Packaging and Contents

The Drive

The drive conforms to the dimensions set forth by the 2.5" form factor. It is made out of metal to improve its durability and is only 7 mm thick, which ensures it will fit into modern notebooks. These photos are of the MLC version drive.


The TLC version looks identical on the front, but has a completely different sticker on its backside.


Team Group's Vulcan SSD uses the SATA 6 Gbps interface. It is compatible with any older SATA standard, but will, in such a case, work at reduced performance.


On the rather compact PCB, you'll find two NAND flash chips, the controller, and a DRAM chip; the other side of the PCB is empty.


The TLC version uses a different PCB, but with similar components.


The Silicon Motion SM2258G SATA 6 Gb/s flash controller supports four flash-channels; on the TLC version, a SM2258H is used.


Both variants use flash chips that have been rebranded by Team Group, so the original manufacturer is not immediately visible. The first picture shows the Samsung 48-layer MLC chips, and the second picture shows the Samsung 64-layer TLC chips.


Depending on the version, you either get a Samsung DDR3-1866 DRAM chip (MLC model) or a Hynix DDR3-1600 DRAM chip (TLC model). Both DRAM chips are 512 MB in size to provide storage for the controller to store the mapping tables.