Package and Contents
The Cardea A440 SSD arrived in a retail package, which is a small, flat box. We will find an SSD and two heatsinks inside the box – larger aluminum and small, flat graphene. The larger one will be perfect for regular PCs, while the small one will fit laptops or other tight devices.
The SSD is designed for an M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 socket, so it’s the only real requirement for optimal work. All modern motherboards and PS5 gaming consoles support this standard.
As I mentioned, the best results will be on modern AMD chipsets, where we can achieve even 300MB/s higher bandwidth than on Intel chipsets. The product specifications don’t say that, so it’s a pleasant surprise.
As long as the graphene heatsink isn’t spectacular, it still helps cool the drive. The larger aluminum heatsink looks exceptional and has an eye-catching texture, which you can see in some photos (depending on the angle and light). For sure, it looks great on gaming motherboards.
The SSD has a Phison PS5018-E18 controller, Hynix DDR4 DRAM, and Micron 176-layer 3D TLC NAND. It’s a pretty strong configuration, so no wonder our test results are high.
Below are additional photos of how the SSD looks installed on the ASRock B650E PG-ITX motherboard.
We will show you how the Cardea A440 SSD performs on the next page of this review.
