Inland TD510 PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2 SSD (2 TB) Surfaces at Micro Center for $349.99

[Tsing]

Super-fast PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2 SSD SSDs are slowly but surely coming to market. Following closely on the heels of GIGABYTE's AORUS Gen5 10000 SSD is the Inland TD510 2TB 3D TLC NAND PCIe Gen 5 x 4 NVMe M.2 Internal SSD, an alternative that is now available to purchase through Micro Center at a discounted price of $349.99. The SSD, which normally costs $399.99, features 2 TB of capacity and read/write speeds of up to 10,000/9,5000 MBps, alongside an endurance rating of 1,400 TBW. It also sports an active fan, which Game Tech Reviews has described as being "too loud."

See full article...

 

[Uvilla]

Who produces the chips inside? Never heard of inland.

 

[Ranulfo]

Inland is Microcenter's brand but I don't know who's chips they're using.

 

[Zarathustra]

Inlands SSD's have ranged from excellent to meh, depending on which version you bought.

"Inland Premium" branded models have usually been pretty decent, but "Platinum" and "Professional" have been kind of crappy.

Inland Premium were great bang for the buck NVMe drives. They were essentially just off the shelf rebranded Phison E12 drives. Solid performance, reasonable reliability, and excellent bang for the buck. I have 13 of these drives in my house right now (most of them in my server)

I don't have any in my Workstation, but when I needed 12 drives at the same time for my server I decided to take the risk, because that's a lot of money to spend on SSD's all at once, and most of the server drives are either two way or three way mirrored anyway, and the ones that aren't are either cache drives that don't containe any data that would be lost if they die, or drives that have low criticality data (like a Live TV ringbuffer for MythTV)

So, getting them for the server was a low risk. The 256GB versions are wearing a little fast, but the 1TB and 2TB drives seem very resilient. Even at the fast wear rate, I should get 8-10 years out of the little 256GB drives.

Write endurance certainly goes up with size!

But that was in the gen 3 era.

I have no idea what to expect from these new Gen5 ones. That fan looks like it might be noisy...

 

[Zarathustra]

Inland is Microcenter's brand but I don't know who's chips they're using.

Who knows if they are still using the same vendor as in their gen3 drives, but if they are, let me take a pic.

Only one I have in an accessible place is this 256GB one.



Do these markings mean anything to you?

(I know, difficult to read.)

I googled one of the numbers on the big chip in the bottom ("tc7ag55aiv" if I got it right) and the only hits I got were for an NVME drive with the "T-Force CARDEA" brand. I guess that's Team Group? I'm not really familiar with that brand, but the naked board looks IDENTICAL to the Inland Premium drive, so I'm guessing it is a third tier Chinese brand, and that MicroCenters Inland Premium drives were just rebranded T-Force drives, as they look pretty much identical.

I highly doubt MicroCenter designed their own drives. They are a great retailer, but they are only a retailer.

 

[Zarathustra]

Who knows if they are still using the same vendor as in their gen3 drives, but if they are, let me take a pic.

Only one I have in an accessible place is this 256GB one.

View attachment 2398

Do these markings mean anything to you?

(I know, difficult to read.)

I googled one of the numbers on the big chip in the bottom ("tc7ag55aiv" if I got it right) and the only hits I got were for an NVME drive with the "T-Force CARDEA" brand. I guess that's Team Group? I'm not really familiar with that brand, but I'm guessing it is a third tier Chinese brand, and that MicroCenters Inland Premium drives were just rebranded T-Force drives, as they look pretty much identical.

I highly doubt MicroCenter designed their own drives. They are a great retailer, but they are only a retailer.

Some further research suggest tc7ag55aiv is a Toshiba chip.

 

[Zarathustra]

And what do you know.

There is a 5th gen T-Force CARDEA drive.

What do you want to bet this Inland drive is just a rebranded version of that one? The pics both in this story, and on Team Groups webpage have it covered in a heatsink and a heat spreader/label respectively, but at least the board color matches, having gone from the same blue in both previous versions to a dark black/green/brown (whatever it is) in the Gen5 drive...

So, it seems like a reasonable guess to me that this Inland/MicroCenter drive is just a rebranded Team Group T-Force gen 5 drive. At least underneath the heatsink.

 

[Ranulfo]

I think Phison controller chips are considered one of the better ones.

 

[Zarathustra]

I think Phison controller chips are considered one of the better ones.

I consider them second tier.

Not bad, but generally below where the top tier (Samsung/Intel/WD) land.

There isore to a drive than the controller chip though.

Sabrent's Rocket 4.0 drives are Poison E16 based, and they have had an issue with random drive deaths, which other Phison E16 based drives haven't seen. At least not to the same level.

 

[Tempest]

The Inland TD510 is based on Phison's E26 controller, and I believe it's paired with Micron's 232-layer 3D TLC NAND.

I just looked at a picture of the fan and attached cable... Yuck! Fortunately, it'll be some time before I'm in the market for PCIe 5.0 drives.

Anyone know if Inland USB flash drives are a good value? I need some new USB flash drives, but the market is flooded with so many options that I gave up the last time I was shopping for some. They should be decent/good quality. Reliability and durability are much more important than speed, but they are intended for "ordinary" consumer applications.

 

[Zarathustra]

The Inland TD510 is based on Phison's E26 controller, and I believe it's paired with Micron's 232-layer 3D TLC NAND.

Just based on the fact that it appears to be a rebranded Gen 5 T Force CARDEA, I'm guessing all the components are identical to what they used.

I just looked at a picture of the fan and attached cable... Yuck! Fortunately, it'll be some time before I'm in the market for PCIe 5.0 drives.

Agreed. I'm thinking we are not quite ready for gen5 SSD's yet. I'm going to wait for node sizes to shrink and power consumption to go down a bit first before I jump in. I have no desire to have a fan on an SSD. Not unless it is temperature controlled, and only kicks in in extreme sustained use cases. Having the constaint whine of a small fan just so I can have a slightly faster SSD, is not an acceptable tradeoff for me, and I don't want to have to add more water blocks to my system to complicate my loop. Just the CPU and GPU block for me.

If it fit where the M.2 slot is, I wouldn't be opposed to attaching some sort of passive large tower cooler to it though. As long as it fits and is silent, IDGAF.

Anyone know if Inland USB flash drives are a good value? I need some new USB flash drives, but the market is flooded with so many options that I gave up the last time I was shopping for some. They should be decent/good quality. Reliability and durability are much more important than speed, but they are intended for "ordinary" consumer applications.

I've never been disappointed with anything Inland I've bought. it's all rebranded stuff of course because it is a retail chains in house brand, but it seems like they generally take their time and rebrand decent stuff.

As far as USB sticks go, I used to always buy Sandisk Extreme stuff, but ever since they sold themselves to WD in 2016 the lineup has become confusing, and I'm not sure if they maintain the same quality standards anymore. I haven't really bought any USB sticks since then since I already had all the ones I needed, so I don't know what I'd shop for today if I were looking.

 

[Ranulfo]

The sandisk cruzer glide models I got a few years ago are average at best. The SD Ultras are still pretty good but I forget how old those are, probably 3-4 years now. The best drives I've used lately in the last 3 years are samsung usb drives, especially the metal housing ones, the BAR model.

 

[Zarathustra]

The sandisk cruzer glide models I got a few years ago are average at best. The SD Ultras are still pretty good but I forget how old those are, probably 3-4 years now. The best drives I've used lately in the last 3 years are samsung usb drives, especially the metal housing ones, the BAR model.

Ah, yes, you were right. They are Ultra's not Extremes.

I guess the Extremes were the SD Cards I used to buy for my camera years ago.



I bought so many of these in the 2010's that I have a supply to last me through to the end times.

I keep finding them everywhere. Usually they have old Ubuntu or Mint and sometimes Windows installera on them. Occasionally I find the odd FreeDos drive I made to flash some difficult firmware.

All I ever use them for is to install stuff, and I have plenty for that for the foreseeable future.

No idea what I'd buy today if I needed one.

 

[LazyGamer]

I guess that's Team Group? I'm not really familiar with that brand, but the naked board looks IDENTICAL to the Inland Premium drive, so I'm guessing it is a third tier Chinese brand

Taiwanese so far as I can tell; obviously they dabble in various markets, but their memory is generally pretty solid, up there with G.Skill and Corsair and so on.

No idea what Is buy today if I needed one.

I've tried a few, and have stacks of budget Adata sticks (some of which have died over the years); if it were something that I wanted to last, I'd grab one of the Samsung ones.

 

[Tempest]

Just based on the fact that it appears to be a rebranded Gen 5 T Force CARDEA, I'm guessing all the components are identical to what they used.

Here it is suggested that the Inland drive is made by Phison itself: https://www.anandtech.com/show/18753/first-pcie-gen5-ssds-finally-hit-shelves-more-to-come
"Whereas Gigabyte has built their own drive, the drive that Inland/MicroCenter sells is thought to be made by Phison itself (or at least under its supervision)."

Perhaps that is also true of the T-Force Cardea. I have no idea.

The Teamgroup T-Force Cardea Z540 is listed in TPU's SSD database among a dozen other drives based on Phison's E26 controller (the Inland TD510 hasn't been added yet): https://www.techpowerup.com/ssd-specs/?f&controller=Phison+E26&nandDie=Micron+B58R+FortisFlash

I had never used TPU's SSD database before, and had been unaware of its existence. It's pretty neat.

The CFD Gaming PG5NFZ looks identical to the Inland SSD, and it's apparently very loud too: https://www.techpowerup.com/304463/first-consumer-pcie-5-0-nvme-ssd-gets-tested-makes-a-lot-of-noise

I've never been disappointed with anything Inland I've bought. it's all rebranded stuff of course because it is a retail chains in house brand, but it seems like they generally take their time and rebrand decent stuff.

Thanks, it sounds like they'd be fine for my purposes, and certainly preferable to the risk of receiving counterfeits from Amazon. (Speaking of Amazon, even if they didn't commingle inventory, I don't think I'd trust their terribad packaging with any electronic device.)

 

[LazyGamer]

and it's apparently very loud too:

Small fans gonna whine like small fans... especially cheap ones.

Agreed. I'm thinking we are not quite ready for gen5 SSD's yet. I'm going to wait for node sizes to shrink and power consumption to go down a bit first before I jump in.

Meant to mention this earlier, it really does seem like they're jumping the gun a bit. I can see a requirement for more robust cooling for workstations, but for most consumer applications PCIe 5.0 for NVMe isn't going to make a real difference in terms of performance while it introduces complications from increased heat. And that's further complicated by the way that M.2 slots are arranged on motherboards, along with the size creep of GPUs.

We will probably see 'better' solutions, and one could always just apply some southern-engineering to strap a 40mm Noctua or two on (and you could run water cooling if you're feeling fancy), but this is all beyond what most buyers are likely wanting to deal with.

---

On the USB drive side discussion - if you're going to use drives for updating a motherboard BIOS, remember that you have to use exFAT for the filesystem and that you can't format more than 32GB, otherwise the BIOS will ignore the drive. I generally recommend picking up packs of 32GB drives for this purpose.

 

[DrezKill]

Testing The First PCIe Gen 5.0 NVMe SSD On Linux Has Been Disappointing Review - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

 

[Tempest]

Small fans gonna whine like small fans... especially cheap ones.

Yes, and I avoid them wherever possible. I wouldn't buy an SSD with active cooling. If the noise from the tiny high-speed fans isn't bad enough, there's also the fact that many of them are not easily user-replaceable and will require removing the entire cooling assembly. Cheap bearings combined with operation at high RPM ensures a quick fan death.

 

[Zarathustra]

Small fans gonna whine like small fans... especially cheap ones.


Meant to mention this earlier, it really does seem like they're jumping the gun a bit. I can see a requirement for more robust cooling for workstations, but for most consumer applications PCIe 5.0 for NVMe isn't going to make a real difference in terms of performance while it introduces complications from increased heat. And that's further complicated by the way that M.2 slots are arranged on motherboards, along with the size creep of GPUs.

We will probably see 'better' solutions, and one could always just apply some southern-engineering to strap a 40mm Noctua or two on (and you could run water cooling if you're feeling fancy), but this is all beyond what most buyers are likely wanting to deal with.

---

On the USB drive side discussion - if you're going to use drives for updating a motherboard BIOS, remember that you have to use exFAT for the filesystem and that you can't format more than 32GB, otherwise the BIOS will ignore the drive. I generally recommend picking up packs of 32GB drives for this purpose.

Yeah, I'm thinking something like this would probably work, even if you took the fan off (though the alignment of the fins isn't the best for the airflow direction in most cases:

This Mini Tower-Cooler Heatsink Could Offer Up To 50% Lower Temps On M.2 SSDs But Is It Really Needed?

Chinese manufacturers have come up with a CPU-like tower heatsink cooler for M.2 SSDs which makes use of active fan cooling.

wccftech.com

It takes a 60 mm fan. I'm guessing even a very slow and quiet one would probably be sufficient for enough airflow to deal with NVMe cooling.

That - of course - assumes your GPU doesn't completely cover the spot where the m.2 slot is, and it would actually fit.

 

[Zarathustra]

That - of course - assumes your GPU doesn't completely cover the spot where the m.2 slot is, and it would actually fit.

Just for fun, I checked if I thought I could make this work on my system.

My Asus Zenith II Extreme Alpha has 3 slots directly on the board, and then two more on the DIMM.2 module for a total of 5.

The primary slot is under the GPU so that won't work

The secondary slot would actually work, as long as I don't stick anything too big in one of the nearby PCIe slots, but I'd have to take the heatsink included with the motherboard off in order to make that work.

The third slot is on the bottom of the board, and thus won't work at all.

Neither of the slots off of the DIMM.2 card are likely to work either. One side would interfere with the RAM, the other side would interfere with the power cables. And that assumes the Dimm.2 board is even strong enough to carry the weight of something like this.

So, on my rather extreme EATX motherboard one out of 5 slots are potentially compatible.

But that said, my CPU/motherboard does not support Gen5 anyway, so I am unlikely to need that kind of cooling either way.

Maybe as time goes on, supported boards will realize the need for beefier m.2 cooling and locate the slots where there is more clearance?