We recently reviewed the 1TB version of Sabrent's Rocket 4 Plus Gen 4 PCIe SSD, and now it is the turn of the 2TB model to go under the spotlight. Using a combination of Phison’s latest Gen 4 8-channel controller, the PS5018-E18, alongside 96-layer 3D TLC NAND, is this SSD worth the £400 asking price? The 2TB model of the Rocket 4 Plus sits in the middle of a three drive range; 1TB, 2TB and the 4TB flagship drive. The drive uses a combination of Phison’s latest Gen 4 8-channel controller, the PS5018-E18, and 96-layer 3D TLC NAND. Sabrent quote Sequential read/write speeds for the 2TB drive as up to 7,100MB/s for reads and up to 6,600MB/s for writes while 4K performance is rated at up to 650,000 IOPS for reads and up to 700,000 IOPS for writes. Sabrent rate the endurance of the 2TB drive at 1400TBW and back the drive with a 1-year warranty although if you register the drive with them you get a full 5-year warranty. Physical Specifications: Usable Capacities: 2TB. NAND Components: Micron B27B 96-layer 3D TLC NAND. NAND Controller: Phison PS5018-E18. Cache: DDR4. Interface: PCI-e Gen 4 x4 NVMe 1.4. Form Factor: M.2 2280. Dimensions: 22 x 80 x 2.25mm. Firmware Version: RKT4P1.1 Unlike many of its competitors, the 2TB Rocket 4 Plus comes in a diminutive box, the weight of which is surprising but more on that in a minute. The front of the box has an image of the drive with the capacity displayed in the bottom right-hand corner. The rear of the box carries a different view of the drive along with the drive’s product number. Once the box is opened the reason for the weight becomes obvious, the drive itself comes packed in a classy copper-coloured metal box, probably the best packing we have seen for a non-special edition SSD. Hats off to Sabrent for that one. Built on a dual-sided M.2 2280 format, the 2TB Rocket 4 Plus has four packages of Micron B27B 96-layer 3D TLC NAND and an SK Hynix DDR4 DRAM IC on each side of the PCB. These are joined on the top side of the PCB by the Phison PS5018-E18 controller. To help keep the controller and the NAND packages next to it cool, Sabrent has used a product label that includes a copper heat spreader in its design. The other side of the drive just has a normal label covering the components. The PS5018-E18 is an 8-channel controller built on a 12nm process using Triple ARM Cortex R5 CPU’s together with a pair of CoXProcessor's. It has an interface speed of up to 1,600MT/s per channel and it supports the latest NVMe 1.4 specifications. The E18 supports Phison’s 4th Gen LDPC engine and comes with End-To-End Data Path Protection. It supports AES 128/256bit hardware encryption and TCG & Opal 2.0, Pyrite, Sanitize and Crypto Erase technologies. Sabrent’s SSD management software goes by the name Rocket Control Panel. It has a fancy, easy to use GUI and it allows you to all the usual things like checking the drive’s health and updating the firmware. It also has a link to download a copy of Acronis True Image for Sabrent. For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real-world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system. This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits. Main system: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, 16GB DDR4-2400, Sapphire R9 390 Nitro and an MSI MPG X570 Gaming Edge Wifi motherboard. Other drives Corsair Force MP600 1TB. Patriot Viper VPN4100 1TB. Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1TB. Samsung SSD980 PRO 1TB. Seagate FireCuda 520 1TB. Teamgroup T-Force Cardea Zero Z440 1TB. WD Black SN850 1TB. Software: Atto Disk Benchmark 4. CrystalMark 5, 7 and 8 AS SSD 2.0. IOMeter. Futuremark PC Mark 10. All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active. CrystalDiskMark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using versions 6.0. and 7.0.0. We are also beginning to use version 8 which includes test settings for NVMe drives. Looking at the two CrystalDiskMark result screens it appears that the new E18 controller that the Rocket 4 Plus uses is much more efficient when reading compressible Sequential and 4K data at certain queue depths. We can also confirm the official Sequential read performance of 7,100MB/s at 7,468MB/s although the maximum tested Sequential write figure of 6,579MB/s was a little shy of the official 6,600MB/s. CrystalDiskMark 7 CrystalDiskMark, version 7, includes a couple of profiles that can be used for testing – Peak Performance and Real World. The result screens for these two profiles not only display MB/s results but also IOPS and latency. Looking at the results for the Peak Performance profile, we could confirm both official Sequential performance figures. The drive is rated up to 7,000MB/s for reads, with the tested drive producing a best of 7,400MB/s, and up to 6,600MB/s for writes, with the best test result of 6,610MB/s. When it comes to random performance the drive is rated as up to 650,000 IOPS for reads and up to 700,000 IOPS for writes. As you can see from the Peak Performance results we couldn't get close to either of those figures using CrystalDiskMark 7. The best read figure we saw was 362,439 IOPS with writes at 342,665 IOPS. We also used CrystalDiskMark 7 to test the random performance of the drive at lower queue depths (QD1 – QD8 where most of the everyday workloads occur) using 1 to 4 threads. The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus read performance climbs smoothly throughout the tested queue depths and threads with a peak performance figure of 325,325 IOPS (1,332.53MB/s) at QD8. In the write tests, the performance was a bit more erratic. The best performance figure we saw was the 356,336 IOPS (1,459.55MB/s) using 4 threads at a QD of 8. CrystalDiskMark 8 NVMe tests. Using the default NVMe setting which forms part of CrystalDiskMark's v8.0.0 benchmark, we could again confirm the official maximum Sequential read figure of 7,100MB/s with a test performance of 7,106MB/s. Tested writes came in at 6,607MB/s, again confirming the official maximum of 6,600MB/s. The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage. We are using version 4.0 for our NVMe disk tests. Officially the 2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is rated at up to 7,100MB/s for reads and 6,600MB/s for writes. Using the ATTO benchmark we couldn't quite reach those maximums but the 6,840MB/s read and 6,380MB/s write figures we did achieve are the fastest we have seen to date for a Gen 4 SSD. AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures. With a read score of 2882 and a write score of 3071, the 2TB version of Sabrent's Rocket 4 Plus drive hits the top spot in the AS SSD result chart. Its read score of 2882 is an increase of 323 over the 1TB version of the drive while its write score of 3072 betters the 2951 score of the 1TB Rocket 4 Plus. IOMeter is another open-source synthetic benchmarking tool that is able to simulate the various loads placed on the hard drive and solid-state drive technology. There are many ways to measure the IOPS performance of a Solid State Drive, so our results will sometimes differ from the manufacturer’s quoted ratings. We do test all drives in exactly the same way, so the results are directly comparable. We test 128KB Sequential read and write and random read and write 4K tests. The test setup’s for the tests are listed below. Each is run five times. 128KB Sequential Read / Write. Transfer Request Size: 128KB Span: 8GB Thread(s): 1, Outstanding I/O: 1-32 Test Run: 20 minutes per test 4K Sustained Random Read / Write. Transfer Request Size: 4KB Span: 80GB Thread(s): 4, Outstanding I/O: 1-32 Test Run: 20 minutes per test 4K Random 70/30 mix Read/Write. Transfer Request Size: 4KB Span: 80GB Reads: 70% Writes: 30% Thread(s): 4 Outstanding I/O: 2 – 32 Test Run: 20 minutes With our own Sequential tests we couldn’t quite hit the official maximums for either read or writes. Our read result of 6,900MB/s isn't too far short of the official 7,100MB/s while the write score of 5,736MB/s is bit further off the official 6,600MB/s. 128KB Sequential Read Performance v QD compared. The 2TB version of the Rocket 4 Plus out performs the 1TB version at QD's 1-4. However at a QD of 32 the 1TB drive has a slight edge. 128KB Sequential Write Performance v QD compared. Unlike the Sequential read performance, when it came to the Sequential write tests, there wasn’t a QD where the 2TB Rocket 4 Plus isn’t the fastest drive we’ve seen to date. Sabrent quote a maximum 4K random read figure for the drive of 650,000 IOPS for the 2TB Rocket 4 Plus. The best we saw from the drive using our own 4-threaded tests was 426,233 IOPS at a QD of 32. 4K Random Read v QD Performance compared. Sabrent’s Rocket 4 Plus sits in third place in our charts behind the WD Black SN850 and Samsung SSD980 PRO at a QD of 1 while it tops the chart at QD2. QD's 4 and 32 sees the drive in second place behind the WD drive. The official 4K random write rating for the Rocket 4 Plus is up to 700,000 IOPS. As you can see from our 4-threaded test results we couldn’t get close to that figure, the best we saw was 257,546 IOPS at QD32. We did a quick test at QD32 using 8 threads and saw the IOPS figure rise to 607,772, a lot closer to the stated maximum figure. 4K Random Write v QD Performance compared. At QD1, the 2TB Rocket 4 Plus tops the results chart at 173,538 IOPS. After this point, it slowly drops down the charts as the tested queue depth deepens. The 2TB Rocket 4 Plus handles our 4K 70/30, read/write mixed test very well, ending the test run (QD32) at 366,631 IOPS (1,501.68MB/s). In our read throughput test the 2TB Rocket 4 Plus peaked at 5,417MB/s (16MB block), putting it into second place behind WD’s Black SN850 drive. In our write throughput test, the drive's performance climbs pretty smoothly as the test progresses until it reaches the 2MB block mark where the performance dips but the drive quickly recovers to finish the test run at 6,127MB/s, the fastest write figure we've seen to date for a Gen 4 drive. For the long term performance stability test, we set the drive up to run a 20-minute 4K random test with a 30% write, 70% read split, at a Queue Depth of 256 over the entire disk. The 2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus averaged 115,934 IOPS for the test with a performance stability of 75.5% which is excellent for a consumer drive. Incediently those figures are a good deal better than the 83,504 IOPS average and 55% performance stability of the 1TB Rocket 4 Plus. The PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to fully test the performance of the fastest modern drives. The benchmark is designed to measure the performance of fast system drives using the SATA bus at the low end and devices connected via PCI Express at the high end. The goal of the benchmark is to show meaningful real-world performance differences between fast storage technologies such as SATA, NVMe, and Intel’s Optane. The Full System Drive Benchmark uses 23 traces, running 3 passes with each trace. It typically takes an hour to run. Traces used: Booting Windows 10. Adobe Acrobat – starting the application until usable. Adobe Illustrator – starting the application until usable Adobe Premiere Pro – starting the application until usable. Adobe Photoshop – starting the application until usable. Battlefield V – starting the game until the main menu. Call of Duty Black Ops 4 – starting the game until the main menu. Overwatch – starting the game until main menu. Using Adobe After Effects. Using Microsoft Excel. Using Adobe Illustrator. Using Adobe InDesign. Using Microsoft PowerPoint. Using Adobe Photoshop (heavy use). Using Adobe Photoshop (light use). cp1 Copying 4 ISO image files, 20 GB in total, from a secondary drive to the target drive (write test). cp2 Making a copy of the ISO files (read-write test). cp3 Copying the ISO to a secondary drive (read test). cps1Copying 339 JPEG files, 2.37 GB in total, to the target drive (write test). cps2 Making a copy of the JPEG files (read-write test). cps3 Copying the JPEG files to another drive (read test). The 2TB Rocket 4 Plus makes a good fist of PCMark10’s Full System Drive benchmark displaying good performance in all the test traces, particulary the 866MB/s bandwidth figure for the Heavy Use Adobe Photoshop trace. Overall in PCMark 10’s Full System Drive benchmark, the 2TB Rocket 4 Plus sits behind WD’s Black SN850 and Samsung SSD980 PRO. It is the fastest of the Phison powered drives we’ve tested to date. To test the real-life performance of a drive we use a mix of folder/file types and by using the FastCopy utility (which gives a time as well as MB/s result) we record the performance of drive reading from & writing to a 256GB Samsung SSD850 PRO. 100GB data file. 60GB iso image. 60GB Steam folder – 29,521 files. 50GB File folder – 28,523 files. 21GB 8K Movie demos. 12GB Movie folder – 24 files (mix of Blu-ray and 4K files). 11GB 4K Raw Movie Clips (8 MP4V files). 10GB Photo folder – 621 files (mix of png, raw and jpeg images). 10GB Audio folder – 1,483 files (mix of mp3 and .flac files). 5GB (1.5bn pixel) photo. Blu-ray movie. Sabrent’s Rocket 4 Plus dealt with our real-life file transfers without any problems, showing very good consistency of performance for both reads and writes when dealing with the larger file sizes, although as usual its the small files in the Audio, Steam and File folders that cause the drive to slow down. To get a measure of how much faster PCIe NVMe drives are than standard SATA SSD's we use the same files but transfer to and from a 2TB Kioxia Exceria Plus drive. Switching over to the NVMe drive to transfer data to and from the 2TB Rocket 4 Plus saw transfer speeds for the large file transfers rocket and times taken drop dramatically. Six of the transfers topped well over 2.5 GB/s for writing to the drive. The 2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus sits in the middle of a three drive line-up, alongside the entry 1TB model and the recently launched 4TB flagship drive. The Rocket 4 Plus series are the first we've seen using Phison’s next-generation PS5018-E18 controller. For the 2TB version of the Rocket 4 Plus, Sabrent has used eight (four per side of the PCB) packages of Micron B27B 96-layer 3D TLC NAND to go along with the controller. Helping to get rid of the heat generated from the drive, the side of the PCB that holds the controller is covered by a full-length product label which includes a layer of copper in its construction. The 8-channel PS5018-E18 is the successor to the world's first Gen 4 controller, the PS5016-E16. The new controller is built on a 12nm process as opposed to the 28nm process its predecessor used and the core count has been increased from the two ARM Cortex R5 cores in the E16 to three in the E18 along with a pair of CoXprocessors. The speed at which the E18 controller connects to the NAND is up to 1,600 MT/s, twice that of the E16 and it can support up to 8TB of NAND. The PS5018-E18 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. Sabrent quote Sequential read/write figures for the 2TB Rocket 4 Plus as up to 7,100MB/s and up to 6,600MB/s respectively. Using the ATTO benchmark we couldn't quite hit those official maximums but the 6,840MB/s read and 6,380MB/s write scores we did achieve are the fastest we have seen to date for a PCIe Gen 4 drive. We could however confirm the official Sequential performance figures using the CrystalDiskMark 7 Peak Performance profile test which produced read/write figures of 7,400MB/s and 6,610MB/s respectively. As for 4K random performance, Sabrent quote figures of up to 650,000 IOPS for reads and up to 700,000 IOPS for writes. Using our 4-threaded tests, the best read figure we saw was 426,233 IOPS (1,745.85MB/s) at a QD of 32. We did a quick test at QD32 using 8 threads and saw the IOPS figure climb to 607.772 IOPS, still shy of the official maximum. When it came to random writes, we couldn’t get close with our standard tests, the best we saw being 266,730 IOPS (1054.91MB/s) at QD8. Again we did a quick test at QD32 using 8 threads and saw the IOPS figure rise to 501,069 IOPS, a lot closer to the stated maximum figure. We found the 2TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus for £399.99 (inc VAT) on Amazon.co.uk 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: We were impressed with Sabrent’s 1TB version of Rocket 4 Plus, but the 2TB version is even better and Sabrent have given it a fighting chance with a pretty competitive price tag.
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