Introduction

Team Group is a well-known Taiwanese hardware manufacturer with a long history of catering to the needs of enthusiasts and gamers from all over the globe. Their lineup includes DRAM memory and solid-state drives, and they also offer various memory cards and USB thumb drives.



Today, we have for review the Team Group Cardea Zero Z44Q. Going by the number "4" and the letter "Q," you probably already have an idea what this SSD is about—PCI-Express 4.0 with QLC NAND flash. PCI-Express 4.0 doubles the theoretical bandwidth over PCI-Express Gen 3, which could help make up some of the deficits of the slower QLC NAND. Under the hood, the Cardea Zero Z44Q uses a Phison E16 controller, which we've seen on drives like the Gigabyte PCIe 4.0 SSD, Seagate FireCuda 520, and Corsair MP600 Core. The former drives are all based on TLC NAND flash, but the Z44Q uses QLC flash instead. We've reviewed the same hardware combination a few weeks ago (Sabrent Rocket Q4). The flash chips are Micron 96-layer QLC, pretty much the market-dominating QLC available at this time. Two DDR4-2666 DRAM chips provide 2 GB of memory for the mapping tables of the SSD.

The Team Group Cardea Zero Z44Q comes in capacities of 2 TB ($310) and 4 TB ($650). Endurance for these models is set to 400 TBW and 800 TBW respectively. Team Group includes a five-year warranty with the Cardea Zero Z44Q. Unlike the Sabrent Rocket Q4, a heatsink is bundled at no additional cost.

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.

Test Setup