TeamGroup MP34 4TB Cheapest NVME SSD on PCPartPicker - Worth it?

[@mannyc19]

TLC ??? HOW MUCH dram CACHE ? NEWEGG SAYS ITS tbw IS 2400tbw OR 2.4 pb SO ITS MOST LIKELY A tlc DRIVE.

[@ManeTech]

Correct, it is a TLC Drive. Here is the TBW Chart: 256GB / >380TB 512GB / >800TB 1TB / >1,660TB 2TB / >2,000TB 4TB / >2,400TB

[@mannyc19]

@@ManeTech Thanks brother,have a great week ! :)

[@FireFire_HehHeh]

I had to buy 4x 4TB sticks for my OWC 4M2 box so I had to wrestle with finding the best deal yet reliable and ended up with these at $199. Speed wasn't an issue as I'm running Raid5 and am limited to the thunderbolt and OWC interface, but am still gettting 1.9GB in and out. I tried them at Raid0 before setting them up for good and got 2.4GB both ways. Anything blazing fast would have been a waste of money in this box. I'm very happy with them. Also, while the Crucial P3 comes in around the same price, there is no comparison on TBW. There's a much cheaper 4TB on AMZ - Leven JP600 at $169 but couldn't pull the trigger on those. Can't play too loose with the data I'm putting on it (photo and video production).

[@ManeTech]

Yes! Totally agree! I actually have the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Single NVME Enclosure, and have another one of these drives in it! I love it!!!

[@CareyHolzman]

Nicely done!

[@bflmpsvz870]

You have not mentioned the most important metric: sustained write speed. Their website mentions MP34 would "never go slower than 2GB/s". I sent them an email wanting to confirm this, they never got back to me.

[@rnbpl]

for most people it's the least important metric

[@bflmpsvz870]

@@rnbpl What good is your car if it can only sustain speed above 5mph for the first 10 seconds?

[@Knaeckebrotsaege]

Not a single word about native NAND speeds when the SLC cache runs out, which is where all of these cheapo SSDs fall flat on their face. Reliability/longevity is also a huge questionmark considering no other manufacturer is able to put TLC NAND on a 4TB NVMe SSD *this* cheap (think Crucial P3/P3 Plus, Kingston NV2, Corsair Force MP600... all in a similar price bracket, all QLC). Very sceptical about this thing... edit: also can't find any official statement from TeamGroup that the 4TB MP34 actually has DRAM cache (which is *not* the same as SLC cache). You'd think they'd advertise a selling point like this, but there's nothing in their marketing, nor in their spec sheet. Only the smaller versions (1TB and below) with reviews from 3+ years ago mention DRAM cache, and those ancient MP34s also used a different controller. This feels like the Kingston bait-and-switch stuff all over again...

[@AdrenalinnVapor]

It says it has DRAM right on the product website.

[@Knaeckebrotsaege]

@@AdrenalinnVapor Website is inconsistent (english says "DRAM Cache: YES", not going into any detail (how much? type?), german version of the site says "supported" instead (whatever that's supposed to mean)) and more importantly, the actual datasheet (which is what counts) says nothing about cache whatsoever. The small sizes (up to 2TB) have DRAM cache and that's been confirmed in old reviews (from 2-3 years ago) but it's not specified or advertised (why?!). Curiously there are *zero* PCB photos of the 4TB version, only the ancient 512GB and 1TB. My point remains... at this price point this seems too good to be true, and the fact that they're so inconsistent with hard info doesn't help/make this more trustworthy

[@avia4281]

Be careful, different stores have different materials! There are several reviews of Google MP32 with different materials. The main control is Crab RTS5762 or Phison PS5012-E12 DRAM / the chips are supplied by inferior manufacturers.

[@Mack_Dingo]

Like the XPG 8200 pro Fiasco

[@manofwar556]

I am going to buy that graphics card next month.

[@professorh8398]

For gen 3, that's pretty good 👍

[@saiajin82]

Thanks, subbed

[@adonian]

Crucial has one for $223.99, the teamgroup I found is $199.99.... Of course I'll take Crucial anyday.

[@ManeTech]

Yes - I do agree with that - Crucial is FANTASTIC! Usually not the fastest drives but amazingly relatable and consistent firmware updates! For this review I was curious how the “cheapest” 4TB operated!

[@syarifairlangga4608]

Not all country. In my country Popular Brand laverage their Price so much. Crucial and WD have insane Price in my place.

[@adonian]

@@syarifairlangga4608 That's totally unfair. TeamGroup isn't a bad brand if you can get it.

[@mannyc19]

That Crucial costs more and has ZERO DRAM onboard,and the Crucial is a known QLC Drive.

[@adonian]

@@mannyc19 Really... OK, NO DRAM= No sale.

[@Seujiro]

hI: nice video. Do you think this drive is good for an asus b350 f gaming motherboard with a ryzen 5 5600x? It is for general use, ocasional gaming and ocasional video editing. Most of all, I convert videos to h264 with handbrake and other software. So, I want to use it as a boot and working NVME. Right now I have a 2 tb predator gm7000 and I know is faster, however, it is limited to PCI E 3.0 speed. So, do you think this mp34 NVME is worth for my use, or I should use it as backup drive with a case?

[@bprofxp]

Can I upgrade the firmware if its in an external enclosure? Will it erase the data on the drive when I update it?

[@xintimidate]

Sorry if I sound ignorant, I really dont know much about how SSDs work but why do people not recommend SATA SSD drives? the average speed is 184 for this drive but for SATA its a constant 500-550 right? I am looking for a new SSD rn and idk what to get. I regret getting my last SSD which was a QLC crucial drive with dram. When the drive is 90% used this thing is a lot slower than a hard drive when downloading games. Is this drive going to have the same issue if the storage is 90% used?

[@raianmr2843]

there's really no reason to think an average sata ssd would outperform the average nvme in terms of random io, if you were promised that then we're probably looking at a case of false advertising. but what can be said with an absolute certainty is that nvme ssds outshine sata ones in terms of sequential io and iops several magnitudes over. dram-less isn't really an issue if your ssd supports hmb. in fact many dramless ssds outperform ssds with dram, even for random io. if you manage to find a nice deal e.g., team's mp44 where you can get a larger dram less ssd at the cost of a smaller dram ssd, definitely go for the former. any ssd with little empty free space will wear out and drop perf at an accelerated rate. basically ssds need to do a lot of internal moving around of data to remain speedy, so when you dont have a whole lot of space left, that algorithm is simply switched off increasing the probability of wearing out parts of the nand. from what ive seen 2tb is the sweet spot in terms of gb per buck, getting anything smaller is a waste. if you dont have nvme slots left you can also buy pcie to nvme adapters that are virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. considering sata ssds arent getting any cheaper, there's just nothing to lose when you go with nvme.

[@KeinNiemand]

Buy two have these and put it into raid 0.

[@artsykilla]

Why raid 0?

[@marcoquessy5000]

does the speed (MB/s) really mater for the performance in game

[@Trip4man]

Depends... If you're upgrading from an HDD to a NVMe, YES, the performance will be noticeable. However, it's not like you're going to get tremendous extra FPS's... But the loading times will be wayyyyyy faster. Like instead of waiting 1 minute to load a game/save, you'll take 10 seconds for example. Same thing with Windows btw. Although it doesn't happen allllllll the time with everyyyyy game... But the improvements will be there nevertheless. So instead of taking 10 seconds they can take 30-40 seconds in some cases. Still, it's 20-30 seconds that you don't have to wait for the load. Now... If you're talking about the difference between Gen3 vs Gen4 Nvme's... Which they do have a difference in MB/s, NO, the difference won't be much noticeable. We're talking about 2-10 seconds of difference in loading times. And the 10 seconds value, only happens in 1 or 2 cases. I'm not sure if that will be the case forever... They probably will improve that in the future... But for now, that's the state of things

[@sL1NK]

TeamGroup uses different controllers for the same models, they have produced the first batches with Phison E12(S), then they switched to RTS5762 and RTS5763DL. They also use different, low tier flash, with tons of factory provisioning (hence the high tbw on lower capacities). Anyways, anything without a dram cache is pure trash.