As everyone knows, there are a wide variety of games you can play on your computer. Most of the games that show up on consoles from Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. Well the ones not made by Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. Most of them. Anyway, you also have a bunch of new releases exclusive to the computer. As well as your stockpile of retro computer games you load through your external floppy, and optical drives, then play through DOSBox. And that’s before you even get to the important stuff like doing paperwork, doing your taxes, budgeting your accounts through Quicken, editing your photos, and ripping your vinyl collection for convenience. After all, you don’t have the time to walk to the record player, there’s work to be done! Where was I?
Oh yes. Upgrades. Eventually, you’re going to run out of space, or you’ll have a drive go bad, or a new game won’t perform well on that mechanical hard disk you have. And much like other components in your desktop, you’ll need to add another one, or replace it with a working one. Enter the T-Force Gaming Delta R RGB SSD by TeamGroup. While the name sounds like a subtitle for a Kingdom Hearts game starring Mr. T, it isn’t. It’s actually one of the nicest Solid State Drives I’ve used. When I built my computer a few years ago now, SSD’s were just coming into form. They were expensive, and didn’t give you a lot of space. So I ended up with a lowly 250GB SSD for my OS with handful of important programs. As well as a 1TB mechanical hard drive for my video games, and storage. Along with an external drive or two for backups in case of crashes. (As an aside, everyone should have a couple of backup drives. Backup the backup. And cloud storage while convenient, can have a snafu. It’s nice to have a third tier in case Murphy’s Law occurs.)
PROS: VERY fast read/write speeds. Fancy lights for those who like flash.
CONS: Doesn’t include everything you’ll need.
T-FORCE: The name reminds me of the Mr. T cartoon.
Anyway, I was thankfully gifted this drive for Christmas by my Brother. Which was good in my case. Because it turned out a couple of games I had installed required updates that improved performance. However on older drive tech in an older computer these patches introduced micro-stuttering. So I ended up installing this in January. Nearly two months later this drive is trucking along very well. Not only did it give me enough space to carry over my games, and allow me to use the traditional hard disk mostly for storage, the performance in gaming was immediately noticeable. This is largely due to the 560MB read speeds, and 510MB write speeds. Most games, and everything else load nearly instantaneously, and this is on a PC running a 4th Gen i7 4770k. While not yet an antique, intel chips are on their 9th Generation now. So if I can see the benefits, those building new machines should give this consideration. In the newest titles I own, the micro-stuttering is gone. As of now, the folks at New World Interactive even recommend playing Insurgency Sandstorm on an SSD over an HD if you have an older machine. A Solid State Drive has become an ideal component for PC Gaming.
In the frills department, the Delta R features a set of LED’s inside that will shine a spectrum of rainbow colors out of your case. These are bright too. My case doesn’t feature a window, but it does have a mesh texture design in front. At night, the gleaming rainbow of colors pours out through the metal. For those with a windowed case, it’s a nice little feature, as it gives the computer a little bit of pizzaz. Still, do know if you buy this drive, it does require a USB 9 pin header on your motherboard. It comes with a cable for the LED lights, and if your motherboard doesn’t have the header you can’t plug it in.
I only have one major complaint with the drive, other than the impossibly long name, and that is a lack of any essentials. This is something that many part manufacturers are starting to cut for cost, and it is annoying for anybody who has to install these parts. Be it a home user, or a professional. The drive doesn’t include any mounting screws. So you had better hope you have some left over from a previous upgrade or that you have an older device with comparable screws sitting broken in a storage closet. It also doesn’t include any SATA cables. So again, you’ll either need to order one when you order the drive, or hope you have one you can repurpose from an old broken desktop you may still have in the garage.
It’s less of an issue if you know this ahead of time, but it’s still something that can be grating. So just know, again if you pick this drive up, you’ll want to make sure you have mounting screws, and a SATA cable already. If not, you’ll have to buy them when you buy the drive. Installing the drive isn’t really all that difficult if you’re comfortable with doing your own upgrades. It requires three cables. Just make sure your motherboard has a 9 pin USB Header for the lights before buying it.
Overall, though I’ve been really pleased with this one. It loads, and saves files insanely fast, performs well with any game I’ve installed on it, and it’s built to handle millions of read/write operations. These things have come a long way since their inception. Whether you’re building a new gaming rig, expanding storage in an existing computer, or replacing a drive that has worn out, the Delta R is a terrific option. It also has a 3 year limited warranty, so if it dies in that time they’ll give you a new or refurbished one to replace it with. Obviously that doesn’t do much for your data, but that’s why again, you should have multiple backups. But in closing, this is a terrific SSD. Storage might not be the most exciting aspect of a PC, but it is an important one. With it’s brisk speeds, large storage, and a dash of flash, it’s a winner. Even if it does have an unnecessarily long name.
Final Score: 9 out of 10
Comma Eight Comma One 