Visual inspection
The T-Force Cardea A440 1TB is a well design SSD that has an all-black PCB, a white label on the top and now one but two heatsinks included in the package.
The included aluminum and graphene heatsinks have a simple design that follows the same style as the rest of the T-Force Cardea series. This includes the black and gold color combination and the angular shape of the aluminum made heatsink.
The T-Force Cardea A440 1TB uses the standard 2280 form factor which makes it compatible with all devices that have the 2280 space and form factor.
This SSD is one of the few that include not one but two heatsinks to keep the temperature of the controller and memory as low as possible. These two heatsinks are in fact a solid aluminum made heatsink and a graphene label, and both will aid with the cooling of the SSD.
The aluminum made heatsink is not large by any means nor heavy, but it is made from solid aluminum and has enough fins to dissipate the heat. The design of this heatdsink is simple, I mean it has no RGB LEDs and no rainbow reflective stickers so it’s already a win in my book.
It comes in two parts that will cover both sides of the SSD and are easily secured with clips and not screws.
The included graphene label has been used before with other T-Force Cardea and has proven to offer some degree of heat dissipation. The only drawback of this label is that once installed, it’s tricky to remove it without damaging its surface.
T-Force Cardea A440 1TB has as its center piece the Phison PS5018-E18. An eight-channel, DRAM-based controller made on the TSMC 12nm manufacturing process. This controller will support DDR4 DRAM chips running upwards of 1600 MT/s per channel.
In terms of the DRAM, this SSD uses a single 1GB DDR4 chip made by SK Hynix and with the model number: H5AN8G6N0J RXNC. This memory chip is used to store the mapping tables of the SSD and thus increase the access speed of the data.
The storage chips installed with the T-Force Cardea A440 1TB are made by Micron and are manufactured on 176-layers. The model number of these chips is IA7BG94AYA.
The T-Force Cardea A440 1TB, has a PCIe Gen 4 x4 interface.