Kit includes a 2.5" 40GB SATA SSD, a 4-pin Molex-to-SATA power adapter, a SATA cable, and a disc complete with drive cloning software to facilitate migration from one drive to another. Although this video wasn't produced with the Kingston 40GB Desktop Upgrade Kit in mind, we're posting it here to show one way to migrate data from one drive to another, when upgrading to an SSD.

Kingston's 40GB Desktop Upgrade Kit will be available the week of November 9 and carried an MSRP of $130. A more affordable stand-alone drive will also be offered for an MSRP of $115. We are told, however, that with rebates, the kit may be had for as low as $85, which would make it a great companion to that copy of Windows 7 you were thinking of picking up.

More information about the Kingston 40GB Desktop Upgrade Kit is available in the full press release, posted below...

Kingston Digital Releases SSD Desktop Upgrade Solution

40GB Solid-State Drive to Boost Desktop Performance; Aggressive Launch Promotion with Newegg.com Announced

Fountain Valley, CA -- October 26, 2009 -- Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced the release of the SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive, the latest addition to its V (Value) family of solid-state drives (SSD). The Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive is one of the best and most cost-effective ways to accelerate any desktop’s boot, shutdown and application load times. It is available for as low as $84.99 after rebates (U.S. only) at e-tailer Newegg.com at launch*.

“The SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive offers instant performance enhancement coupled with reliability and lower power consumption at a fraction of the cost of a new system,” said Ariel Perez, SSD business manager, Kingston. “The 40GB Boot Drive is the latest offering in our V Series SSD line. It provides a low-cost upgrade solution that complements the installed hard-disk drive to extend the life cycle of existing desktop computers and workstations in homes and offices.”

Using the industry-standard PCMark Vantage Advanced HDD Suite, the 40GB Boot Drive received a score of 13,883, whereas a 7200RPM hard-disk drive attained a score of 3,708**. PCMark Vantage Advanced HDD Suite runs a series of tests such as Windows Vista startup, importing photos, adding music to Windows Media Center and application loading. The score is an indicator of how many bytes were moved per second.

Kingston’s SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive is designed for novice SSD users looking to increase their current desktop performance. As part of Kingston’s goal to provide an easy upgrade path for first-time SSD users as well as do-it-yourself system builders, the drive is also available with a bundle that includes cloning software, 2.5" to 3.5" brackets and SATA data and power cable extenders. The SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive is designed for a desktop system to be used in conjunction with an existing hard-disk drive (HDD). A PC operating system and key applications reside on the SSD while all data such as documents, music, files and photos remain on the HDD.

The Kingston SSDNow V Series 40GB Boot Drive has an MSRP of $115.00 (U.S.) and will begin shipping on November 9, 2009. It is backed by a three-year warranty, 24/7 tech support and legendary Kingston reliability. For more information visit www.kingston.com.

Kingston SSDNow 40GB Boot Drive Features and Specifications: