T-Force Cardea A440 M.2 NVMe SSD 1TB Review

A Closer Look

This is a pretty serious SSD, and it only comes in two capacities, 1TB and 2TB. I have the 1TB in for review, which is frankly plenty for my needs, but if you want to really empty your wallet, the 2TB model will help you along that road. It’s the usual M.2 2280 design. It looks stunning though and comes with well-known TLC NAND allowing for 700TBW (1400TBW on the 2TB).

You have a choice of two coolers, and both of them are premium options, even if one does look a little more basic than the other. The first is the flat and very thin graphene heatsink.

It uses an adhesive strip to attach, and is basically the best option for installations that are limited on space.

The other is a large aluminium heatsink, which comes with deep fins on the top, and just has more mass overall. This is the greater cooler of the two, but I don’t doubt the Graphene one will get the job done too.

Of course, if you have a big heatsink built into your motherboard design, I’d just use that, as they’re generally pretty great these days too.

The hardware is pretty impressive here, with 96-layer TLC 3D NAND flash, which runs through the Phison E18 controller using the NVMe 1.4 protocol.

So let’s get this beast installed, and see what it can really do!