You've possible never heard of the name Team Group before, but it's a company that's been producing and supplying DRAM modules and flash memory for the commercial and consumer PC industry since 1997. These days, it has a solid reputation and its SSDs are especially good.
This T-Force Cardea A440 model is a perfect example of that. On paper, you're not getting anything very special, compared to the competition, but the components are all top-notch. We were mighty impressed with the drive when we first tested the 2TB version, and our only issue was that it was a bit pricey back then. Fast forward a couple of years and the prices of flash memory and SSDs have shrunk dramatically.
Underneath that beefy heatsink are a collection of 96-layer TLC flash chips made by Micron, 2GB of SK Hynix DDR4-3200, and an E18 controller from Phison. Those are perfectly decent parts and although TLC (triple-level cell) isn't the fastest flash storage out there, it's more than good for most users' needs. To get anywhere near the A440's maximum performance, it will need to be installed in a PC that fully supports PCIe 4.0; it will still work in an older PCIe 3.0 M.2 slot, but the peak data speeds will be half as fast.
Unlike a lot of cheap SSDs, this one sports onboard DRAM which stores the big map of where everything is located on the drive. So-called DRAM-less SSDs have to use a slice of the available flash memory, which impacts how fast everything works, especially when shifting lots of data around.
In those situations, the controller chip can get pretty hot and if the temperature rises too high, the chip will reduce the rate at which it works (aka thermal throttling). To prevent that from happening, Team Group has slapped a big chunk of aluminum on the A440 and claims that it lowers temperature by 15%, compared to having no heatsink at all.
There are much faster 1TB SSDs on the market (check out the very best SSDs for gaming here), but they all cost more than the T-Force Cardea A440. Team Group's drive isn't just good value for money, it's just a good SSD full stop. If you're looking to replace a small, old M.2 drive or switch everything to NVMe, then I don't think you'll be disappointed in the least with this one.
