TeamGroup TForce Cardea A440 PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD Review

If you demand the most out of your system, PCIe 4.0 is likely a key to your need for speed. Teamgroup’s T-Force Cardea A440 leverages PCIe 4.0 to provide speeds of up to 7GB/s. Cooling is often a concern with high-speed SSD’s, but Teamgroup provides you with two options in the same box. Use the industrial super material, graphene, in an ultra-thin sheet for low profile installations for 9% better cooling than a naked drive, or the included aluminum heatsink for maximum cooling with up to 15% cooler temps. The choice is yours. You’ll never have to compromise on capacity either as the Cardea A440 comes in one or two Terabyte capacities. Let’s check it out! PC Test Bench would like to thank TeamGroup for providing us with a sample of the Cardea A440 to check out. Teamgroup’s take on the Cardea A440: The T-FORCE CARDEA A440 PCIe 4.0 SSD supports the PCIe Gen 4x4 specification and the latest NVMe 1.4 standard and is backward compatible with PCIe 3.0 interface ports. Not only does it support high read/write speeds of up to 7000/6900 MB/s, but it is also available with large capacities of 1 or 2 TBs. The classic matte black CARDEA A440 features two of the industry's first interchangeable, patent-certified thermal modules. The layered and unique beveled surface of the "aluminum fins" is specially designed to increase the heat dissipation area and can reduce SSD temperature by up to 15%. The "ultra-thin graphene heat sinks" consist of the best materials for thermal conductivity and can dissipate heat by up to 9%. TEAMGROUP’s CARDEA A440 provides the best heat dissipation solution. Gamers no longer need to worry about encountering thermal throttling when running games at full speed, causing slowdowns. They can freely enjoy the ultimate gaming experience. The T-FORCE CARDEA A440 SSD uses the latest RRL (Read Recovery Level) technology, which can improve the SSD’s lifespan. Its optimized NVM Sets segmentation mechanism and PLM (Predictable Latency Mode) reduces latency and read and write wear. The CARDEA A440 SSD not only features remarkable specifications but also heat dissipation technology and excellent durability, providing the most stable experience for users and helping them realize their full gaming potential. Enjoy the lightning speed of the PCIe Gen4 x4 Supports the latest PCIe Gen4 x4 specification, reaching 7,000/6,900 Mb/s, provides outstanding performance 15 times faster than ordinary SATA SSDs and is backward compatible with PCIe 3.0 ports. Featuring two patented heat sinks The first in the industry to incorporate two patented heat sinks, giving you the benefits of a patented high-strength aluminum heat sink and a patented ultra-thin graphene heat sink at the same time, so you can choose your preferred method for dissipating heat. Effective cooling—flexible installation The patented high-strength aluminum heat sink features a unique thermal diversion design, capable of effectively reducing the temperature by up to 15%. The patented ultra-thin graphene heat sink features graphene material with excellent thermal conduction performance, delivering heat dissipation rates of up to 9%. Two patented heat sinks allow for flexible assembly without interference issues. Supports the latest NVMe 1.4 standard Supports the latest NVMe 1.4 standard, optimizes the NVM sets distribution mechanism and Predictable Latency Mode (PLM), effectively reducing latency while minimizing read/write damage and improving system QoS. Uses the latest Read Recovery Level (RRL) technology to extend the SSD's service life. FEATURES Enjoy the lightning speed of the PCIe Gen4 x4 Featuring two patented heat sinks Effective cooling—flexible installation Supports the latest NVMe 1.4 standard SPECIFICATIONS Interface PCIe Gen4.0 x4 with NVMe 1.4 Capacity 1TB / 2TB Operation Temperature 0˚C ~ 70˚C Terabyte Written (TBW) 1TB - 700TBW 2TB - 1,400TBW Performance Crystal Disk Mark: 1TB Read/Write: up to 7,000/5,500 MB/s 2TB Read/Write: up to 7,000/6,900 MB/s IOPS (IOMeter): 1TB Read/Write: up to 650K/700K 2TB Read/Write: up to 650K/700K Weight 13g (with Graphene heat sink) 46g (with Aluminum heat sink) Dimensions 0(L) x 22.0(W) x 3.7(H) mm (with Graphene heat sink) 0(L) x 23.4(W) x 12.9(H) mm (with Aluminum heat sink) MTBF 3,000,000 hours Warranty 5-year limited warranty A Closer Look Teamgroup’s packaging is consistent. The T-Force logo in the corner denotes this is part of the T-Force Gaming Family of products. The model is next to it with a sticker on the front for drive capacity, 1TB in our case. The back has some basic specifications as well as dimensions and a generalized installation procedure. Inside, the Cardea A440 sits in the top half of the tray with the graphite cooling sheet under it. The next pocket has the larger heatsink assembly and thermal pad wrapped in plastic. One of the claims to fame for the A440 is your choice of cooling, so this does mean there is some assembly required. The back of the drive is void of components, so you can install the A440 in ultra-thin machines without worry. The label covers the necessities like model, serial, and specs. The Cardea A440 is powered by Phison’s latest PS5018-E18 controller. Next to it is 1GB of Hynix DDR4 2666MHz DRAM for caching. The storage pool is made up of four 256GB Micron 96L TLC NAND chips Testing Test Platform: CPU Intel Core i9-11900k Mobo ASRock Z590 Taichi RAM 16GB Corsair Dominator Platinum 3200MHz GPU Nvidia RTX 2080 FE OS SSD Corsair MP600 2TB Test Platform: 2 CPU AMD Ryzen 9 5950X Mobo ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Formula RAM 64Gb Viper Steel 3600MHz GPU Nvidia RTX 3090 FE OS SSD Samsung 960 Pro 2TB CrystalDiskInfo Teamgroup's Cardea A440 connects to both our test systems at PCIe 4.0 x4 and uses NVM Express version 1.4. CrystalDiskMark “CrystalDiskMark is designed to quickly test the performance of your hard drives. Currently, the program allows measuring sequential and random read/write speeds." Our Intel Test bench shows better sequential reads and read and write 4k randoms across the board. In either case, Writes seem to top out around 5.45GB/s, a touch lower than advertised. Reads clear the 7GB/s mark on Intel so that matches up. Overall IOPS are quite good with writes clearing 88k and reads almost at 19k. Latency comes in a touch lower than expected, which is great as it has a lot more impact than overall high queue depth sequential speeds. ATTO Disk Benchmark Again we see Teamgroup’s Cardea A440 holding a notable advantage running from an Intel 11th Gen platform than from AMD’s latest. Performance is still great either way. Anvil's Storage Utilities Anvil gives us a score of around 23.5k points, some of that attributed to raw speed, but the overall low latency helps considerably here. Black Magic Disk Speed Test Disk Speed Test is an easy-to-use tool to quickly measure and certify your disk performance for working with high-quality video! Simply click the start button and Disk Speed Test will write test your disk using large blocks of data, and then display the result. Disk Speed Test will continue to test writes and reads from your disk so you can evaluate both performance and readability over time. BlackMagic’s Disk Speed Test is in need of a serious update these days. On most PCIe 4.0 drives, the read and write segments are so short that they cant accurately measure performance. It does however show that the drive is more than capable of handling video editing on common formats, even in raw mode. Temperature Testing We checked peak temperatures as registered by CrystalDiskInfo on the Cardea A440 with just the bare drive, with graphite heat spreader installed, and with the heatsink installed. We also tested each configuration with modest airflow from a case fan about 4 inches (10cm) away as some airflow is going to be typical of a gamer’s desktop. Interestingly, the Graphite heat spreader seems to act more as an insulator overall both with and without airflow. The heatsink does make a notable difference with much cooler temps both with and without airflow. Idle temps fell to 29-30C in all configurations which is acceptable. Final Thoughts & Conclusion Teamgroup’s T-Force Cardea A440 M.2 SSD provides top-level performance in gaming, as well as productivity and day-to-day use. Overall low latency keeps things snappy in all use cases but really helps at lower queue depth as you would get in typical use. The A440 is going to be more than ready for Microsoft’s Direct Storage when games start taking advantage of it on the PC platform, so it’s not a bad time to throw one in your system if you already need an upgrade. If you aren’t quite on PCIe 4.0 just yet, you’ll still get great performance with some extra bandwidth waiting for your next upgrade. We weren’t blown away by the Graphene and copper heat spreader as it gave slightly worse temps than just the bare drive. If your motherboard has an integrated heatsink, it should work fine, but the included heatsink gives excellent results if you need it. It’s worth noting that even with the warmer temperatures, the drive did not appear to actually get hot enough to throttle so putting this in an SFF machine or laptop shouldn’t be an issue. Overall The Cardea A440 provides Enthusiast performance at a more mainstream price and would be an excellent choice for anyone needing bigger and better storage they don’t have to wait on. Good Job Teamgroup!

TeamGroup TForce Cardea A440 PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD Review

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