The Team Group T-Force Cardea (240GB) SSD Review: Grace Under Write Pressure
by Billy Tallis on September 28, 2017 8:00 AM ESTConclusion
Modern 3D NAND tends to be manufactured with a high capacity per die, which makes it difficult to make a high-performance low-capacity SSD. The Team T-Force Cardea avoids that problem by using Toshiba's 15nm planar MLC NAND. The result is a drive that handles heavy workloads quite well without the performance drops that are typical of TLC SSDs. The Phison E7 SSD controller platform used by the T-Force Cardea helps keep costs much lower than most other MLC-based drives, though the heatsink prevents it from being the cheapest Phison E7 drive on the market.
The most important competitor at the low end of the capacity range is Samsung's 960 EVO 250GB. The MLC-based 960 PRO isn't available at capacities below 512GB, and the previous generation 256GB 950 PRO is out of production. Thanks to the strength of Samsung's Polaris controller, the 250GB 960 EVO manages to be the fastest drive in its class for light workloads. But when heavier workloads with a high volume of writes are involved, the T-Force Cardea comes out ahead.
We haven't seen any strong evidence that the heatsink helps the T-Force Cardea under ordinary conditions. In fact, we often see performance degrade as a test continues and the accumulated volume of writes forces the drive to continue performing garbage collection beyond the idle time our test protocol provides. Larger SSDs and many competing 240GB-class SSDs seem to be able to wrap up their garbage collection more quickly, leading to more consistent sustained performance. But this shortcoming of the T-Force Cardea is only really noticeable on our synthetic benchmarks; even our most intense tests of real-world I/O patterns have it clearly outperforming SATA SSDs and most cheaper NVMe SSDs.
The most significant performance weakness we spotted during our testing is with sequential reads. Samsung's NVMe SSDs are several times faster at queue depth 1. The gap narrows at higher queue depths, but all of the Phison E7 SSDs are still at a disadvantage here.
| 250GB | 500-512GB | 1TB | |
| Team T-Force Cardea | $129.99 (54¢/GB) | $219.99 (46¢/GB) | |
| Samsung 960 EVO | $117.60 (47¢/GB) | $234.00 (47¢/GB) | $467.00 (47¢/GB) |
| Samsung 960 PRO | $298.00 (58¢/GB) | $598.38 (58¢/GB) | |
| MyDigitalSSD BPX | $114.99 (48¢/GB) | $199.99 (42¢/GB) | |
| Toshiba OCZ RD400 | $118.79 (46¢/GB) | $239.99 (47¢/GB) | $567.18 (55¢/GB) |
| Intel SSD 600p | $165.59 (65¢/GB) | $199.99 (39¢/GB) | $329.99 (32¢/GB) |
Current pricing has the 240GB T-Force Cardea well above the Samsung 960 EVO, and just below it at the half-TB capacity class. For most users, the 960 EVO's performance profile will be a better fit, making the 960 EVO the better buy. For a particularly heavy workload at, the T-Force Cardea may be a better choice than the 250GB 960 EVO. But since it doesn't appear that the heatsink matters in ordinary use, most users can save even more money by going with a cheaper Phison E7 drive like the MyDigitalSSD BPX.
In an upcoming review, we will more thoroughly explore the thermal limits of M.2 SSDs, including when positioned near a hot-running graphics card. That may reveal the large heatsink on the Team T-Force Cardea to occasionally be a significant advantage.
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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.