Teamgroup continues to expand its affordable SSD line-up for both gamers and professional usage. The MP44L is a PCIe 4.0 SSD, designed to offer reliable performance, and we got to try the 1TB model of the drive.
While Teamgroup does not offer a heatsink version of the drive, the MP44L comes with a heat-dissipation graphene label. The label consists of conductive graphene on aluminum foil and is less than 1mm thick to maintain a low-profile structure. Teamgroup says that the new label design helps eliminate mechanical interferences, and the heat-dissipating performance is doubled, as compared to previous models.
The MP44L SSD features TLC-based NAND flash and comes in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB storage options. The storage capacities differ in read/write speeds and endurance limitations. While the 250GB model can hit 4650MB/s read speeds, the write speed is a very modest 1900MB/s, which is quite disappointing. The endurance of the 250GB is also very low and only maxes out at 200TBW, and the 500GB model bumps this limitation a little bit more to 300TB. The 500GB drive also has a faster 5000MB/s read speed and a 2500MB/s write speed.
However, the 1TB and 2TB drives have better performance and endurance. The 1TB MP44L drive, which we have here for review, features a 5000MB/s read speed and a faster 4500MB/s write speed. It’s faster than the lower storage models, and the endurance is also doubled to a respectable 600TBW for long-term usage. The 2TB model also has a similar performance ceiling, with the read speeds rating at 5000MB/s, and the write speeds at a slightly slower 4400MB/s. The endurance of the 2TB is the highest of its line-up, topping out at 1200TBW.
It should be noted that none of the MP44L drives feature a dedicated DRAM cache, and instead, rely on 64MB of HMB (Host Memory Buffer) with SLC cache to maintain copy and write speeds. The drives also use the Phison PS5021-E21T memory controller. The company also mentions that the MP44L PCIe 4.0 is also compatible with the Sony PlayStation 5 console. We also should mention that the 1TB model is a single-sided PCIe 4.0 drive.
We tested the drive on a testbed that features the ASUS X570 TUF Gaming motherboard, the AMD Ryzen 7 3800XT processor, 16GB of Teamgroup Delta RGB DDR4 3600Mhz memory, a 1TB Kingston KC600 SATA drive, 1000W XFX PSU, and the XFX Radeon RX 5700 XT GPU. We ran CrystalDiskMark, AS SSD, and DiskSpeed test. Take a look at the scores below, especially the CrystalDiskMark, where we got 5061MB/s read speeds and 4548MB/s write speeds.
If you’re looking for an affordable SSD for your newly built PC or planning to upgrade your laptop, then the Teamgroup MP44L is a good choice to consider. The drive does offer respectable 5000MB/s read and 4500MB/s write speeds, and the drive features a thin graphene heat spreader to handle the heat dissipation. The drive also has an endurance rating of 600TBW. While the MP44L does not come with a DRAM cache, the drive depends on HMB and SLC cache to maintain its performance.
