TeamGroup G70 Pro 2TB SSD Review: Low latency meets affordable DRAM

Another day, another TeamGroup drive, right? Yet the G70 Pro surprises with some unusually good results, combining DRAM and newer flash into a powerful but affordable drive. We have some questions about the controller choice, but the drive as a whole is surprisingly good.

The devil, as they say, is in the details, as its performance quirks make it better for some use cases over others. It’s also not something you want to toss into your laptop – this is still a high-end drive with correspondingly high heat production – but could work in a pinch for pretty much anything else. In this market, it’s a welcome alternative.

TeamGroup G70 Pro Specifications

If you’re ever upset that a drive only comes in one or two capacities, then the TeamGroup G70 Pro might be for you. Not only does it come in both heatsinked and non-heatsinked versions, but it’s also available at 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and even 8TB. At the time of review, we could only find 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB models available, with pricing pretty close between the two types – go for the heatsink, if you can. We’re giving the lower prices at $197.99, $326.99, and $505.99. If you’re shooting for DRAM, these prices aren’t too bad, but we’d lean towards the Seagate FireCuda 530R instead at 1TB. The G70 Pro is more competitive at 2TB and 4TB against comparable drives.

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The drive is capable of reaching up to 7,400 / 6,600 MB/s for sequential reads. Random read and write IOPS are not given, but we know this controller and flash are rated for at least 700K and can reach 1,000K or more. This is comparable to other drives in this class. We wouldn’t recommend the drive at 512GB as it can’t reach peak performance. Ideally, you would go for 2TB or 4TB for the best results. The drive is backed by a five-year warranty that covers 740TB of written data per TB, which is above average but not exceptional.

TeamGroup G70 Pro Software and Accessories

TeamGroup’s primary download for the G70 Pro is its SSD S.M.A.R.T. Tool. This all-in-one SSD toolbox displays drive and system information and allows for performance testing. While you can sometimes catch drive errors early with SMART, it’s best not to rely on it. For drive and data backup we continue to recommend MultiDrive for Windows and Clonezilla or Rescuezilla for everything else.

TeamGroup G70 Pro: A Closer Look

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The 2TB TeamGroup G70 Pro is a double-sided drive and, judging by the specifications, always double-sided. We don’t have smaller SKUs to verify that, and we recommend the larger SKUs as the better value anyway. However, we’ve heard of single-sided G70 Pros at 1TB in the wild, so your mileage may vary.

Our drive uses a graphene label – which is useful for spreading heat from the controller, in particular – but there is also a version with a heatsink. We would recommend going with a heatsink, if possible. The rear of the drive states a power rating of ~8.25W, which is within expectations. In our testing, we would expect it to pull less and, in fact, that is what our numbers show.

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The drive is adorned with an SSD controller, two DRAM packages, and four NAND flash packages. The controller is the InnoGrit IG5236, an eight-channel controller with DRAM that competes directly with the Silicon Motion SM2264 and Phison E18. These are at the top of the PCIe 4.0 product stack. The DRAM in question is SK hynix H5AN8G6NDJR-VKC, which, as the 8G indicates, is in an 8Gb or 1GB configuration. Two packages mean 2GB, which gives the normal 1GB:1TB DRAM:NAND ratio for optimal performance. The flash packages are 512GB each of YMTC 232-Layer TLC (X3-9070) with four 1Tb dies each. With a total of sixteen dies, or two per channel, performance is good at this capacity.

Let’s address the elephant in the room: the IG5236 controller. This controller was one of our favorites when it first came out, as it competed with the E18 – the first true non-proprietary high-end PCIe 4.0 controller – at a lower price point. Eventually, it saw some flash it didn’t like from YMTC, which caused some serious issues. Over time and with more feedback, the controller eventually gained a more general reputation for unreliability. Reliability reports were often unpredictable, which didn’t help matters. While, as a result, we do prefer the E18, our review of this G70 Pro sample has given indications that TeamGroup took some efforts to improve reliability. We’ll point these out as we go forward.

The bigger issue for the drive is probably that TeamGroup will likely not have one specific set of hardware for this drive, which means that, while we think you’re probably okay with the mix we got, we can’t guarantee this is the NAND and SSD controller configuration that you’ll receive.

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