TEAMGROUP MP44 SSD 2TB Review
Summary: Fast hard drive access is no longer restricted to small storage capacity... TEAMGROUP's 2TB SSD provides plenty of space for all your quick load needs.
4.5
Serious Storage
Some of us old timers, those of us from the days not just before optical drives were installed in PC cases… but before optical drives even existed, know the pain of installing a hard drive in an already overcrowded case… not just that but we didn’t even get a significant boost to loading times as a result.
But then a technology came along that promised to make loading times lightning fast and they just happened to be smaller in form factor as well. They also tended to be fairly low capacity… at least compared to what we had grown accustomed to. Now, not only have the drives become smaller again, they have also significantly increased their storage capacity.
One such drive is TEAMGROUP’s MP44 2TB SSD which I was fortunate enough to get my hands on.
My first foray into SSD storage was back when they looked like a thinner version of the more familiar platter Hard Drive, the capacity was only about 250GB and I was damn happy to have the speed boost (if you haven’t tried SSD storage for your operating system… you will be thrilled at the difference it makes for boot/loading times).
In those early days the storage size was limited, not too surprising from a new technology… but now not only is the capacity something that seems respectable, the price has also come way down and certainly makes the TEAMGROUP MP44 a serious contender for a new system setup or even an expansion to an existing systems storage.
Installation is quite easy. Compared to the old hard drives that required a data cable and a power cable to be connected and a fairly sizeable space (typically a drive bay… when cases used to have those) be allocated to the installation of the drive… M.2 SSD’s more or less slot into place. My previous M.2 SSD is slotted into the motherboard standing upright and has a little bracket to hold it in place.
For the TEAMGROUP MP44 I actually had to unscrew a heatsink, slot the drive in then screw the heatsink back in place which acted as the “bracket” to hold it in place. Obviously different motherboards will have different installation options/configurations… but the form factor of the M.2 means they don’t need much space and can be worked into even the smallest cases.
So what are we dealing with here… well a quick look at some of the spec sheets state:
- PCIe Gen4x4 with NVMe
- Heat dissipating graphene label, the best enhancement to motherboard heatsink
- PCIe Gen4 ultra-speed performance exceeding 7,000MB/s
- Dimensions 80(L) x 22(W) x 3.7(H) mm
- DC +3.3V
But the obvious thing to do is to take it for a test run… for that I fired up three benchmark programs Crystalmark SSD, AS SSD and ATTO SSD. All three were pretty close for results and I should note that my motherboard is an ASUS Prime X299-A, so it’s getting a bit old and may well be impacting the potential top speeds of the drive, having said that even with my arguably aging system… for the price point TEAMGROUP’s MP44 2TB SSD is a great option for adding storage that won’t force you to sit for minutes just waiting for your system to start or your most used programs to get up and running.
Final Thoughts?
So if you are setting up a new system or (as usual) find yourself needing more space, check that you have a M.2 slot available and grab TEAMGROUP’s MP44 2TB SSD… it’s a great price point for a significant amount of storage that will greatly reduce your load times.
About the Author
Chris O'Connor Father of four, husband of one and all round oddity. Gaming at home since about 1982 with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Moving on to the more traditional PC genre in the years that followed with the classic Jump Joe and Alley Cat. CGA, EGA, VGA and beyond PC's have been central to my gaming but I've also enjoyed consoles and hand helds along the way (who remembers the Atari Lynx?). Would have been actor/film maker, jack of many trades master of none.
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