Introduction

Team Group is a well-known Taiwanese memory and flash storage maker with a long history of catering to the needs of users from all over the globe. Today, we have a review of the Team Group MP33 PCIe NVMe SSD in the M.2 form factor.

The MP33 is a cost-effective solid-state drive that uses a new controller we haven't had a chance to check out yet. Phison's PS5013-E13 is very compact physically, which enables M.2 SSDs with four flash chips on each side. It also has support for DRAM-less operation, which the Team Group MP33 makes use of. The ability to operate without DRAM cache allows for further cost optimization—a few dollars can be saved. The caveat is that random write performance will be reduced because the flash mapping tables are stored directly in flash instead of the faster DRAM chip. The flash chips on the MP33 are Toshiba 96-layer BiCS4.

The Team Group MP33 is available in capacities of 128 GB (pricing unknown), 256 GB ($50), 512 GB ($78), 1 TB ($135), and 2 TB (pricing unknown). Endurance for these models is set at 100 TBW, 200 TBW, 400 TBW, 600 TBW, and 1000 TBW respectively. Team Group also includes a five-year warranty.

Packaging

The Drive

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


Like most M.2 NVMe SSDs, the Team Group MP33 connects to the host system over a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface.


On the PCB, you'll find the controller and four flash chips; a DRAM chip is not available.

Chip Component Analysis

The flash controller is made by Phison and is a new model with support for 3D TLC, PCI-Express 3.0 x4, and DRAM-less operation. It uses four flash channels and is produced on a 28 nm process at TSMC Taiwan.


The four TLC flash chips are made by Toshiba, built using 96-layers on a 15 nanometer 3D NAND production process.