TeamGroup describes its NV5000 (starts at $74.99 for 1TB; $124.99 for 2TB as tested) as a "high-performance entry-level" PCI Express 4.0 solid-state drive (SSD). That's technically true: Its rated read speed is more than double that of a typical PCI Express 3.0 stick and over nine times faster than SATA SSDs. However, the latter is now outdated technology, and the former is on its way out as well. However, the NV5000 lags behind all PCI Express 4.0 SSDs we have tested in the past couple of years on one of our main benchmark tests. It's true that the NV5000 is cheaper than most PCIe 4.0 SSDs, but for just a little more money, you can get a much better performer, such as TeamGroup's own MP44Q, an Editors' Choice winner. And you can also find plenty of faster SSDs that are near in price or cheaper, such as the WD Blue SN5100. Against that context, buying the NV5000 only makes sense if it's significantly marked down.

Design: What Exactly Is Inside?

The TeamGroup NV5000 is built in the M.2 Type-2280 "gumstick" form factor, which is common among today's internal SSDs. It employs the NVMe protocol over its PCIe 4.0 bus. (Baffled by some of these terms? Check out our glossary of SSD terminology.)

The NV5000 is a four-lane PCI Express (PCIe) 4.0 drive that utilizes 3D NAND flash memory. The NV5000 lacks a dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) cache, relying on the computer's own memory (host memory buffer, or HMB) instead. The DRAM-less architecture helps keep this SSD's price down. Although TeamGroup doesn't specify the NV5000's controller, the company's previous DRAM-less SSDs, such as the MP44Q, utilize MaxioTech DRAM-free controllers and NAND flash from YMTC. TeamGroup says that different production batches of the NV5000 may utilize various controllers and NAND flash components, and the company declined to provide more specific component details. This box-of-chocolates approach may help keep costs down, but it raises questions around the consistency of the drive's performance from sample to sample.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

On the top surface of the NV5000, you will find TeamGroup’s familiar heat-dissipating graphene label, which is less than 1mm thick and runs the full length of an M.2 2280 SSD. It is a heat spreader, reducing operating temperature by delivering the heat throughout the top surface of the SSD; otherwise, it would remain concentrated around the drive's controller and NAND chips, where a buildup of heat could damage the components or trigger thermal throttling. The latter is a safety mechanism that slows down the drive (and thus reduces performance) to tamp down the heat when a certain temperature is reached. We still recommend, in the case of PCI Express 4.0 and PCI Express 5.0 SSDs—even ones with thin heat spreaders like this —that they be coupled with a full-fledged M.2 heatsink, either a third-party unit or the one provided with most late-model desktop computers' motherboards.

The NV5000 comes in 1TB and 2TB capacities. It is priced similarly to inexpensive DRAM-less SSDs (many of which come in capacities of up to 4TB) that are currently in vogue.

The NV5000's durability ratings, expressed in terms of lifetime write capacity in total terabytes written (TBW), are low for an internal SSD. They are similar to those we see with many SSDs with QLC NAND, and below the 600TBW and 1,200TBW ratings, for 1TB and 2TB, respectively, of the Crucial T500, Crucial P5 Plus, Samsung SSD 990 Pro, and WD Black SN850X, all of which are TLC NAND-based.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The TBW spec is an estimate, according to the manufacturer, of how much data can be written to a drive before some cells begin to fail and get taken out of service. (TBW tends to scale 1:1 with capacity, as it does in this case.) The NV5000 is under warranty for three years or until you hit the rated TBW figure in writes, whichever comes first, though it is unlikely that you would write enough data to the drive in less than three years to hit its TBW mark.

Performance Testing: Looking Low for 4.0

We test PCIe 4.0 internal SSDs using a desktop testbed with an MSI X570 Godlike motherboard and AMD Ryzen CPU, 16GB of Corsair Dominator DDR4 memory clocked to 3,600MHz, and a discrete Nvidia GeForce graphics card. We subjected the TeamGroup NV5000 to our standard suite of solid-state drive benchmarks, which includes CrystalDiskMark 6.0, PCMark 10 Storage, and 3DMark Storage. For comparison, we included other relatively recent PCI Express 4.0 SSDs that are still being sold. (Many of the early Gen 4 drives have been discontinued.)

Crystal DiskMark's sequential speed tests provide a traditional measure of drive throughput, simulating best-case, straight-line transfers of large files. The NV5000 performed as advertised on these tests, with its sequential read speed a hair short of its rated speed and a write-speed score in excess of its rating. This was the drive's high point in our benchmarking. Crystal DiskMark's 4K (or "random read/write") tests simulate typical processes involved in program/game loads or bootup sequences. The NV5000's 4K read speed was the lowest in our comparison group; its 4K write score was also the worst, just below the mark of TeamGroup's own MP44.

The PCMark 10 Overall Storage test measures a drive's speed in performing various routine tasks, such as launching Windows, loading games and creative apps, and copying both small and large files. The NV5000 had the lowest (slowest) PCMark 10 Overall score among our comparison group, more in line with scores from the earliest PCI Express 4 SSDs (circa 2020) than today's models. It also fared no better in the individual trace tests from which the overall score is aggregated.

It also had the lowest score among our comparison group on the 3DMark Storage test, a gaming-centric benchmark that aggregates results from various gaming-related tasks. We have been using the 3DMark Storage benchmark since 2021.

It is unclear how typical our test results are for the NV5000, as the SSD's controller and NAND flash—the two components that primarily determine a drive's performance—may vary depending on the production batch from which a particular unit comes.