Samsung 960 (NVMe) 500 GB vs Kingston OEM NVMe 1 TB

Short answer: which is best?

Samsung 960 (NVMe) 500 GB is 16.8 % stronger than Kingston OEM NVMe 1 TB. Samsung 960 (NVMe) 500 GB ranks #27 of 54 measured system drives at WhatFPS (8,833 Drive score over 7 verified runs). Kingston OEM NVMe 1 TB ranks #36 of 54 measured system drives at WhatFPS (7,561 Drive score over 1 verified runs). The numbers are measured in 8 verified WhatFPS runs — not estimated, not self-reported.

Measured comparison

MetricSamsung 960 (NVMe) 500 GBKingston OEM NVMe 1 TB
Drive score (the drive's own performance: sequential read + 4K IOPS)8,8337,561
Best rig (GAMING — whole PC)21,8482,662
Sequential read1,945 MB/s2,396 MB/s
4K IOPS13,4228,374
4K latency, median (lower is better)69 µs93 µs
TypeNVMe SSDNVMe SSD
Size500 GB1 TB

What the numbers mean

The drive score is the system drive's measured performance in the rigs it sat in — sequential read and 4K IOPS, unbuffered. PCIe generation, fill level and driver affect it. GAMING is the whole rig's score. We show both and never mix them.

All numbers come from our benchmark suite, the same test on every PC, written in Rust with no middleware. The methodology is open at https://whatfps.com/metodik

All measurements for Samsung 960 (NVMe) 500 GB · All measurements for Kingston OEM NVMe 1 TB