Team Group Delta RGB SSD Review : LIte Performance, Ligh Drive

Complementing the SSD review Monday, we have another SATA SSD with adjustable RGB LED lighting: Group T-Force Delta Team. Like the Kingston HyperX Fury RGB, this is a mainstream SATA drive coupled with RGB LEDs, which can be activated and controlled via a compatible motherboard head to illuminate the top of the drive casing. However, the similarities between the two drives end there.

The T-Force Delta RGB SSD takes a very different approach from HyperX Fury RGB to implement lighting. Where the RGB Fury places the LED on the back side of the PCB SSD, Delta RGB uses a completely separate circuit board. The upper side of the drive is dominated by a textured clear plastic diffuser illuminated by a single row of RGB LEDs. The T-Force Gaming logo is printed in black on this plastic part and silhouettes with LED lighting, instead of the directly illuminated logo as in HyperX Fury RGB. Because Delta RGB only lights from one side there is some uniformity in the brightness on the drive surface, but there is no localized variation in brightness that results from direct Fury RGB backlighting. Overall, Delta Delta emits far more light than Fury RGB even though it uses 8 RGB LED modules to 75 Fury modules.

Delta RGB uses a digital signal protocol for its LEDs, allowing each of the eight RGB LED modules to be individually controlled, so that the drive is not limited to solid color illumination. Although the Delta RGB Team and HyperX Fury RGB both reuse micro-type B USB connectors for their lighting, their adapter cables are completely incompatible and require different motherboard headers. Delta RGB LEDs run 5V while a much larger LED array on the RGB Fury is not surprising requiring a 12V supply.

Where the power and heat consumption generated by LEDs in the RGB Fury seems to be the cause of some performance problems and certainly makes the drive warm to the touch, the Delta RGB lighting solution does not seem to have an impact on drive storage functions. When a set of color LEDs lights up on Delta RGB, the LED uses slightly above 0.5W and all red, green and blue component settings for full brightness only require around 1.4W. In comparison, HyperX Fury RGB requires around 2.3W for LEDs when set to red and more than 4W when everything is on.

The team offers several cosmetic variants from Delta RGB. Metal casings can have a white, not black matte finish used by our sample. Delta Delta, which is reviewed here, uses a 5-pin 5V digital interface to turn on and control the LED, allowing the colors of each of the 8 LEDs to be set individually. The team has also announced two versions with different lighting schemes: Delta S uses a 4-pin 12V header to set one solid color for all LEDs, and Delta R with an animated (but uncontrolled) rainbow color effect from the USB 2.0 Header. Delta S seems not currently available through the usual online retailers, but the recently announced Delta R will be available on Newegg.

Apart from RGB lighting, Delta RGB is a pretty boring SSD. Using the Silicon Motion SM2258 controller that is very familiar and the last generation Micron 32-layer 3D TLC NAND, the combination we have handled several times before.

The first generation Micron 3D TLC NAND is produced in 384Gb (48GB) per unusual die capacity. This means that Delta RGB has more backup areas to use compared to ordinary drives: the 250GB model has 288GB of flash. For some reason, our sample labeled as a 250GB drive actually has the capacity that can be used just like a normal 256GB SSD. Larger models may also offer capacities that are slightly more useful than they advertise, because there are many raw NANDs to use even after setting aside a generous SLC write cache. However, the strange dead capacity has a negative side because the flash is not optimally regulated. Delta 250GB Delta uses only three of the four channels provided by the SM2258 controller. With the NAND interface fast enough, this doesn't have to be a serious problem, but Micron's 3D NAND 32L isn't too fast and we can't expect Delta RGB to set performance records.

The transition to 3D NAND brings leaps in capacity per die, and the first generation of Micron 3D NAND is a little too far away with the TLC 384Gb. The consequence for consumer SSDs that almost exclusively uses TLC is that low capacity drives have very few dead to be accessed in parallel. A performance hit caused most product lines to leave a 120GB capacity class, and many SSD vendors stopped giving review samples that were smaller than 480GB. Because our Delta RGB sample is a 256GB drive, we only have one comparable SATA capacity SSD using the current 64-layer 3D TLC generation to compare, and that's the entry-level Lenovo DVD TR200 DRAMless. This review also includes several 480-512GB drives with 64L 3D NAND to compare, but its higher capacity gives them a natural advantage for performance. The drive closest to Delta RGB in terms of performance expectations is 256GB ADATA Ultimate SU800 and HP S700 Pro, both using the same SM2258 controller and Micron 32L TLC.

Because RGB LED lights drive Delta RGB prices far beyond mainstream SATA or other low-end SSDs, this review also compares Delta RGB with multiple NVMe SSDs at the same price. MyDigitalSSD SBX is an entry-level NVII SSD using Toshiba 64L TLC and Phison E8 controllers. ADATA XPG SX8200 uses a high-end combination of Micron 64L TLC and Silicon Motion SM2262 controller, but in 240GB capacity it is not as fast as the larger capacity that competes well with Samsung and Western Digital's flagship NVMe drives.

Delta RGB is entered through our SSD benchmark suite with lighting disabled, because our testbed motherboard does not have an RGB header. HyperX Fury RGB is tested with the red LED illuminating at full brightness because that is the default behavior when the LED control cable is not plugged in, but the Delta RGB LED is on a circuit board that is completely separate from the SSD and cannot pull power except through an LED cable. For HyperX Fury RGB we report two sets of power measurements to reflect total power withdrawals including LEDs and storage attraction only from only 5V supplies. For Delta RGB, we only report power images with the LED disconnected and off.

Consumer SSD Testbed

• CPU Intel Xeon E3 1240 v5
• Motherboard ASRock Fatal1ty E3V5 Performance Gaming/OC
• Chipset Intel C232
• Memory 4x 8GB G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR4-2400 CL15
• Graphics AMD Radeon HD 5450, 1920x1200@60Hz
• Software Windows 10 x64, version 1709
• Linux kernel version 4.14, fio version 3.6
• Spectre/Meltdown microcode and OS patches current as of May 2018

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