Teamgroup T-Force Cardea A440 Pro Special Series 1TB SSD Review

Teamgroup's T-Force Cardea Z440 was among the first PCIe Gen4 drives we looked at back in 2020. Since then Teamgroup has built up quite a portfolio of Gen4 drives, the latest of which is the Cardea A440 Pro Special Series which comes with an ultra-thin Graphene heatshield and is aimed at PS5 users.

Whereas the T-Force Cardea Z440 used a combination of Phison's first-generation PS5016-E16 controller and 96-Layer 3D NAND, the Cardea A440 Pro Special Series uses a much more potent mix of Phison's PS5018-E18-41 8-channel controller and the latest Micron's 176-layer B47R 3D TLC NAND. At the time of writing this review the A440 Pro Special Series line-up consists of just three drives; 1TB (the drive we are reviewing), 2TB and a flagship 4TB drive.

The combination of the Phison PS5018-E18 controller linked to Micron’s B47R 176-layer 3D TLC NAND gives the Cardea A440 Pro Special Series a hefty performance advantage over the first generation Cardea Z440 (Phison PS5016-E16 controller and 96-layer NAND) we looked at. The official maximum Sequential read/write speeds of the Cardea A440 Pro Special Series are up to 7,200MB/s and up to 6,000MB/s compared to the up to 5,000MB/s and 4,400MB/s for read and writes respectively of the previous generation drive. The Cardea A440 Pro Special Series is rated at up to 1M IOPS for 4K random read and writes.

Using CrystalDiskMark 8 we could confirm the official Sequential read figure of 7,200MB/s with the best test figure of 7,449MB/s (default 0 fill) while the best write test figure of 5,878MB/s (default 0 fill) is just under the 6,000MB/s official maximum.

When it comes to 4K random performance, we couldn’t get close to the official maximums of 1,000,000 IOPS for read and writes, the best we saw during testing was 650,957 IOPS for reads and 541,979 IOPS for writes, both coming via testing with the default CrystalDiskMark Peak Performance Profile.

Teamgroup supplies a thin, self-adhesive graphene heatsink label for the drive which works pretty well, but if you are going to really push the drive then installing it under a motherboard heatsink cooler will give extra peace of mind.

The endurance of the drive is quoted as 700TB TBW and Teamgroup backs the drive with a 5-year warranty.

We found the 1TB Teamgroup T-Force Cardea A440 Pro Special Series for £188.26 (inc VAT) on Amazon UK HERE.

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Pros

• Overall performance.
• Graphene heatsink.
• Compatible with Sony's PlayStation 5.

Cons

• Not able to hit the maximum official random 4K figures under testing.

KitGuru says: Designed for use in Sony's PlayStation 5, Teamgroup's Cardea A440 Pro Special Series is a fast drive with good endurance but the price could do with a little tweaking to make it a bit more competitive.

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