Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2TB SSD Review

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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