Teamgroup Z540 2TB NVMe SSD review
Everyone loves a fast Gen 5 SSD, just not the prices that are attached to them. They still carry too much of a price premium over Gen 4 drives. But, as supply ramps up, the gap is slowly beginning to close. The key word there is slowly.
At $269, the Teamgroup Z540 2TB PCIe Gen 5 SSD is certainly a speedy drive, with peak read and write transfer rates of 12,400 MB/s and 11,800 MB/s respectively, but is it worth the $100+ price premium over a Gen 4 drive when there's little tangible benefit for today's gaming PCs?
Still, that $269 price means it's one of the more affordable Gen 5 SSDs, particularly compared to first wave Gen 5 drives around the 10,000MB/s range. And, it stacks up very well against the $400 Nextstorage X Series 2TB drive our man Jacob recently reviewed, even though the NN5Pro model comes with a bundled heatsink.
Along with the Z540 SSD, Teamgroup also sent over its T-Force Dark Airflow 1 SSD cooler for this review. It's available separately and it's a recommended purchase if you have a motherboard that doesn't include integrated heatsinks. It's quite fairly priced at $27, though at the time of writing it was not available in the UK or Australian markets.
Capacity: 2TB
Interface: PCIe 5.0 x4
Memory controller: Phison PS5026-E26 controller
Flash memory: Micron 232L TLC NAND
Rated performance: 12,400 MB/s sustained read, 11,800 MB/s sustained write
Endurance: 1400 TBW
Warranty: Five years
Price: $269 | £274 | AU$515
The Z540 is available in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities. I have the 2TB version on hand. Teamgroup promotes the Z540 as a drive for gamers, but the Z540 will happily serve as an all purpose drive, with a five year warranty and 1400 TBW endurance rating.
The Teamgroup Z540 is a PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 2280 NVMe SSD. It's rated for up to 12,400 MB/s sequential reads and 11,800 MB/s writes for the 2TB version I have. That's the same as the 4TB version, though the 1TB version comes in slightly slower at 11,700 MB/s and 9,500 MB/s.
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