Team Group T-Force Cardea M.2 NVMe SSD Review (240GB)

POWER CONSUMPTION

For our power consumption testing, we have the drive connected to the system as a secondary drive. To record the wattage, we are now utilizing a Quarch Technology Programmable Power Module. It allows us to accurately measure power consumption over time and is flexible enough to allow us to test any SSD that comes our way.

Our power analysis may change as time goes on, but for now, we are looking at just a few metrics with the main goal of measuring our results against the manufacturer’s ratings. Because most consumer systems are at idle for about 80% of the time, idle power consumption is an important measure to look at when understanding the efficiency of a drive.

During idle, Team Group Cardea was in the same realm of many other similar SSDs, this an area where the Intel P600 did very well.

POWER EFFICIENCY

Finally, we wanted to post up a graph of the power efficiency of the SSDs in comparison. We are looking at MB/s per Watt in this graph. The higher the result, the better.

File Transfer Efficiency places the Team Group T-Force Cardea M.2 SSD as top dog, tied with the Corsair MP500 at 342MB/s per watt of usage.

REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS

Admittedly, I don’t see much of a need for a heatsink on an SSD and it is not something anyone but very heavy users should really concern themselves with.  Having said that, there are those media professionals that will realize a certain level of comfort knowing there SSD will not experience thermal throttling at times when they need it the most. This is a definite plus. As for gaming, this SSD will increase the speed of game loading but I don’t know of anyone who has encountered SSD throttling through gaming… but I could be wrong.  If I am, please jump in and leave a comment.

The T-Force Cardea M.2 NVMe SSD is based on the Phison PS5007 controller and Toshiba NAND flash memory, the controller is a nice ‘mid-range’ controller which will provide 2.7GB/s read and 1.4GB/s write throughput with up to 180K IOPS.  This is decent performance and if one can score this at the right price, it could turn into a great buy.  This is where we ran into a snag.

It doesn’t seem to be available on Amazon. Huge concern here. Limited availability isn’t a positive in today’s world as it definitely cuts out sales for those that prefer Amazon.  The Cardea also falls short in having its own ‘toolbox’ type program but these types of tools are more common with the larger companies.  Checking the price of the Cardea, we found it at $128 which was at the mid-point of what we found for other SSDs at Amazon.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The Team Group T-Force Cardea NVMe SSD is a solid SSD that will fit a niche group of buyers.  It accomplishes better heat dissipation through its heatsink which will be of benefit to some but may dissuade others who would find it bulky or may be seeking similar for a laptop.  It is not going into any laptop.  That said, the Cardea is deserving of our Bronze Seal.

Check Out M.2 NVMe SSD Pricing at Amazon.