Packaging

The Drive

The drive uses the M.2 2280 form factor, which makes it 22 mm wide and 80 mm long.


While most other M.2 NVMe SSDs transfer data over the PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface, the Team Group Cardea Zero Z44Q connects to the host system over a PCI-Express 4.0 x4 interface, which doubles the theoretical bandwidth.


Within the package, you'll find two types of a "heatsink." The first is a proper heatsink using a clamshell mechanism to hold the SSD PCB in place.


The second one, for laptops and other confined spaces, is a copper heatspreader foil. While there's the claim of "graphene," that is not the case. The black material is non-conductive, so it can't be graphene. It doesn't rub off like graphite either, so I suspect it's just black paint, or something else possibly containing a little bit of carbon for legal reasons.

We'll compare uncooled drive, heatspreader, and heatsink in our thermal tests later in this review.


On the PCB, you'll find the controller, four flash chips, and two DRAM chips.

Chip Component Analysis

The PS5016-E16 from Phison was one of the first controllers with support for PCI-Express 4.0. It is considered "first generation PCIe 4.0" because newer, more modern controllers offer significantly improved performance.


The four QLC flash chips are made by Micron, built using 96 layers.


Two Hynix DDR4-2666 chips provide 2 GB of fast DRAM storage for the controller to store the mapping tables.