BTR recently received a 2TB Rocket 4 Plus SSD from Sabrent which is a very fast 7,000/6850MBps Read/Write PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 drive. Although its thin heatsink is perfect for the PlayStation 5 (PS5) and tight installations, Sabrent recommends using an external NVMe or PS5 heatsink to dissipate the heat generated to avoid thermal throttling and to maximize performance.

We put the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus through its paces against eight other SSDs: (1) a 2TB CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series (7,400/7,000MBps Gen 4 x4), (2) a 1TB CARDEA A440 (7,000/6000MBps Gen 4 x4), (3) a 2TB CARDEA Zero Z440 (5,000/4400MBps Gen 4 x4), (4) a 2TB CARDEA Ceramic C440 (5,000/4400MBps Gen 4 x4), (5) the 1TB CARDEA IOPS SSD (3,400/3000MBps, Gen 4 x3), (6) a midrange TeamGroup 1TB MP33 (1,800/1,500MBps, Gen 3 x4 SSD), (7) a 4TB M200 portable USB 3.2 Type C SSD (2,000/2,000MBps), and (8) a fast 1TB Delta MAX White RGB (560MBps/510MBps) SATA III SSD.

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is available from Sabrent for $299 but at the time of writing it’s offered with a 15% off promotion at Newegg for $254.99 (!) The T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series SSD is priced at Newegg at $359.99 for the 2TB version. The T-FORCE CARDEA A440 (vanilla) SSD is at Amazon for $249.99 for 2TB, but it comes with two heatsinks, the 2TB CARDEA Ceramic C440 is priced at $229.99, and the 2TB T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSD is available at Amazon at $227.99 for the 2TB version.

For additional price comparisons, the TeamGroup 2TB MP33 NVMe SSD is $145.99, the T-FORCE NVMe CARDEA IOPS is $132.33 and only offered in a 1TB capacity as is the SATA III Delta MAX at Amazon for $89.99 but it offers RGB lighting. The 4TB M200 Portable USB 3.2 Gen2 x2 Type C SSD is $527.99 while the 2TB version is $189.59.

Features & Specifications

Here are the features and specifications of the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2TB SSD which are taken directly from Sabrent’s website.

Features

• PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, NVMe 1.3 compliant. APST/ASPM/L1.2 support.
• Supports SMART and TRIM functions. Works in an enclosure.
• Wide flash compatibility. Uses TLC with DRAM.
• Advanced endurance features for a long drive lifespan.
• Upgradeable firmware and software support.
• 4.0-capable motherboard and M.2 heatsink are recommended, but the drive is backward compatible with PCIe 3.0 and 2.0 M.2 sockets.
• All Sabrent SSDs come with Sabrent Acronis True Image for Sabrent

Specifications

The 2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus specifications, based on CrystalDiskMark, boast up to 7,000 Read MB/s / 6,850 MB/s Write which are excellent for an current Gen 4 x4 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD and exceptional for gaming and most applications. The 2TB model is rated for a solid lifespan of 1,400 terabytes written backed by a five year warranty with registration, and it features S.M.A.R.T and Trim support.

Next, we unbox the Rocket 4 Plus and take a closer look at it.

Unboxing, Heatsink installation, and Temperatures Under Load

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus comes in a small box that advertises it as an advanced performance M.2 PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe SSD. Sabrent also sent us an aluminum heatsink for the PS5 console as well a copper/aluminum NVMe heatsink for the PC. As it turns out, we don’t have a PS5 nor do we need a NVMe heatsink – although we tested it – since the ASUS ROG Maximus Apex has a heavy duty heatsink integrated into the motherboard.

The back of the Rocket 4 Plus box doesn’t give any further details except to recommend visiting www.sabrent.com/rocket. In contrast, the PS5 heatsink details are spelled out on the back of the box.

Here is the Rocket 4 Plus box again next to the PC heatsink box which spells out its details.

The presentation of the Rocket 4 Plus is outstanding as the SSD comes in an aluminum jewel box style container with the installation instructions.

Pictured below are both sides of the Rocket 4 Plus.

Of course, the end user is not supposed to remove the heatsink or the paper on the back with a warning that the warranty is voided. We did it anyway to show the ICs below the heatsink and under the paper.

ICs are on both sides of the PCB unlike the single-sided Cardea A440 Pro Special Series. A Phison PS5018-E18 controller is coupled with Micron B47R NANAD and SK Hynix DDR4 DRAM to achieve its blazing fast 7,000MB/s specifications.

It is very unwise to operate the Rocket 4 Plus with only the foil heatsink as the heat generated by the ICs will throttle performance as temperatures will easily exceed 80C. The $24.99 Rocket NVMe heatsink – purchased separately – is a complete easy-to-install kit that will securely lock down using an M.2 screw to the motherboard following the simple instructions.

Unfortunately, we were unable to install the Rocket 4 NVMe heatsink into our Apex motherboard as its twist locks could not hold it down. So for the following picture, we installed it in our i9-10900K PC. It’s a very good-looking heatsink and quite effective also.

We benchmarked the Rocket 4 Plus in our Apex motherboard using its included 5.6oz (159g) heatsink. In comparison, the Rocket NVMe heatsink weighs in at 4oz (115g) which also makes it a very solid cooling solution.

Above are the Apex MB and Rocket NVMe heatsinks compared.

If you have a PS5, the Rocket 4 Plus is an ideal fast SSD and a $19.99 heatsink is also available for it.

Temperatures

Do not operate your Rocket 4 Plus SSD without a heatsink unless you are only going to use it for light duty or you will get temperatures approaching 80C with performance throttling.

Using the massive NVMe heatsink included with the ASUS ROG Maximus Apex motherboard, we never saw temperatures rise above 40C. Using the Rocket NVMe heatsink, the highest temperatures we observed was 46C under the most demanding conditions.

After installing the Rocket 4 Plus, the user may need to format it before use. If you are planning to clone it, make sure both disks are GUID or convert one of them first. You can use the free Acronis True Image cloning software for Sabrent included with every Sabrent SSD purchase.

Lets look at our test configuration next.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-12900KF (HyperThreading and Turbo boost at stock settings)..
• ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Apex LGA 1700 motherboard (Intel Z690 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 5.0, DDR5)
• T-FORCE DELTA RGB PC5-51200 6400MHz DDR5 CL40 2x16GB kit, supplied by TeamGroup
• GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, supplied by NVIDIA
• Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, supplied by Sabrent
• T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• T-FORCE CARDEA A440 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• T-FORCE T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• T-FORCE CARDEA Ceramic C440 2TB PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSD
• T-FORCE CARDEA IOPS 1TB PCIe Gen 4 x3 NVMe SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• TeamGroup MP33 1TB NVMe Gen 3 x4 PCIe SSD
• T-FORCE M200 4TB Portable Gen 2 x2 USB 3.2 Type C SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• T-FORCE DELTA MAX White 1TB SATA III SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• Super Flower LedEx, 1200W Platinum 80+ power supply unit
• MSI MAG Series CORELIQUID 360R (AIO) 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• Corsair 5000D ATX mid-tower (plus 1 x 140mm fan; 2 x 120mm Noctua fans)
• BenQ EW3270U 32? 4K HDR 60Hz FreeSync monitor

Test Configuration – Software

• Gaming results show loading time in seconds and lower is better
• Windows 11 Professional edition; latest updates/build
• Latest DirectX
• All benchmarking programs are updated to their latest versions
• IOmeter

PC Game & Level Loading Suite

• PCMark 8 (World of Warcraft & Battlefield 3)
• Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Benchmark – loading times of five different levels
• Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker Benchmark – loading times of five different levels
• 3DMark Storage Benchmark (Battlefield V, Call of Duty, Overwatch)

Synthetic Benching Tests & Suites

• SiSoft Sandra 2020/2021
• AIDA64
• PCMark 10 Pro version courtesy of UL (Full Storage Benchmark, Express, Extended)
• PCMark 8
• SPECworkstation3 (3.0.4) Benchmarks
• Anvil’s Storage Utilities
• CrystalDiskMark
• TxBENCH Basic
• HD Tune
• AS SSD
• HD Tach
• 100GB File Copy Timed Test

Let’s head to our benching results.

Benchmarking the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus SSD

Benchmarking SSDs is not an exact science as there is variability between runs, and different benchmarks may show different results depending on how they run their tests and how up-to-date the benchmarks are. However, by using enough real world and synthetic tests, it may be possible to get a good idea of the relative performance across all nine tested drives. For benchmark results, the drives are listed in the following order on the charts:

1. Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSD
2. T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSD
3. T-FORCE CARDEA A440 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSD
4. T-FORCE CARDEA Ceramic C440 1TB PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSD
5. T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSD
6. T-FORCE CARDEA IOPS 1TB PCIe Gen 3 x4 NVMe SSD
7. TeamGroup MP33 1TB NVMe Gen 3 x4 PCIe SSD
8. T-FORCE M200 4TB Portable Gen 2 x2 USB 3.2 Type C SSD
9. T-FORCE Delta MAX SATA III 1TB SSD

We did not set up Windows on the Delta MAX SSD, so not all of the benchmarks could be run on it. All of the drives will have their results summarized by multiple charts although we will only show the details for the PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSDs. Let’s start first with UL’s 3DMark storage benchmark.

3DMark Storage Benchmark

3DMark’s Professional version by UL includes a Storage Benchmark (optional in the Advanced version) which also measures the time it takes to load several popular games. We only show the Gen 4 x4 SSD detailed results but will summarize all of them.

First, the Rocket 4 Plus results with 4167.

Next, the A440 Pro Special Series results with 3229. Now, the CARDEA A440 results with 3844. The CARDEA Ceramic C440 scores 3009.

Finally, the ZERO 440 results with 2606.Here’s the summary chart of all nine of our tested drives.

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is the standout as the fastest SSD using the 3DMark Storage benchmark by a wide margin, followed by the CARDEA A440, the A440 Pro Special Series, the C440, the Z440, the IOPS, the MP33, the portable Type C SSD, and the SATA III DELTA MAX.

Next up, another important UL benchmark suite, PCMark 10, including its benching suites – Express, Extended, and the Full System Drive Benchmark.

PCMark 10 Professional

UL (formerly Futuremark) has been a developer and publisher of PC benchmark applications for nearly two decades. Although PCMark benches are synthetic suites, they provide a good measure of system performance. PCMark 10 was primarily developed for Windows 10 and it builds upon the PCMark 8 suite for a package of vendor-neutral home and office benchmarks.

The regular version of PCMark 10 misses several key elements such as detailed storage testing, but the Professional version, which we use courtesy of UL, includes a storage benchmark and a full system drive benchmark. In addition, We use both PCMark 10’s Express and Extended suite.

First up is the Full System Drive Benchmark.

Full System Drive Benchmark

The CARDEA ZERO Z440 scores 3396. Here’s the summary chart of all of our tested drives.

The Rocket 4 Plus is the second fastest SSD after the Cardea A440. On to PCMark 10.

PCMark 10 Express

First, the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus scores 7292.

Below are the Rocket 4 Plus online validated score which gives more detailed results.

Next, the A440 Pro Special Series results with 7468. Below is the CARDEA A440 Express score with 7480. The CARDEA Ceramic C440 Express score is 7188.

The Z440 scores 7324.

The summary chart is presented after the Extended scores.

PCMark 10 Extended

First up, the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus Extended score with 13459.

Next the Rocket 4 Plus online details.

The CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series Extended score is 13257. Next, the CARDEA A440 Extended score is 13452. The CARDEA Ceramic C440 Extended score is 13384.

Finally, the CARDEA ZERO Z440 Extended score is 13154.

Here’s the summary chart.

In the Express suite, the Rocket 4 Plus trails most of the PCIe drives except for the Cardea C440. In the more demanding Extended suite, the Rocket 4 Plus is the fastest SSD. The Delta MAX SATA III SSD could not be tested since Windows is not set up on it.

Let’s check out the older PCMark 8 benchmark suite which also uses dedicated storage tests.

PCMARK 8

Finally, the CARDEA ZERO Z440 scores 4973. World of Warcraft loaded in 58.4 seconds and Battlefield 3 loaded in 134.3 seconds.

The individual benchmarks take much longer but they are more accurate. The numbers at the top right of the chart represent the time the test took to complete and they are presented below without comment.

Now the CARDEA A440.

We test the CARDEA Ceramic C440 SSD.

Finally, the CARDEA ZERO Z440 detailed results, the last of our PCIe 4.0 SSDs.

Below is presented the summary chart.

Let’s check out what is probably the most popular benchmark for ranking SSDs and HDDs, CrystalDiskMark.

CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4

CrystalDiskMark is a HDD benchmark utility for your drives that measure sequential and random read/write speeds. Here are some key features of “CrystalDiskMark”:

• Measure sequential reads/writes speed
• Measure random 512KB, 4KB, 4KB (Queue Depth=32) reads/writes speed
• Results given in IOPS or MB/s

First up is the Rocket 4 Plus and notice that it exceeds its Read speed advertised specifications of 7,000MB/s but falls a bit short of its 6,850MB/s Write spec. It appears that most SSD manufacturers use an empty second drive for their testing whereas BTR does real world testing on primary drives that are in use with Windows 11 installed

Next, we test the T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series SSD which also falls short of its published specifications of 7,400MBps/7,000MBps for the same reasons as above.

Lastly the CARDEA ZERO Z440 results.

Here is the summary chart highlighting the most often quoted Read/Write performance data. Higher is better.

TxBENCH

TxBENCH is similar to CrystalDiskMark but with additional features including secure erase. According to the website, “It not only measures the performance of storage easily but also performs detailed speed measurements based on specified access patterns and long-period speed measurements. It also allows you to see each drive’s supported features, enabled features, and S.M.A.R.T. information.”

First up are the Rocket 4 Plus TxBench results.

Next up, the A440 Pro Special Series SSD. The A440 results are below. Finally, the CARDEA Ceramic C440 results.

Finally, the CARDEA ZERO Z440 results. The TxBENCH rankings are summarized by the chart below.

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus HD Tune results are below.

HD Tune benchmark results are summarized by the chart below.

Next up are the T-FORCE CARDEA A440 AS SSD results. Below, the T-FORCE CARDEA Ceramic C440 AS SSD results.

Last up is the CARDEA ZERO Z440.

Here is the AS SSD summary chart.

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is the overall highest scoring SSD but it has the slowest game copy speeds.

HD Tach

HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices that was developed by Simpli Software. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and low level Windows interfaces to determine the physical performance of the device. It is no longer supported and needs to be run in compatibility mode for Windows 10.

We present the benchmarks first with the Quick benchmark (8MB zones) on the left and the Long benchmark (32MB zones) on the Right.

The CARDEA ZERO Z440 gives an average read of 2119.8MB/s for the Quick bench and 2210.3MB/s for the Long bench. Below are the HD Tach Disk benches summarized in a chart comparing our nine drives. For read speeds, higher is better but for access times, lower is better.

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus scores fifth in the Quick bench and third in the Long bench.

Next we look at game/level loading speeds.

The Game/Level Loading Timed Results – FFXIV

Game and game level loading time results are difficult to measure precisely but generally SSDs perform similarly with regard to game loading times and they all load significantly faster than any HDD. Even SSHDs require loading the same level or program over-and-over to get quicker. We accurately tested 5 levels and overall loading times by using the Final Fantasy XIV: Stormbringer & Endwalker benchmarks.

Shadowbringers Benchmark

The Shadowbringers Benchmark will not only give you accurate framerates averages, it precisely times how long it takes to load each of 5 different levels and the total loading time. We used maximum settings.

Let’s start with the Shadowbringer benchmark using the Rocket 4 Plus. Total Loading times are 7.495 seconds.

Here’s the Shadowbringer summary chart.

Although all the PCIe SSDs are fast, the Rocket 4 Plus SSD is the fastest at loading Shadowbringers. We also use the newer Endwalker benchmark.

Endwalker Benchmark

The Endwalker benchmark is just as detailed as Shadowbringers and is a very accurate test of loading game and level times. We test using the Endwalker benchmark with the Rocket 4 Plus.

Total Loading times are 7.475 seconds.

Here is the Endwalker summary chart.

Although we see a 2-3 second difference between our fastest SSD and our slowest SATA III SSD with an additional second required to load from an external drive, the fastest SSD is the Rocket 4 Plus.

It may make an immersion difference for getting right back into the game. However, until developers start to target SSDs for PC game storage, only then we may see SSDs fully achieve the game loading performance they are capable of on Windows. In the meantime, PS5 gamers can take full advantage of the Rocket 4 Plus fast loading speeds.

Faster is better when a gamer wants to get right back into a game. Lets look at file copy speeds next.

File Copy 104GB

File copy speeds are important to gamers especially when they want to quickly transfer their game files from one location to another. We copy a 104GB folder containing Horizon 5 from its Steam folder to a desktop folder which is something we do regularly when setting up Steam games on multiple PCs. Pay careful attention to the charts (in green) that show the consistency and speed of file copies. They tend to show the ups and downs where each SSD runs out of cache and how long it takes to empty and refill it.

104GB File Copy

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus took 1 minutes and 36.0 seconds to copy 104GB.

The A440 Pro Speciall Series SSD took 1 minutes and 17.0 seconds. to copy 104GB. The A440 took 1 minutes and 44.0 seconds to copy 104GB. The Ceramic C440 took 1 minutes and 59 seconds for the same copy.

The CARDEA ZERO Z440 took 1 minutes and 39.0 seconds. to copy 104GB. Let’s summarize our copy times using a chart.

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is the second fastest SSD after the A440 Pro for copying 104GB. However, even a SATA III SSD is much faster than any HDD or SSHD for copying large files. Consider taking a nap if you are going to copy 104GB using a hard drive.

Finally, let’s revisit game/level loading times plus all of our Summary charts and then reach our conclusion.

Summary Charts and Conclusion

Here are all of the gaming and summary charts again for easy reference followed by our conclusion.

The Game/Level Loading Time Results

Game and game level loading time results are difficult to measure precisely (such as by using a stopwatch) but our tests are far more consistent. Here are the World of Warcraft and Battlefield 3 loading times again as measured precisely by PCMark 8’s storage test and accurately by Final Fantasy XIV: Stormbringer/Endwalker’s benchmarks. Lower (quicker/faster) loading times (measured in seconds) are better.

3DMark’s Storage Benchmark also provides precise SSD bandwidth, loading times, game record, install, and save time comparisons.

All nine SSDs load games quickly but the Generation 4 x4 PCIe SSDs are generally faster than Generation 3 x4 and stand out from SATA III and external SSDs. Overall, the Rocket 4 Plus SSD is the fastest SSD for loading the games we benchmarked.

When PC game developers start to target SSDs for game storage, only then may we see SSDs achieve the super-fast game loading performance they are capable of. Until then, PlayStation 5 gamers may take full advantage of the Rocket 4 Plus and other PCIe 4.0 fast SSD loading speeds.

Non-Gaming Summary Charts

Here are all of the summary charts presented again in one place.

A gamer who wishes to have the very fastest PC will choose an internal PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSD, and three SSDs stand out as the fastest drives – the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus and both CARDEA Ceramic A440 SSDs. All three are faster than the CARDEA C440 and CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSDs. The CARDEA IOPS Gen 4 x3 fits in next well ahead of the TeamGroup MP33 or M200 Portable SSDs, and finally the Delta MAX SATA III SSD is almost always in last place.

For gaming and for regular tasks on current Intel platforms, any SSD will provide decent game and level loading performance well above that of mechanical hard drives or even hybrid (SSHD)drives, but a PCIe 4.0 NVMe Gen 4 x4 will provide the highest performance.

Let’s head for our conclusion.

The Conclusion & Verdict

We believe that 1TB is currently the minimum storage capacity for a gamer that includes the operating system since PC games have grown very large and 2TB is probably ideal. It is not yet mandatory to use a SSD for gaming if you have a ton of patience.

Games do not usually perform significantly better on SSDs since most PC developers still target HDDs for game performance. However, games generally take a lot longer to load from a HDD or SSHD than they do from any internal SATA III drive or even from an external USB 3.0 SSD. If a gamer wants to get right back into the game, any SSD will improve immersion and decrease frustration compared with using a HDD or SSHD.

Windows 10/11 have become painful to use when installed on a mechanical or even on a hybrid solid state/hard disk drive. Indexing, Search, or anti-malware Windows programs may saturate the bandwidth of a mechanical drive, and even downloading or updating Steam games will slow your PC to an irritating crawl. This will not happen using a SSD. And for maximum performance with the least frustration, using a PCIe NVMe SSD is the only way to fly.

Let’s recap PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 pricing. The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus (7,000/6850 MBps) is available from Sabrent for $299 but at the time of writing it’s offered with a 15% off promotion at Newegg for $254.99. The T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series SSD (7400/7000MBps) is priced at Newegg at $359.99 for the 2TB version. The vanilla T-FORCE CARDEA A440 SSD (7,000/6,900MBps) is at Amazon for $249.99 for 2TB and it comes with two heatsinks, the 2TB CARDEA Ceramic C440 (5,000/4,400MBps) is priced at $229.99, and the 2TB T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSD (5,000/4,400MBps) is available at Amazon at $227.99 for the 2TB version.

We believe that spending the extra money is worth it for a fast 2TB NVMe Gen 4 x4 SSD over Gen 3 x4 as long as your motherboard supports PCIe 4.0, and the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is a great choice especially at the Newegg sale price of $254.99. If you have an integrated NVMe motherboard heatsink, the Rocket 4 Plus is an especially great choice as the fastest game loading SSD we have tested so far.

Of course, gamers on a budget should also look for sales. Because of today’s close pricing and competition, choosing an SSD is easier than ever. Based on performance and price, we recommend the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus as a competitively-priced blazing-fast SSD. A five year warranty backed by Sabrent insures that a player will enjoy fast performance for years to come as long as you register the product.

Pros

• 5-year warranty (if registered) backed by Sabrent support
• Fastest game/level loading speeds and very fast large file copy speeds
• Fast Write and Read speeds
• The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is priced competitively at $299 and an awesome buy for $259 with the Newegg promotion
• Thin foil heatsink fits under integrated motherboard NVMe heatsinks
• Sabrent Acronis True Image cloning software for Sabrent included

Cons

• The included graphene heatsink is inadequate to prevent throttling under heavy load. Use an aftermarket or integrated MB heatsink
• You have to register the product to get the full 5 year warranty; if not, you get 1 year

Next up, a VR review of the RX 6650 XT and Rodrigo is working on a GeForce driver performance analysis. Stay tuned.

Happy Gaming!

BTR recently received a 2TB T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSD from TeamGroup which is an older PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 drive that appears to be particularly useful for motherboards with integrated NVMe heatsinks because of its thin graphene foil cooling solution. SSD (Solid State Drive) technology is continually improving and its pricing remains reasonable as speed and capacities increase for gamers who need more storage as games grow larger. CARDEA ZERO Z440 is a fast 5,000MBps/4,400 MBps SSD that we put it through its paces against seven other SSDs. We especially want to see how it compares especially in PC gaming with our other three NVMe Gen 4 x4 SSDs – a 2TB 7,400MBps/7000MBps SSD, a 1TB 7,000MBps/6,000MBps SSD, and another 2TB 5,000 MBps/4,400 MBps SSD.

We will also focus on its performance besides comparing it with five NVMe/PCIe SSDs, a portable USB 3.2 SSD, and a fast SATA III SSD: (1) a 2TB CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series (7,400/7,000MBps Gen 4 x4), (2) a 1TB CARDEA A440 (7,000/6000MBps Gen 4 x4), (3) a 2TB CARDEA Ceramic C440 (5,000/4400MBps Gen 4 x4), (4) the 1TB CARDEA IOPS SSD (3,400/3000MBps, Gen 4 x3), (5) a now midrange TeamGroup 1TB MP33 (1,800/1,500MBps, Gen 3 x4 SSD), (6) a 4TB M200 portable USB 3.2 Type C SSD (2,000/2,000MBps), and (7) a fast 1TB Delta MAX White RGB (560MBps/510MBps) SATA III SSD.

The T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSD is available in 1TB and 2TB capacities, priced at Amazon at $227.99 for the 2TB version (and at $119.99 for the 1TB version). The T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series SSD is priced at Newegg at $287.99 for the 2TB version. The T-FORCE CARDEA A440 (vanilla) SSD is at Amazon for $299.99 for 2TB, but it comes with two heatsinks, and the 2TB CARDEA Ceramic C440 is priced at $229.99. They are all in similar price ranges to other comparable fast PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSDs currently available.

For additional price comparisons, the TeamGroup 2TB MP33 NVMe SSD is $145.99, the T-FORCE NVMe CARDEA IOPS is $117.82 and only offered in a 1TB capacity as is the SATA III Delta MAX at Amazon for $109.99 but it offers RGB lighting. The 4TB M200 Portable USB 3.2 Gen2 x2 Type C SSD is $659.99 while the 2TB version is $267.99.

Features & Specifications

Here are the features and specifications of the T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSD which are taken directly from TeamGroup’s website.

Features

• M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen4 x4 solid state drive. Supports the latest platform AMD X570
• Excellent performance – Read speed is up to 5,000 MB/s^[1]. Enhances the speed and performance of the overall system
• Three heat dissipation elements – the combination of graphene and copper can provide excellent heat dissipation. 0.2mm ultra-thin and patented cooling module can avoid interference during installation
• Multiple protection, smart management technology – effectively monitors the status of solid state drive and maximizes its performance
• Product warranty – five-year product warranty with free technical support service
• Taiwan Invention Patent (number: I703921)
• China Utility Patent (number: CN 211019739 U)

Specifications

The specifications, based on CrystalDiskMark, boast up to 5,000 Read MB/s / 4,400 MB/s Write for the 2TB version and the same speeds for the 1TB version which are very good for an older Gen 4 x4 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD. Although it features a SLC cache that will degrade beyond its capacity threshold and isn’t capable of sustaining its write performance until full, it is exceptional for gaming and most applications. The 2TB model is rated for a solid lifespan of 3,600 terabytes written backed by a five year guarantee, and it features S.M.A.R.T and Trim support.

We were curious as to why TeamGroup picked the name, “Cardea“. In Greek and Roman mythology, Cardea was the ‘Goddess of the Hinge’, a family protector who kept evil spirits from entering their homes. Cardea comes from the Latin word ‘cardo’, which means hinge, pole, axis, or juncture with the same root as “cardiology”, which means connected to the heart/center. Cardo was also fundamental to Roman city planning. It appears that a SSD/storage is at the heart of a PC and essential to it.

Next we unbox the T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSD and take a closer look at it.

Unboxing, Heatsink installation, and Temperatures Under Load

The T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 comes in a small box that advertises PCIe 4.0 and a copper graphine heatsink as pictured on the front. Here is the back of the box which warns the buyer that the up to 5,000 MB/s / 4,400 MB/s transfer speeds can vary according to hardware/software conditions and are only to be used for basic reference. It offers a 5-year warranty and demonstrates the heatsink – a thin copper-colored Graphene foil – that will allow the SSD to be placed behind a video card, under an integrated motherboard heatsink, or into the PS5. Here is a closer look at the CARDEA ZERO Z440 in its inner packaging with the heatsink on top of the NVMe SSD. The front of the CARDEA ZERO Z440 carries a sticker which warns that the warranty may be void if removed. It’s pretty meaningless as a restriction since there are modules on both sides of the PCB.

The ICs are on both sides of the PCB and the Z440 Pro uses a second-generation 96-layer 3D BiCS4 NAND manufacturing process. It uses Phison’s PS5016-E16 to achieve its rated speeds.

The CARDEA ZERO Z440 comes with just one heatsink unlike the regular A440 which comes with a second finned heatsink. The graphene heatsink is covered with a lot of unnecessary text, but it is designed to be thin and hidden behind a video card. It is also ideal for installation in a PlayStation 5.

The graphene heatsink is good-looking and easily attaches to the SSD. Installing the heatsink is simple; remove the plastic covering from the sticky thermal interface material and apply it to the heatsink taking care to cover all the modules. It is important to use a heatsink as temperatures will easily exceed 80C without one. But using the graphene heatsink behind a video card only drops temperatures by about 5C. Stressing the ZERO Z440 by copying 100GB over and over resulted in temps of 80C. The ZERO Z440 is as difficult to cool as CARDEA Ceramic C440 (5,000MBps/4400MBps) which also has ICs on both sides of its PCB and which also runs too hot to be cooled by its supplied graphene heatsink. A ceramic heatsink would have been a better choice.

We measured the temperatures using Crystal Disk Info and Hardware Info 64 which were in agreement, and the SSD became much too hot to touch. In fact, we saw significant loss of performance as the SSD throttled its speeds in an attempt to cool down. We also tested the CARDEA ZERO Z440 with the finned heatsink the A440 came with, and temperatures stayed well below 70C under the most demanding conditions without throttling.

Just as with the CARDEA A440 Special Series, we didn’t know why TeamGroup decided not to include an additional heatsink with the regular A440 but not with the ZERO Z440, so we let them know that we found the graphene heatsink inadequate. They replied (regarding the A440 Special Series which also applies to the Z440):

“We suggest that you use the NVMe heatsink that comes with ASUS ROG Maximus Apex motherboard, and also please suggest users do it this way also.

The CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series SSD is originally designed within the PS5 environment, so when it comes with higher data transfers, the temperature will go higher than expected.”

So the Z440 should be fine with a PS5 but not with a PC. If your motherboard has an integrated NVMe heatsink, you will want to use it. If not, buy an aftermarket NVMe heatsink if you are doing intensive SSD work. They should install easily over the ZERO Z440’s graphene heatsink to keep it cool and it will never throttle due to heat. Using the massive NVMe heatsink included with the ASUS ROG Maximus Apex motherboard (above), we never saw temperatures rise above 50C. After installing the CARDEA ZERO Z440, the user may need to format it before use. If you are planning to clone it, make sure both disks are GUID or convert one of them first. Lets look at our test configuration next.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-12900KF (HyperThreading and Turbo boost at stock settings)..
• ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Apex LGA 1700 motherboard (Intel Z690 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 5.0, DDR5)
• T-FORCE DELTA RGB PC5-51200 6400MHz DDR5 CL40 2x16GB kit, supplied by TeamGroup
• GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, supplied by NVIDIA
• T-FORCE T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• T-FORCE CARDEA A440 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• T-FORCE CARDEA Ceramic C440 2TB PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSD
• T-FORCE CARDEA IOPS 1TB PCIe Gen 4 x3 NVMe SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• TeamGroup MP33 1TB NVMe Gen 3 x4 PCIe SSD
• T-FORCE M200 4TB Portable Gen 2 x2 USB 3.2 Type C SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• T-FORCE DELTA MAX White 1TB SATA III SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• Super Flower LedEx, 1200W Platinum 80+ power supply unit
• MSI MAG Series CORELIQUID 360R (AIO) 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• Corsair 5000D ATX mid-tower (plus 1 x 140mm fan; 2 x 120mm Noctua fans)
• BenQ EW3270U 32? 4K HDR 60Hz FreeSync monitor

Test Configuration – Software

• Gaming results show loading time in seconds and lower is better
• Windows 11 Professional edition; latest updates/build
• Latest DirectX
• All benchmarking programs are updated to their latest versions
• IOmeter

PC Game & Level Loading Suite

• PCMark 8 (World of Warcraft & Battlefield 3)
• Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Benchmark – loading times of five different levels
• Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker Benchmark – loading times of five different levels
• 3DMark Storage Benchmark (Battlefield V, Call of Duty, Overwatch)

Synthetic Benching Tests & Suites

• SiSoft Sandra 2020/2021
• AIDA64
• PCMark 10 Pro version courtesy of UL (Full Storage Benchmark, Express, Extended)
• PCMark 8
• SPECworkstation3 (3.0.4) Benchmarks
• Anvil’s Storage Utilities
• CrystalDiskMark
• TxBENCH Basic
• HD Tune
• AS SSD
• HD Tach
• 100GB File Copy Timed Test

Let’s head to our benching results.

Benchmarking the CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSD

Benchmarking SSDs is not an exact science as there is variability between runs, and different benchmarks may show different results depending on how they run their tests and how up-to-date the benchmarks are. However, by using enough real world and synthetic tests, it may be possible to get a good idea of the relative performance across all eight tested drives. For benchmark results, the drives are listed in the following order on the charts:

1. T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSD
2. T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSD
3. T-FORCE CARDEA A440 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSD
4. T-FORCE CARDEA Ceramic C440 1TB PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSD
5. T-FORCE CARDEA IOPS 1TB PCIe Gen 3 x4 NVMe SSD
6. TeamGroup MP33 1TB NVMe Gen 3 x4 PCIe SSD
7. T-FORCE M200 4TB Portable Gen 2 x2 USB 3.2 Type C SSD
8. T-FORCE Delta MAX SATA III 1TB SSD

We did not set up Windows on the Delta MAX SSD, so not all of the benchmarks could be run on it. All of the drives will have their results summarized by multiple charts although we will only show the details for the PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 SSDs. Let’s start first with 3DMark’s storage benchmark.

3DMark Storage Benchmark

3DMark’s Professional version by UL includes a Storage Benchmark (optional in the Advanced version) which also measures the time it takes to load several popular games. We are only to show the Gen 4 x4 SSD detailed results but will summarize all of them.

First, the ZERO 440 results with 2606.Next, the A440 Pro Special Series results with 3229. Now, the CARDEA A440 results with 3844. Finally, the CARDEA Ceramic C440 scores 3009. Here’s the summary chart of all eight of our tested drives.

The ZERO Z440 is the slowest of the PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x5 SSDs. The CARDEA A440 is a standout as the fastest SSD using this benchmark, followed by the A440 Pro Special Series, the C440, the Z440, the IOPS, the MP33, the portable Type C SSD, and the SATA III DELTA MAX.

Next up, another important UL benchmark suite, PCMark 10 including the full benching suites – Express, Extended, and the Full System Drive Benchmark.

PCMark 10 Professional

UL (formerly Futuremark) has been a developer and publisher of PC benchmark applications for nearly two decades. Although PCMark benches are synthetic suites, they provide a good measure of system performance. PCMark 10 was primarily developed for Windows 10 and it builds upon the PCMark 8 suite for a package of vendor-neutral home and office benchmarks.

The regular version of PCMark 10 misses several key elements such as detailed storage testing, but the Professional version, which we use courtesy of UL, includes a storage benchmark and a full system drive benchmark. In addition, We use both PCMark 10’s Express and Extended suite. First up is the Full System Drive Benchmark.

Full System Drive Benchmark

The CARDEA ZERO Z440 scores 2162.

Here’s the summary chart of all of our tested drives. The CARDEA ZERO Z440 is the slowest of the PCIe 4.0 drives but well ahead of the PCIe 3.0 drives. On to PCMark 10.

PCMark 10 Express

First the CARDEA ZERO Z440 scores 7324.

Now the ZERO Z440 online validated score which gives more detailed results.

Next, the A440 Pro Special Series results with 7468. Below is the CARDEA A440 Express score with 7480. Finally, the CARDEA Ceramic C440 Express score is 7188. The summary chart is presented after the Extended scores.

PCMark 10 Extended

First up, the CARDEA ZERO Z440 Extended score is 13154.

Next, the ZERO Z440 online results.

The CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series Extended scores 13257. Next, the CARDEA A440 Extended score is 13452. The CARDEA Ceramic C440 Extended score is 13384. Here’s the summary chart.

The Delta MAX SATA III SSD could not be tested since Windows is not set up on it. In the Express suite, the A440’s score generally the fastest while the CARDEA ZERO Z440 scores above the CARDEA C440 but is behind the PCIe 3.0 Gen 3 x4 SSDs in the more demanding Extended suite.

Let’s check out the older PCMark 8 benchmark suite which also uses dedicated storage tests.

PCMARK 8

Now the CARDEA A440.

Finally, we test the CARDEA Ceramic C440 SSD, the last of our PCIe 4.0 SSDs.

Below is presented the summary chart.

Higher scores denote faster drives and as usual, both CARDEA A440 SSDs both standout, followed by the CARDEA ZERO Z440, the CARDEA Ceramic C440 SSD, and then followed in order by the CARDEA IOPS, the MP33 SSD, the Type C portable, and the SATA III Delta MAX in last place as usual.

TxBENCH

TxBENCH is similar to CrystalDiskMark but with additional features including secure erase. According to the website, “It not only measures the performance of storage easily but also performs detailed speed measurements based on specified access patterns and long-period speed measurements. It also allows you to see each drive’s supported features, enabled features, and S.M.A.R.T. information.”

First, the CARDEA ZERO Z440.

Next up, the A440 Pro Special Series SSD. The A440 results are below.

Finally, the CARDEA Ceramic C440 results.

The results are very similar to the CrystalDiskMark benchmarks but with the CARDEA ZERO Z440 edging out the C440.

Next up are the T-FORCE CARDEA A440 AS SSD results. Finally, the T-FORCE CARDEA Ceramic C440AS SSD results.

Although the CARDEA ZERO Z440 has the fastest game copy time, both of the CARDEA A440 SSDs are first in Read/Write with the CARDEA ZERO Z440 ahead of the CARDEA C440, followed by the IOPS, the MP33, the portable, and finally the Delta MAX.

HD Tach

HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices that was developed by Simpli Software. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and low level Windows interfaces to determine the physical performance of the device. It is no longer supported and needs to be run in compatibility mode for Windows 10.

We present the benchmarks first with the Quick benchmark (8MB zones) on the left and the Long benchmark (32MB zones) on the Right.

The CARDEA ZERO Z440 gives an average read of 2332.5MB/s for the Quick bench and 2174.1MB/s for the Long bench.

Below are the HD Tach Disk benches summarized in a chart comparing our eight drives. For read speeds, higher is better but for access times, lower is better.

The CARDEA A440 Pro again generally scores the fastest in HD Tach ahead of the A440, although the CARDEA ZERO Z440 is ahead of the CARDEA C440 which trades blows with the vanilla A440, followed by the IOPS, then by the MP33 SSD, the portable SSD, and the SATA III Delta MAX takes last place as usual.

Next we look at game/level loading speeds.

The Game/Level Loading Timed Results – FFXIV

Game and game level loading time results are difficult to measure precisely but generally SSDs perform similarly with regard to game loading times and they all load significantly faster than any HDD. Even SSHDs require loading the same level or program over-and-over to get quicker. We tested 5 levels and overall loading times accurately by using the Final Fantasy XIV: Stormbringer & Endwalker benchmarks.

Shadowbringers Benchmark

The Shadowbringers Benchmark will not only give you accurate framerates averages, it precisely times how long it takes to load each of 5 different levels and the total loading time. We used maximum settings.

Let’s start with the Shadowbringer benchmark using the CARDEA ZERO Z440. Total Loading times are 9.5555 seconds. Here’s the Shadowbringer summary chart.

The CARDEA ZERO Z440 trades blows with the PCIe 3.0 IOPS and is slightly slower than the C440 which in turn are well behind the A440 SSDs.

We also use the newer Endwalker benchmark.

Endwalker Benchmark

The Endwalker benchmark is just as detailed as Shadowbringers and is a very accurate test of loading game and level times.

We test using the Endwalker benchmark with the CARDEA ZERO Z440. Total Loading times are 9.376 seconds. Here is the Endwalker summary chart..

For all 4 games and from multiple levels tested, both CARDEA A440s stand out, followed generally by the CARDEA ZERO Z440 and C440, the IOPS, the MP33, the Delta MAX, and then the USB 3.2 Type C portable SSD.

We see a 2-3 second difference between our fastest SSD and our slowest SATA III SSD with an additional second required to load from an external drive. It may make an immersion difference for getting right back into the game. However, until developers start to target SSDs for PC game storage, only then we may see SSDs fully achieve the game loading performance they are capable of on Windows. In the meantime, PS5 gamers can take full advantage of either A440’s fast loading speeds. No matter what, faster is better when a gamer wants to get right back into a game.

Lets look at file copy speeds next.

File Copy 104GB

File copy speeds are important to gamers especially when they want to quickly transfer their game files from one location to another. We copy a 104GB folder containing Horizon 5 from its Steam folder to a desktop folder which is something we do regularly when setting up Steam games on multiple PCs. Pay careful attention to the charts (in green) that show the consistency and speed of file copies. They tend to show the ups and downs where each SSD runs out of cache and how long it takes to empty and refill it.

104GB File Copy

CARDEA ZERO Z440 took 1 minutes and 39.0 seconds. to copy 104GB.

The A440 Pro Speciall Series SSD took 1 minutes and 17.0 seconds. to copy 104GB. The A440 took 1 minutes and 44.0 seconds to copy 104GB. The Ceramic C440 took 1 minutes and 59 seconds for the same copy.

The CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series SSD excels at copying well ahead of the three other Gen 4 x4 SSDs with the CARDEA ZERO Z440 beating the vanilla A440 and the C440. The IOPS comes in fourth place well ahead of the MP200 portable and MP33 SSDs which are in turn faster than the Delta MAX SATA III SSD.

Yet no matter how you look at it, even a SATA III SSD is much faster than any HDD or SSHD for copying large files. Consider taking a nap if you are going to copy 104GB using a hard drive.

Finally, let’s revisit game/level loading times plus all of our Summary charts and then reach our conclusion.

Summary Charts and Conclusion

Here are all of the gaming and summary charts again for easy reference followed by our conclusion.

The Game/Level Loading Time Results

Game and game level loading time results are difficult to measure precisely (such as by using a stopwatch) but our tests are far more consistent. Here are the World of Warcraft and Battlefield 3 loading times again as measured precisely by PCMark 8’s storage test and accurately by Final Fantasy XIV: Stormbringer/Endwalker’s benchmarks. Lower (quicker/faster) loading times (measured in seconds) are better.

PCMark’s Storage Benchmark also provides precise SSD bandwidth, loading times, game record, install, and save time comparisons.

All eight SSDs load games quickly but the Generation 4 x4 PCIe SSDs are generally faster than Generation 3 x4 and stand out from SATA III and external SSDs. When PC game developers start to target SSDs for game storage, only then may we see SSDs achieve the super-fast game loading performance they are capable of. Until then, PlayStation 5 gamers may take full advantage of the CARDEA ZERO Z440 and other PCIe 4.0 fast SSD loading speeds.

Non-Gaming Summary Charts

Here are all of the summary charts presented again in one place.

A gamer who wishes to have the very fastest PC will choose an internal PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSD, and both CARDEA Ceramic A440 SSDs stand out as the fastest drives, and noticeably faster than the CARDEA C440 and CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSDs. The CARDEA IOPS slots into fifth place well ahead of the TeamGroup MP33 or M200 Portable SSDs, and finally the Delta MAX SATA III SSD is almost always in last place.

For gaming and for regular tasks on current Intel platforms, any SSD will provide decent game and level loading performance well above that of mechanical hard drives or even hybrid (SSHD)drives, but a PCIe 4.0 NVMe Gen 4 x4 will provide the highest performance. Let’s head for our conclusion.

The Conclusion & Verdict

We would suggest that 1TB has become the minimum storage capacity for a gamer that includes the operating system since PC games have grown very large although 512GB may be acceptable. It is not absolutely mandatory to have a SSD if you only use your PC for gaming and have a ton of patience. Games usually do not perform significantly better on SSDs since most PC developers still target HDDs for game performance optimization. However, games generally take significantly longer to load from a HDD or SSHD than they do from any internal SATA III drive or even from an external USB 3.0 SSD.

If a gamer wants to get right back into the game, any SSD will improve immersion and decrease frustration compared with using a HDD or SSHD. Windows 10/11 have become positively painful to use when installed on a mechanical or even on a hybrid solid state/hard disk drive. Indexing, Search, or Anti-malware Windows programs may saturate the bandwidth of a mechanical drive, and even downloading or updating Steam games will slow your PC to an irritating crawl. This will not happen using a SSD. And for maximum performance with the least frustration, using a PCIe NVMe SSD is the only way to fly.

Let’s recap pricing. The T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSD is available in 1TB and 2TB capacities, priced at Amazon at $227.99 for the 2TB version (and at $119.99 for the 1TB version). The T-FORCE CARDEA A440 Pro Special Series SSD is priced at Newegg at $287.99 for the 2TB version. The T-FORCE CARDEA A440 (vanilla) SSD is at Amazon for $299.99 for 2TB, but it comes with two heatsinks, and the 2TB CARDEA Ceramic C440 is priced at $229.99.

We believe that spending the extra money is worth it for a fast 2TB NVMe CARDEA ZERO Z440 PCIe Gen 4 x4 SSD over Gen 3 x4 as long as your motherboard supports PCIe 4.0. If not, the CARDEA IOPs is an excellent choice. The CARDEA ZERO Z440 is priced $60 less than the fastest tested 2TB SSD and is priced $2 less than the CARDEA Ceramic C440 which is in the same 5,000MBps/4,400MBps class but comes with a better heatsink. If you have an integrated NVMe motherboard heatsink, the CARDEA ZERO Z440 is a great choice.

Of course, gamers on a budget should also look for sales. Because of today’s close pricing and competition, choosing an SSD is easier than ever. Based on performance and price, we recommend the T-FORCE CARDEA ZERO Z440 SSD as a competitively-priced fast SSD. A five year warranty backed by TeamGroup insures that a player will enjoy fast performance for years to come.

Pros

• • 5-year warranty backed by TeamGroup support

• Fast game/level loading speeds and very fast large file copy speeds
• Fast Write and Read speeds
• The CARDEA ZERO Z440 is priced competitively $60 less than the fastest A440 SSDs, and not too much higher than slower Gen 4 x3 SSDs
• Thin foil copper-graphene heatsink fits under integrated motherboard NVMe heatsinks

Cons

• The included graphene heatsink is inadequate to prevent throttling under heavy load. Use an aftermarket or integrated MB heatsink
• No proprietary disk monitoring utilities. It is necessary to use third-party tools to monitor health and usage

Next up, a VR review of the RX 6650 XT and RX 6700 XT versus the RTX 3060 Ti. It will be followed up by a budget mini-PC (book sized) ECS LIVA A300 review.

Happy Gaming!

SSD stands for Solid-State Drive. It is similar to a USB flash drive and has no moving parts unlike a traditional mechanical Hard Disk Drive (HDD). Flash memory chips provide the SSD’s storage instead of spinning magnetic platters, and data can be accessed much more rapidly. A big disadvantage for gamers is that high capacity SSDs cost far more than equivalent capacity HDDs, and this evaluation is going to only look at the value of buying and using a $100 2TB SSHD versus spending about $70 for a regular 2TB HDD.

SSHD stands for Solid-State Hybrid Drive. In the case of the FireCuda SSHD, it is a fast 7200 RPM traditional HDD coupled with 8GB of solid-state flash storage built-in that appears as a single device to Windows. A custom Seagate controller chip decides which data is kept on the SSD for fastest access, and what data is stored on the HDD.

It is possible to use a SSD as an up to 64GB caching device together with a HDD on motherboards that support Intel’s Rapid Storage Technology to improve system performance. We found that regularly played games load nearly as quickly as if they were installed on a SSD even though they remain on the HDD. However, we prefer an all-in-one storage solution for simplicity and for quickly changing out hardware. The potential benefits of using a SSHD are that it doesn’t need any software or any special user configuration to function effectively without having to decide where to store files and programs. If Windows isn’t manually configured to store documents on the hard drive, for example, it is easy to quickly overwhelm a SSD’s capacity.

The 2TB Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSHD

Seagate has updated their SSHD lineup and now calls their FireCuda drives, “the fastest PC hard drive” and has aimed them at gamers. In addition, Seagate claims: “Play faster, work smarter. FireCuda drives meld the latest NAND flash technology with a traditional hard drive for a compact blend of capacity and speeds up to 5× faster than typical hard drives, all backed by a 5-year warranty.” These are some pretty bold claims and we are going to evaluate them compared with a standard fast 2TB Toshiba 7200 RPM hard drive.

The FireCuda SSHD tends to perform best when it comes to caching data/applications and then launching them quickly when needed. This is probably most noticeable when using the FireCuda drive as a boot drive. After repeated use of an application, one may notice the full performance benefit of the FireCuda SSHD by allowing its adaptive memory feature to determine which applications and data are used most frequently and then storing this data on the 8GB NAND Flash storage portion of the drive.

Seagate FireCuda Gaming 2TB Features & Specifications

Here are the specifications from Seagate’s .pdf.

In addition, average seek and write times are given as 9.5ms which is a little slower than the specifications for the 2TB Toshiba HDD. Let’s take a close look at unboxing the 2TB Seagate FireCuda drive, setting it up, and finally its performance as a stand alone SSHD.

Unboxing & Test Configuration

The 2TB Seagate FireCuda SSHD that we purchased from Newegg came as OEM in a very basic anti static bag and bubble wrapped for transportation, and it did not include mounting screws nor anything else.

Just insert the SATA cable connector from the motherboard, plug in the power cable, and lock down the SSHD with screws into the PC case. That’s it!

Now check out our Test Configuration.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i7-6700K (reference 4.0GHz, HyperThreading and Turbo boost for all 4 cores are locked on to 4.4GHz).
• ASRock Z7170M OC Formula motherboard (Intel Z7170 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 3.0/3.1 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x)
• HyperX 16GB DDR4 (2x8GB, dual channel at 3333MHz), supplied by Kingston
• Founders Edition GTX 1080 8GB, reference clocks, supplied by NVIDIA, for testing PC games
• Intel Skylake Core i7-6700K DX11 CPU graphics for all testing other than for PC games
• 2TB Seagate FireCuda 7200 RPM SSHD
• 2TB Toshiba 7200 RPM HDD
• EVGA 1000G 1000W power supply unit
• EVGA CLC 280 watercooler supplied by EVGA
• Onboard Realtek Audio
• Genius SP-D150 speakers, supplied by Genius
• Thermaltake Chaser MK-1 full tower case, supplied by Thermaltake
• ASUS 12X Blu-ray writer
• ACER Predator X34 GSYNC 3440×1440 display, supplied by NVIDIA

Test Configuration – Software

• MSI’s Afterburner, latest beta, was used for the GTX 1080 to set power/temp limit to maximum.
• All games are patched to their latest versions at time of publication.
• Windows 10 64-bit Home edition. Latest DirectX and fully updated.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• VSync is off in the control panel.
• NVIDIA’s GeForce WHQL 378.66 drivers. High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display.

• Synthetic Benchmarks

• SiSoft Sandra 2016
• AS SSD benchmark
• ATTO benchmark
• HD Tune
• HD Tach
• Windows 10 start up and shut down times timed by stopwatch
• PC games loading times measured by stopwatch
• Assassin’s Creed Syndicate
• Battlefield 1 (DX11)
• Civilization 6 (DX12)
• Call of Duty Infinite Warfare
• Crysis 3
• DOOM (OpenGL)
• Gears of War 4
• Deus Ex Mankind Divided (DX12)
• Just Cause 3
• Total War Warhammer (DX12)

Benchmarking the 2TB FireCuda SSHD vs. the 2TB Toshiba HDD

Since we used our main PC with Windows 10 installed on the 2TB FireCuda SSHD versus Windows 10 installed on a standard 2TB Toshiba HDD, it is not possible to give exact comparisons of application loading between the hybrid drive and the regular hard drive. The caching system is somewhat variable and we can only give averages and estimates.

Seagate’s SSHD cache functions similarly to Intel’s RST using the most frequently accessed logical block addresses (LBA). As it reads a block enough times, or writes to it repeatedly, those accesses will get priority for the cache until it is full. When full, the least recently used data is overwritten, making room for new data.

Gaming framerates between a SSD or SSD caching system and a HDD are the same, the only differences are to be found for game or for level load times. Playing and finishing Resident Evil 7 required this editor 15 hours to complete over 3 days, and reloading it from the SSHD became nearly instantaneous after dying. This worked the same way for all of the games that we played. Playing with the SSHD caching enabled became a faster experience over playing the same game from the HDD. Admittedly, Resident Evil 7 reloaded quickly enough on the 2TB Toshiba 7200 rpm HDD, although the SSHD was generally quicker by a few seconds.

Since SSDs and SSHDs use NAND flash, the cache data remains in its memory between reboots and even after complete power off cycles. Data stays in the cache until it is moved out by more recent data. If you use certain applications regularly as we did playing Resident Evil 7 continuously for a few days, those applications will have priority and generally will be quickly available from the SSHD cache.

The benchmarks

SiSoft Sandra 2016

We want to see exactly where the FireCuda SSHD and the Toshiba HDD differ, and there is no better tool than SiSoft’s Sandra 2016.

There are several versions of Sandra 2016, including a free version of Sandra Lite that anyone can download and use. It is highly recommended! SiSoft’s Sandra 2016 SP3 was released late in 2016, and the 2017 version should be out soon. It has quite a few improvements over Sandra 2015 and there are regular service packs released to keep it up to date.

First we run the 2015 Sandra benchmark suite with our ASRock Z7170M motherboard and Core i7-6700K as in all of our benches at 4.4GHz; first with the 2TB Toshiba HDD, and then again using the Seagate FireCuda hybrid drive. Here is the overall benchmark where the SSHD PC wins over the HDD PC by 9.15kPT over 8.21kPT.

Here is a chart showing the comparison between the 2TB FireCuda SSHD and the 2TB Toshiba HDD using Sandra’s Physical Disks, File System Bandwidth, and the File System IO benchmarks that are made especially for storage drives.

We note that the FireCuda SSHD performs slightly faster than the HDD overall although the Toshiba HDD is not slow for a mechanical HDD.

Crystal Disk Mark

CrystalDiskMark is a HDD benchmark utility for hard drives that enables measurement of sequential and random read/write speeds. Here are some key features of CrystalDiskMark:

Measure sequential reads/writes speed

Measure random 512KB, 4KB, 4KB (Queue Depth=32) reads/writes speed

First up is the Hard Disk Drive:

The FireCuda SSHD is faster below.Let’s check out HD Tune next.

HD Tune

HD Tune is a hard disk utility which has the following functions:

Benchmark measures the performance of:

• Transfer Rate
• Access Time
• CPU Usage
• Burst Rate
• Random Access test
• Write benchmark
• Hard Disk information which includes partition information, supported features, firmware version, serial number, disk capacity, buffer size, transfer mode
• Hard Disk Health
• S.M.A.R.T. Information (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology)
• Power On Time
• Error scan
• Temperature display

The 2TB Toshiba HDD is up first:

FireCuda 2TB SSHD is up next below.

We see the SSHD is generally slightly faster than the HDD using HDTune, especially its access time.

Now we benchmark using AS SSD.

AS SSD

AS SSD is primarily designed for Solid State Drives (SSD). The tool contains synthetic and practice tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD without use of the operating system caches. In Seq-test the program measures how long it takes to read and write a 1 GB file.

In the 4K test, read and write performance for random 4K blocks are determined. The 4K-64-third test are similar to the 4K procedure except that the read and write operations on 64 threads are distributed as in the usual start of a program. In the copying test, two large ISO file folders are created, programs with many small files, and a games folder with small and large files. These three folders are copied by the OS copy command with the cache turned on.

The practice tests show performance with simultaneous read and write operations AS SSD gives an overall “score” after it runs the benchmarks. These scores and comparisons are summed up by the performance summary screenshots.

First we display the Toshiba 2TB HDD results, as usual:

Next up, is the 2TB Seagate FireCuda SSHD below.

The HDD tests appear to take forever with AS SSD and they score very low compared to any SSD. The drives are equivalent but with different strengths and weaknesses. On to ATTO.

ATTO

ATTO is a disk benchmark. The ATTO Disk Benchmark measures a storage system’s performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Options are available to customize the tests, including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode.

First up is the 2TB Toshiba HDD:Next are the 2TB FireCuda SSHD results below.

Again, the Seagate FireCuda SSHD scores faster than the Toshiba hard drive. Now on to HD Tach.

HD Tach

HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices including SSDs and HDDs. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and low level Windows interfaces to determine the physical performance of the device. It is no longer supported and needs to be run in compatibility mode for Windows 10.

Here are the 2TB Toshiba HDD results: 167.7MB/s average read.

Now we repeat the same test with the 2TB FireCuda SSHD: 175.2 MB/s average read below.

Using HD Tach, both of our drives score about half what a midrange SSD will score..

The above are the basic synthetic drive benchmarks for comparing performance of a HDD with a SSHD. It appears that the 2TB Seagate FireCuda SSHD is a little faster compared with the 2TB Toshiba HDD. We are going to look next at more real world game testing to see if Windows, games, and game levels will load faster from a SSHD.

We will attempt to answer the question, “is it worth it” to spend $30 more for a 2TB SSHD compared with a regular 2TB HDD?

The Real World Results

First, let’s check our results comparing framerates of ten test games on the 2TB FireCuda SSHD versus identical hardware and conditions of framerates on the 2TB HDD.

The results are nearly identical and well within the 1-3% benchmarking margin of error except for Deus Ex Mankind Divided, and we cannot explain why the percentage of difference is nearly 4% in favor of the SSHD over the HDD.

Next, we want to look at these same ten games and compare loading speeds between the 2TB HDD and the 2TB FireCuda SSHD. In all cases, the initial loading times for each game and for each load level are much longer, and they tend to decrease as the game or game level is loaded repeatedly.

Generally, the 2TB FireCuda SSHD loads games and game levels quicker than the 2TB Toshiba HDD. And after repeated use, although subsequent load times decrease for both drives, the SSHD continues to load games and game levels faster.

Unfortunately, our results are very difficult to measure precisely since SSHD caching technology is not exact. However, if you use a program over and over, daily, it benefits most from the SSHD cache especially as we did, playing Resident Evil 7 for over 15 hours in a few days. The game loads itself and its levels nearly instantly so immersion isn’t lost. This SSHD’s super-quick cache loading worked with every game that we played regularly. As long as the program was accessed very often from the SSHD, it had priority and it loaded faster compared with loading from a regular HDD.

Gamers can keep their games installed on a single large capacity SSHD, and the games that are played most regularly, will load themselves and load their levels faster than if they were installed on a HDD. Other well-used programs, such as Chrome or Firefox, also start nearly instantly. However, these programs also start pretty fast anyway, so we are talking about saving seconds that may add up to many seconds over time.

The first time that you start a program or copy files, caching will not be involved and the performance that you get will be the same as from your hard drive system. However, if you use Photoshop regularly, or work with Excel, or Word, they will generally start up to 20% to 50% faster. We would generally say that overall, our most used applications had a 20-30% speed up using the FireCuda SSHD as opposed to just using the Toshiba hard drive. It is definitely not as fast as a good SSD, but it might be a good compromise considering the current high pricing of high capacity SSDs.

Windows Start-up and Shut down Times

We also noticed shortened Windows 10 startup and shutdown times using the FireCuda SSHD versus using the Toshiba HDD. Although Windows 10 sets up very quickly on any drive, we saved on average more than 2 seconds from boot to being able to use Windows with the SSHD – from 10.5 seconds with the 2TB Toshiba HDD to under 8.5 seconds with the 2TB Seagate Fire Cuda SSHD. And from boot-up to being able to use Steam takes about 10 to 15 seconds less from the SSHD than from the HDD.

Conclusion

With a 2TB high-capacity mechanical drive coupled with 8GB of flash memory functioning as a cache, gamers will no longer have to install new games and then uninstall them after playing them to make room for even newer games as they have to do with low capacity SSDs. We really like this new option that the Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSHD brings for gamers. Games, game levels, regularly used applications, and Windows all load faster from the SSHD than they do from a mechanical hard drive.

Pros

The SSHD is faster than a mechanical HDD for loading regularly used applications and games. Using our Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSHD, Windows startup is faster and shutdown is noticeably quicker than using the 2TB Toshiba HDD.

The FireCuda 2TB SSHD is decent bang for buck at $100 compared with spending $70 for a standard 2TB HDD as its performance and loading times are better.

A 5-year warranty and high-quality Seagate support stand it out from the “HDD crowd”.

SSHD Caching works for gaming and gamers. You get faster level loading than from a HDD, and games can still stay on the hard drive without having to manually configure anything.

Cons

Price. It costs about 30% or $30 more for the 2TB FireCuda SSHD than it does for a 2TB Toshiba HDD.

This has been quite an enjoyable exploration using Seagate’s 2TB FireCuda SSHD. Based on our experience, SSHD caching is highly recommended for gamers as saving time and the frustration of waiting for applications, games and levels to load! We are giving the Seagate 2TB FireCuda Gaming SSHD BTR’s “Highly Recommended” Award.

For us, spending the extra $30 for a slightly faster 2TB Seagate FireCuda SSHD over our 2TB Toshiba HDD is worth it. And our 2TB Toshiba drives are now relegated to becoming back-ups for our Seagate SSHDs so we will never experience any downtime in playing or in benchmarking.

Stay tuned, there is a lot coming from us at BTR. We are planning a road trip soon and will return with a lot of new and interesting information, and hopefully with some new hardware to review.

Happy Gaming!

Users will have the ability to store massive amounts of data in a small form factor. DataTraveler Ultimate GT offers superior quality in a high-end design as it is made of a zinc-alloy metal casing for shock resistance. Its compact size gives the tech enthusiast or professional user an easily portable solution to store and transfer high capacity files. Please refer to the following reference table for storage capacities.

DataTraveler Ultimate GT ships in February and will be available in 1TB and 2TB capacities. It is backed by 5-year warranty, free technical support and Kingston reliability. For more information, visitwww.kingston.com

Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate GT Features and Specifications :

• Capacities¹: 1TB, 2TB
• Speed²: USB 3.1 Gen. 1³
• Dimensions: 72mm x 26.94mm x 21mm
• Operating Temperature: -25°C to 60°C
• Storage Temperature: -40°C to 85°C
• Warranty: 5-year warranty with free technical support
• Compatible with: Windows^® 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7 (SP1), Mac OS v.10.9.x+, Linux v.2.6.x+, Chrome OS^TM

^*Based on Flash Memory Storage Chart

1. Some of the listed capacity on a Flash storage device is used for formatting and other functions and thus is not available for data storage. As such, the actual available capacity for data storage is less than what is listed on the products. For more information, go to Kingston’s Flash Guide at kingston.com/flash_memory_guide.
2. Speed may vary due to host hardware, software and usage.
3. USB 3.1 Gen 1 performance requires a host device with a USB 3.0 or 3.1 port.

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