@skyblond This is an excerpt of a Tom's Hardware review on the line of drives.

"The Kingston NV2 is simply not a drive we can recommend in most cases because the range of hardware it can have makes it too risky for the buyer. You could get the great SM2269XT or the mediocre SM2267XT controller. You could get BiCS5 TLC or much slower QLC. None of these will have DRAM and it’s probably unfair to call this a PCIe 4.0 drive on top of all that.

In testing, the drive also ran hot even when idle and it draws a decent amount of power, making it less than ideal for many machines, including laptops. Its saving grace is its amazing price, which does make it perhaps good for something other than a primary drive."

I did suspect that it was the Memory Controller. I've bought four SSDs with three having Phison MCs and the other having a Silicon Motion MC.

I'd recommend checking the performance of the MC of a drive before buying it. The three SSDs with Phison MCs were bottlenecked by the MCs and not the flash. I got a random, no name Chinese SSD after the first four disappointments and it outperformed them with ease.

I would recommend a Samsung as I've seen them perform and I've never witnessed one die. I also question the thermal solution on the Kingston being a sticker.