Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1TB SSD Review

1. Introduction2. Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1TB3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO Disk Benchmark6. AS SSD7. IOMETER8. 128KB Sequential Performance9. 4K Random Read v QD Performance10. 4K Random Write v QD Performance11. 4K 70/30 Mixed Performance12. Throughput13. PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark 14. Performance Stability15. Real Life File Testing16. Closing Thoughts17. View All Pages

Since the arrival of the first Gen 4 NVMe SSD's in early 2020, there has been a bit of a lull in new drives appearing but towards the end of the year, there was a rush of activity with new drives from Samsung and WD, both using in-house controllers. Sabrent has also come to market with the Rocket 4 Plus, using the second generation Phison controller, the PS5018-E18.

Phison's E18 controller follows on from the world's first Gen 4 controller, the PS5016-E16. Built from the ground up on a 12nm process (the PS5016-E16 used a 28nm process) the 8-channel E18 features triple ARM Cortex R5 cores as opposed to the two in the E16 and also has a pair of CoXprocessors as well. The controller connects to the NAND at up to 1,600 MT/s, twice that of the E16 and can support up to 8TB of NAND. It uses Phison's 4th Gen LDPC engine with End-to-End Data Path Protection and SmartECC. AES 128/256-Bit hardware encryption with Crypto Erase is supported along with TCG OPAL 2.0 and Pyrite.

For the Rocket 4 Plus, Sabrent has combined the E18 with, in the case of the 1TB drive, four packages of Micron B27B 96-layer 3D TLC NAND. As all Gen 4 drives get pretty toasty when they are pushed, Sabrent has used a layer of copper in the label that covers the components to help get rid of the heat.

Sabrent quote Sequential read/write figures for the 1TB drive as up to 7,000MB/s and up to 5,300MB/s respectively. Using the ATTO benchmark we couldn’t quite match those maximums, the tested drive producing a read figure of 6,820MB/s and a write figure of 4,950MB/s. Even though we couldn’t match the official numbers, those read and write ATTO results are the fastest we have seen to date for a PCIe Gen 4 drive. Using our own Sequential tests we again fell a little short of the maximum read figure at 6,931MB/s. However, we could confirm the write figure with a test result of 5,364MB/s.

As for random 4K performance, Sabrent quotes a read figure of up to 350,000 IOPS and a write figure of up to 700,000 IOPS for the 1TB drive. Using our 4-threaded tests, the best read figure we saw was 263,363 IOPS at a QD of 16. As for random writes, we couldn't get close with our standard tests, the best we saw being 324,013 (QD32). We did a quick test at QD32 using 8 threads and saw the IOPS figure climb to 490,121 IOPS.

We found the 1TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Pro for £199.99 (inc VAT) on Amazon.co.uk HERE.

Pros

• Sequential performance.
• Pricing.

Cons

• Need to register the drive before you get the full warranty period.
• Couldn't match the official random write figures under testing.

KitGuru says: Sabrent's Rocket 4 Plus is the first drive we've seen that uses the second generation Phison Gen 4 NVMe controller and it uses it to good effect. It's a fast drive that comes with a keen price tag and should stir up the market segment quite nicely.

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