TeamGroup T-Force CARDEA Z440 TUF 1 TB “Gamer” & MP44L 1 TB “Mainstream” Gen 4 M.2 SSDs Review

TeamGroup is the creator of some of the most high-quality memory products for the PC industry. They have come a long way since its inception in 1997 and went on to become one of the fastest-growing product manufacturers and a leading brand around the globe.

Since the arrival of DDR4 memory in the mainstream market, TeamGroup started a separate line of DIMM kits under their new T-Force brand. The T-Force brand is the more enthusiast and gamer-aimed memory series with a sheer focus on quality and performance.

The company later expanded the T-Force brand into its entire gaming portfolio which includes SSDs, gaming peripherals, and more.

T-FORCE is TEAM force. The red "T" on the logo of "TF" represents TEAMGROUP's passion for the storage products. The black "F" represents TEAMGROUP's over 18 years of promotion of storage products. The visual design of the perfect combination elegantly symbolizes a pair of flying wings. They represent that the high quality and extreme performance gaming products from TEAMGROUP are capable of allowing all gamers to break the speed limit and enjoy the ever-changing world of gaming.

Today, I will be taking a look at two unique SSDs under the Teamgroup SSD portfolio. First up we have the T-Force CAREA Z440 TUF which is designed in collaboration with ASUS's TUF brand and is focused on gamers while the second is the MP44L which is more of a mainstream solution with a new cooling technique that was introduced last year.

The T-Force CARDEA Z440 1 TB SSD is based on the NVMe SSD form factor and features the 2nd-generation BiSC4 96-layer 3D TLC NAND Flash technology. The Z440 SSDs are also based on the Gen 4 Phison PS5016-E16 controller. The SSD also comes with 1 GB of DDR4 SLC-Cache.

TeamGroup T-Force CARDEA Z440 TUF 1 TB has sequential read speeds of 5000 MB/s and write speeds of 4400 MB/s. The Random read speed of the drive is up to 750K IOPS and the write is 750K IOPS too. The endurance of the lineup is rated at 1800 TBW or 1,700,000 hours which should last a good amount of time with these drives. You are also looking at a 5-year limited warranty too.

The Teamgroup MP44L is based on the NVMe SSD form factor and features Micron's 176-Layer TLC NAND Flash technology. The Z440 SSDs are also based on the Gen 4 Phison E21T controller which is a cache-less design with no DRAM featured on the SSD module.

TeamGroup MP44L 1 TB has sequential read speeds of 5000 MB/s and write speeds of 4500 MB/s. The Random read speed of the drive is up to 525K IOPS and the write is 550K IOPS. The endurance of the lineup is rated at 600 TBW or 1,500,000 hours which should last a good amount of time with these drives. You are also looking at a 5-year limited warranty too.

Test Setup

Our test platform for this review consisted of an Intel Core i9-12900K  processor which ran at stock clocks on the Z690 AORUS Master motherboard. The platform was coupled with 32 GB of DDR5 memory from G.Skill (Trident Z5/ 16 GB x 2) and the ASUS ROG Thor 1200W PSU. For graphics, I used the MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X. This rounds up as a high-end platform for tests with modern-day SSDs.

Our test platform for this review consisted of an Intel Core i9-12900K processor which ran at stock clocks on the Z690 AORUS Master motherboard. The platform was coupled with 32 GB of DDR5 memory from G.Skill (Trident Z5/ 16 GB x 2) and the ASUS ROG Thor 1200W PSU. For graphics, I used the MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPRIM X. This rounds up as a high-end platform for tests with modern-day SSDs.

First up, we have the official performance stats for these drives as listed by their manufacturers. You can compare these stats with the rest of the drives I tested in the following chart:

AS SSD Benchmark download is a Windows 10 utility software program that tests the performance of solid-state drives. With its help, you can find out the speed of all installed SSDs and take care of any issues that the tests may reveal. The free app performs three separate tests to provide you with conclusive evidence on your driver's general behavior while it copies, reads, and writes data.  The app determines the access time of an SSD, along with its speed and performance capabilities

As the industry’s leading provider of high-performance storage & network connectivity products, ATTO has created a widely-accepted Disk Benchmark freeware software to help measure storage system performance. As one of the top tools utilized in the industry, Disk Benchmark identifies performance in hard drives, solid-state drives, RAID arrays as well as the host connection to attached storage. Top drive manufacturers, like Hitachi, build and test every drive using the ATTO Disk Benchmark.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturer's RAID controllers, storage controllers, host bus adapters (HBAs), hard drives, and SSD drives, and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

CrystalDiskMark is a disk benchmark software. It measures sequential reads/writes speed, random 512KB, 4KB, 4KB (Queue Depth=32) reads/writes speed, selects test data (Random, 0Fill, 1Fill),

To test the maximum average transfer speeds of the drives, I used a 100 GB file to test the limits.

Both the TeamGroup T-Force CARDEA Z440 TUF 1 TB and the MP44L 1 TB are Gen 4 SSDs and deliver what you'd call the step into high-end Gen 4 performance. You get the added heatsink with TUF's design choice but the Graphene heatsink on the MP44L does its job really well too. While the TUF runs slightly faster, it isn't a whole lot which means that if you are not a high-end user, the MP44L could be a decent budget option.

The TeamGroup MP44L 1 TB Gen 4 also comes in at just $61.99 US at Newegg while the heatsink less Z440 is available for a similar price point of $65.99 US at the same retailer. These are decent prices for these solutions and while the market is crowded with more options, these two SSDs are worthy choices at their current price point.