Team Group T-Force Cardea IOPS in test – NVMe SSD with cooler selection

At the end of last year, Team Group introduced another NVMe SSD in M.2 format with the Cardea IOPS. The SSD is called IOPS, which stands for Input/Output Operations Per Second, because it is not only supposed to convince with very high sequential transfer rates of 3,400 MB/s read and 3,000 MB/s write, but also with very high IOPS rates.

The special feature of the IOPS is that Team Group includes a choice of two coolers for the user and he can assemble the SSD himself depending on the application. The customer can choose whether to install a flat graphene cooler or use a significantly larger aluminum cooler.

The Cardea IOPS is available with a capacity of 1 TB, there are no other variants. In our review, we will go into detail about whether the M.2 SSD deserves the epithet IOPS and how great the cooling performance of the two included coolers is or how big the temperature difference is compared to using it without a heat sink.

Technical data

The Cardea IOPS is a 1TB SSD in M.2 format. The SSD is connected via PCIe Gen3x4, NVMe version 1.3 is used as the protocol. Team Group promises a max. read speed of 3400 MB/s and a max. write speed of 3000 MB/s. Furthermore, the SSD is supposed to achieve very high IOPS rates, Team Group states up to 680,000 IOPS for reading and up to 670,000 IOPS for writing. This is to ensure the user maximum performance for games at any time without having to worry about the read and write speed. Besides the current games, which the manufacturer addresses, many other applications naturally benefit from it as well.

Besides the promised performance, thanks to which the Cardea IOPS does not have to hide from other NVMe SSDs on paper, Team Group wants to appeal to the users with a sophisticated cooling system. On the one hand, a very flat graphene cooler is included, which is especially suitable for use in a notebook or on the back of a motherboard. On the other hand, a much bigger aluminum heat sink, as known from other M.2 SSDs, is also included. Team Group promises up to 9% better heat dissipation when using the flat graphene cooler, and up to 15% when using the aluminum heatsink. Of course, you can also use the SSD without the heatsink if you don’t need it.

Test system

• Asus TUF B360-PRO gaming motherboard
• Intel Core i5-8400 processor
• 32GB G.Skill RipJaws V 3200 RAM
• MSI Radeon RX 5500 XT Gaming X 8G graphics card
• Kingston KC2000 1TB SSD
• be quiet! Pure Power 10 400W power supply

Performancetest

We checked the SSD’s performance with the very common programs ATTO Disk, AS SSD, CrystalDiskMark and HD Tune Pro.

We could even slightly surpass the values for sequential read and write given by Team Group in the test with CrystalDiskMark, with 3459 MB/s and 3021 MB/s, respectively. Thus, the Cardea IOPS in sequential read is among the best of the M.2 SSDs we have tested so far. It can even come close to the top in write. Unfortunately, the SSD scores much worse in the other CrystalDiskMark tests and ends up in the midfield.

In the AS SSD benchmark, the Cardea IOPS does very well, apart from the 4k write. Here, the Team Group SSD consistently belongs to the top group or even manages to place itself ahead of all other M.2 SSDs that we have tested so far. The SSD also manages to take first place by far in the benchmark score.

We use the ATTO benchmark to check the IOPS values when reading and writing files with a size of 512 B to 64 MB. Since Team Group calls the SSD IOPS itself, we naturally expect very good results here as well. Unfortunately, it could not quite live up to the name in our test with ATTO Disk. When reading, the M.2 SSD consistently landed in the midfield of the SSDs we have tested so far. This is also true for writing up to a file size of 512 KB. Above that, from 1 MB, the Cardea IOPS worked its way to the front and consistently takes first place from 8 MB and more.

In our benchmark course, the M.2 SSD could partly achieve new best rates, but was behind our expectations in other places. Overall, the performance is mostly good to very good, except for a few outliers.

Graphics vs. Aluminum – Comparison of Coolers

In our test, the M.2 SSD was installed below the graphics card. Without load, this is in zero RPM mode, so the fan is off. Even otherwise, there is very little airflow in this position in our system, so temperatures tend to be high and well above the temperatures in the other M.2 slot.

With the included Graphene cooler, the height of the SSD is just 3.7 mm. This also allows mounting it on the back of motherboards or even in notebooks, i.e. in places where there is hardly any space and installation with larger heat sinks would be impossible. For mounting, the protective foil is peeled off and the thin graphene strip is glued directly onto the SSD.

If you have more space available, you can go for the aluminum heatsink. This is considerably larger, completely black except for the lettering, and almost completely encloses the M.2 SSD. For the installation, we first stick the thermal pad onto the SSD, place it into the bottom of the cooler and then press the top onto the SSD and thermal pad until the two aluminum parts hook together. On the one hand, you have to be a bit careful here, but on the other hand, you also have to apply enough pressure so that both parts hook together.

Team Group itself states up to 9% better heat dissipation for the graphene cooler and up to 15% for the aluminum cooler. Of course, this value is strongly dependent on the case, the installed hardware and the airflow. The indicated temperatures are the idle temperature 30 minutes after power-on, without any programs running. We determined the load temperature with CrystalDiskMark and it is the highest temperature we reached in the benchmark. Since the performance of many SSDs drops when the temperature is too high, this is very important especially for systems with little airflow. In our case, we could not determine any performance problems even without a cooler.

Although the graphene cooler is only very thin and you can quickly get the impression that it can hardly have an effect on the temperature, it drops by 6°C under load, which also corresponds to the value stated by Team Group. With the aluminum cooler, we even reach only 54°C under load, which is 19°C less than without the heat sink. Both options proved to be very effective. If you have the space, you should of course go for the aluminum heatsink, but if you don’t, you can also lower the temperatures significantly with the graphene strip.

Conclusion

With the Cardea IOPS, Team Group has brought a very performant M.2 SSD to the market. The performance is mostly good to very good, in some benchmarks the Cardea IOPS could even set up new best values. Considering these top rates, it is a shame that the SSD fell a bit short of our expectations in some benchmarks, which clouds the overall impression a bit.

Besides the performance, we also liked the cooler concept very much. The larger aluminum heat sink was able to lower the temperatures considerably and could completely convince us in the test. But the thin graphene strip also had a much bigger impact than we initially thought and is thus recommended for systems where space is at a premium. Whether you need both coolers as a user is of course another question, because most will probably buy the SSD for one type of system and leave it there.