The Team Group T-Force Cardea (240GB) SSD Review: Grace Under Write Pressure
by Billy Tallis on September 28, 2017 8:00 AM ESTPower Management
Real-world client storage workloads leave SSDs idle most of the time, so the active power measurements presented earlier in this review only account for a small part of what determines a drive's suitability for battery-powered use. Especially under light use, the power efficiency of a SSD is determined mostly be how well it can save power when idle.
SATA SSDs are tested with SATA link power management disabled to measure their active idle power draw, and with it enabled for the deeper idle power consumption score and the idle wake-up latency test. Our testbed, like any ordinary desktop system, cannot trigger the deepest DevSleep idle state.
Idle power management for NVMe SSDs is far more complicated than for SATA SSDs. NVMe SSDs can support several different idle power states, and through the Autonomous Power State Transition (APST) feature the operating system can set a drive's policy for when to drop down to a lower power state. There is typically a tradeoff in that lower-power states take longer to enter and wake up from, so the choice about what power states to use may differ for desktop and notebooks.
We report two idle power measurements. Active idle is representative of a typical desktop, where none of the advanced PCIe link or NVMe power saving features are enabled and the drive is immediately ready to process new commands. The idle power consumption metric is measured with PCIe Active State Power Management L1.2 state enabled and NVMe APST enabled.
As with the other Phison E7 drives, the Team T-Force Cardea has a compatibility problem with out testbed when it comes to power management. Since the T-Force Cardea is intended as a desktop-only product, the overall power consumption is a very minor concern, and the heatsink eliminates any concerns about a higher idle temperature making the drive more susceptible to thermal throttling under load.
With power management that is inoperative on our testbed, none of the Phison E7 drives show more than a trivial delay when first given I/O commands after an idle period. By contrast, the Samsung 960 EVO needs an extra 5ms to come out of its sleep state.
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MajGenRelativity - Thursday, September 28, 2017 - link
Yep. Anandtech doesn't have the money to purchase a lot of their own review samples, so it is up to the company to provide them.DanNeely - Thursday, September 28, 2017 - link
More to the point, they can get enough free (donation/loan) hardware to keep their reviewers all busy; why should they buy out of pocket instead. AFAIK most exceptions fall under the category of the reviewer writing about something they bought for personal use.MajGenRelativity - Thursday, September 28, 2017 - link
That also makes senseFlunk - Thursday, September 28, 2017 - link
MyDigitalSSD is a rebrander, they slap their sticker on drives made by an OEM, quite often ADATA. I've taken a look at the model you mentioned and it looks like a PHISON E7 reference design, as such I can't really guess which OEM made it or the real model name.But if you're thinking of buying one, any review of a PHISON E7 reference design should be relevant.
willis936 - Thursday, September 28, 2017 - link
How can anyone compete against samsung in the consumer SSD space?MajGenRelativity - Thursday, September 28, 2017 - link
64 layer NAND and new controllers should allow other companies to do so. The Intel 545s puts up a stiff fightBrokenCrayons - Thursday, September 28, 2017 - link
That's easy, just sell a lower performance product at a competitive price. Certainly Samsung has some good SSDs out there, but the seat-of-the-pants feel between one of their top performing drives and a budget SSD will be small or, in some cases, not noticed outside of benchmarks since the rest of the system becomes a factor in acutal usage. These other competitors can just knock a few percent off the sales price and a lot of people will happily purchase drive that is slower.davidedney123 - Thursday, September 28, 2017 - link
Seriously, who decides "Yeah I'll trust my data to a Team Group Team T-Force Cardea, as it's tuppence cheaper than a drive from Samsung/Intel/Crucial/Some other proper company?Storage is one area I would really not recommend going for off brand tat to save a few dollars.
Billy Tallis - Thursday, September 28, 2017 - link
It's not like any of the important bits are actually designed or built by TeamGroup. This is a Phison drive wearing a Team heatsink. Phison is hardly "off-brand", though they're certainly not the premium brand. They account for a huge portion of the consumer SSD market.davidedney123 - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
Phison sell them the controller IC, someone else makes the NAND (and the grade will depend on what they are paying the manufacturer for it), but assembly, validation, final testing, and support are all from Frangpai Magic SSD Friend or whatever they are called. My point still stands.