Team Group T-Force Vulcan SATA SSD Review: Flashy, Fast and Affordable

The Vulcan is a highly logical choice for a speedy, pretty budget boot drive.

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By Sean Webster
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(Image: © Tom's Hardware)

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In a sea of SATA SSDs, Team Group’s T-Force Vulcan stands out as an impressive specimen. Its design is simple, yet stylish and flashy. To hide it would be a shame. It’s best suited for display within a gaming or showpiece desktop. And, with Micron’s 3D TLC and Silicon Motion’s SM2258, the Vulcan features a winning component combination too. It’s well rounded and then some.

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Still, Team Group’s drive is priced aggressively, so there is value to be had here, undercutting many of the top SATA SSDs available. At under $100, the 1TB model is the best value in the lineup, but the 500GB model we tested is worth considering as well. If you’re looking to upgrade your system with a mainstream SATA SSD, especially one with great looks to go with its performance, Team Group’s T-Force Vulcan is a top pick.  That said if you have a motherboard with a slot for it, faster M.2 NVMe SSDs are slipping down in price and can potentially give your build a cleaner look without the need for SATA power and data cables.

The component combo leads to some killer performance results. In testing, it matched or surpassed the Crucial MX500 and Samsung 860 EVO depending on the specific test. It even surpassed the Crucial P1 in PCMark 8, and in sequentially writing hundreds of gigabytes of data in a short period of time. And, it performed as the best SATA SSD yet in the SPEC workstation 3’s storage benchmark, proving its worth as an SSD that can handle even prosumer workloads. On a more basic level, it delivered a user experience that was significantly better than an HDD anyway you look at it.

But the drive has its downsides, too. While the endurance rating surpasses the Crucial MX500 and is almost as good as the Samsung 860 EVO, its 3-year warranty is fairly basic, in line with the WD Blue 3D’s. Also, the SSD Toolbox is a good add on, but we weren’t able to use it to clone our NVMe OS drive to the Vulcan. 

 

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Sean Webster
Sean Webster
Storage Reviewer

Sean is a Contributing Editor at Tom’s Hardware US, covering storage hardware.

4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • w_barath
    For 512GB drives, it doesn't appear to compare very favourably to the AData XPG8200, which in turn hasn't compared very favourably to the Silicon Power SU512GBP34A80M28AB in my own work machine.

    Tom's doesn't seem to do reviews / benchmarks of the Silicon Power drives though, curiously. When I see exclusions like this the question that comes to mind is "has SP failed to pay its shill dues to THG, or has THG some politically-influenced reason for not covering their products?"
    Reply
  • mdd1963
    Gonna have to say at that price point $60/for 500 GB) I'd rather just pay $5 more for a Crucial MX500.....
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    w_barath said:
    Tom's doesn't seem to do reviews / benchmarks of the Silicon Power drives though, curiously. When I see exclusions like this the question that comes to mind is "has SP failed to pay its shill dues to THG, or has THG some politically-influenced reason for not covering their products?"
    Um... A quick search reveals Tom's Hardware reviewed that drive, or at least the 1TB version, four months ago. >_>

    https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/silicon-power-p34a80-pcie-gen3x4-m-2-nvme-ssd,6180.html
    It was a largely positive review, so Silicon Power clearly must have paid their shill dues. : D

    If they don't review a particular drive, it might simply be because they weren't sent a sample to review by the manufacturer. It might also be that they don't have the resources to test every product they are sent, so they might focus on testing the ones that they feel do something unique or better than others they have previously tested, or that are expected to be a popular product due to their brand or other factors.
    Reply
  • Scour
    TeamGroup are stingy with details.

    Can anyone tell me how good the GX2 is? Completely different to the Vulcan or not?
    Reply