Team Group N74V-M80: First SSD with vapor chamber cooling defies heat

SSDs with heat sinks are not yet common, but they could be soon. At least the CTO of Phison assumes that. Instead of using a tall heatsink, the Team Group N74V-M80 is breaking new ground by using vapor-chamber cooling for the first time. With impressive results.

This is the Team Group N74V-M80

The Team Group N74V-M80 M2.SSD relies on a vapor-chamber structure for the first time to cope with even high temperatures. It is primarily intended for the industrial sector and is offered in sizes of 128 GB, 256 GB and 512 GB.

You probably already know corresponding cooling solutions from graphics cards or notebooks. A vapor chanber uses a flat heat pipe in which a liquid is evaporated by the emitted heat of the object to be cooled. The resulting vapor condenses back into the liquid form on the other side, which in this case cools down the SSD.

The result that Team Group was able to achieve in internal tests is impressive. At an enormous temperature of 85 degrees Celsius, read and write times were reduced by 75 percent (from 116 minutes to 29 minutes) compared to an uncooled SSD, the manufacturer writes on its own website. At the same time, the Team Group N74V-M80 performs reliably in a range between -40 degrees and 85 degrees Celsius.

• Impressive speed: Adata XPG PCIe Gen5 SSD: New M.2 SSDs get up to 14 GB/s

Vapor Chamber on Aluminum Radiator

The Team Group N74V-M80 installs the vapor chamber cooling under an aluminum radiator with cooling fins, which is separated from the controller of the M.2 module by a heat-conducting plate. Another aluminum cover is then located on the underside.

From a purely technical point of view, the M80 is connected via PCIe 3.0 x4 and relies on a 3D TLC flash. It achieves sequential rates of 3,445 MB/s read and 2,520 MB/s write and offers an MTBF (mean time between failure) of over 3 million hours.

It is also reliably protected against shock and vibration according to military standards, even while working. An external DRAM buffer is also available, as well as TRIM and S.M.A.R.T. The manufacturer also gives a three-year warranty. However, the manufacturer does not mention prices or availability of the three variants of the Team Group N74V-M80 M.2 SSD.