Sabrent's current flagship for the Rocket 4 Plus SSD series is the 4TB model. We've already looked at the 1TB and 2TB drives that make up the rest of the family, so let's see how the big one stacks up. Can it justify an asking price of almost £800? The 4TB Rocket 4 Plus heads up a three drive range, the other two being 1TB and 2TB capacities. At the heart of the drive is a second-generation Phison PCIe Gen 4 controller, the PS5018-E18. In the case of the 4TB model, this looks after eight packages of 96-layer 3D TLC NAND and a couple of DRAM cache chips. Sabrent quote Sequential read/write speeds for the 4TB drive as up to 7,200MB/s and up to 6,900MB/s respectively. 4K random performance is listed as up to 650,000 IOPS for reads and up to 700,000 IOPS for writes. Sabrent rate the endurance of the 4TB drive at 2,800TBW 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: 4TB NAND Components: Micron B27B 96-layer 3D TLC NAND. NAND Controller: Phison PS5018-E18. Cache: 4GB DDR4. Interface: PCI-e Gen 4 x4 NVMe 1.4. Form Factor: M.2 2280. Dimensions: 22 x 80 x 2.25mm. Firmware Version: RKT4P1.2 The 4TB Rocket 4 Plus comes in a diminutive box with an image of the drive on the front along with the capacity, which is 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. The drive is one of the best packaged we've seen to date including special editions of drives. It comes in a classy copper-coloured metal box, a really nice touch that from Sabrent. The 4TB version of the Rocket 4 Plus is built on a dual-sided format. One side of the PCB holds the Phison PS5018-E18 controller, four 512GB packages of Micron 96-layer 3D TLC NAND and a 2GB SK hynix DDR4 DRAM IC. The other side holds another four 512GB NAND packages and another 2GB DRAM chip. 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 MSI MPG X570 Gaming Edge WiFi Other Drives Corsair Force MP600 1TB Patriot Viper VPN4100 1TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2TB 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 7.0.0. 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 SSDs. Of the three Rocket 4 Plus drives we've looked at the 4TB model appears to struggle the most with the CrystalDiskMark 6 4K QD32 test. Comparing the two CrystalDiskMark result screens shows that the 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 maximum Sequential read performance of 7,200MB/s with a test result of 7,521MB/s. However, the tested Sequential write figure of 6,794MB/s is shy of the official 6,900MB/s maximum. 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 the official 7,200MB/s Sequential read performance figure with a best test result of 7,401MB/s, however, the best write figure we saw was 6,790MB/s, some way off the official 6,900MB/s. As for 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 could confirm the official random read performance with a test result of 655,963.38 IOPS but as with the Sequential writes, we were some way off the official random write figure with a result of 596,309.81 IOPS. CrystalDiskMark 8 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 7,200MB/s with a best test performance of 7,400MB/s. Tested Sequential writes came in at 6,788MB/s, a little short of the official maximum 6,900MB/s figure. We also used CrystalDiskMark 8 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 4TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus read performance climbs smoothly throughout the tested queue depths and threads with a peak performance figure of 336,824 IOPS (1,379.63MB/s) at QD8. In the write tests, the best performance figure we saw was the 380,346 IOPS (1,557MB/s) using 4 threads at a QD of 8. 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 4TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is rated at up to 7,200MB/s for reads and 6,900MB/s for writes. Using the ATTO benchmark we couldn’t quite reach those maximums but the 6,890MB/s read and 6,450MB/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 2814 and a write score of 3053, the 4TB version of Sabrent’s Rocket 4 Plus isn't as fast as the 2TB version of the drive in the AS SSD benchmark. However, Its write score of 3053 is the second fastest we've seen to date. 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 7,106.29MB/s isn’t too far short of the official 7,200MB/s while the write score of 6,786.43MB/s is a bit further off the official 6,900MB/s. 128KB Sequential Read Performance v QD compared. At queue depths 1 & 2 the 4TB drive is the fastest of the Rocket 4 Plus models we have tested. However, at QD4 the performance falls away but at a QD of 32 only Samsung's SSD 980 PRO is faster. 128KB Sequential Write Performance v QD compared. When it came to the Sequential write tests, the 2TB version of the drive was faster at QD1 but after that its the 4TB Rocket 4 Plus drive that rules the roost. Sabrent quote a maximum 4K random read figure for the drive of 650,000 IOPS. The best we saw from the drive using our own 4-threaded tests was 409,738 IOPS (1,678.29 MB/s) at a QD of 32. 4K Random Read v QD Performance compared. Sabrent’s Rocket 4 Plus sits in third place in our random read charts behind the WD Black SN850 and Samsung SSD980 PRO at a QD of 1 while it tops the chart at QD2. QD4 sees it sitting behind the WD drive again while at QD32 its sits behind both the WD drive and the 2TB version of the Rocket 4 Plus. Sabrent rate the random write performance for the 4TB Rocket 4 Plus as up to 700,000 IOPS. Using our 4-threaded tests we couldn't get close to this figure, the best we saw was 302,315 IOPS (1,238.28MB/s) at QD32. 4K Random Write v QD Performance compared. At QD1, the 4TB Rocket 4 Plus tops the results chart with a figure of 175,691 IOPS. After this point, it slowly drops down the charts as the tested queue depth deepens, although the performance does pick up again at QD4. The 4TB Rocket 4 Plus handles our 4K 70/30, read/write mixed test very well, ending the test run (QD32) at 363,834 IOPS (1,490.26MB/s). In our read throughput test the 4TB Rocket 4 Plus peaked at 5,334MB/s (16MB block), 83MB/s slower than the 2TB version of the drive. In our write throughput test, the drive’s performance climbs smoothly as the test progresses finishing the test run at 6,113.33MB/s, the fastest figure we've seen to date for a PCIe 4.0 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 4TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus averaged 142,565 IOPS for the test with a performance stability of 97% which is enterprise-grade stability. 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 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). 3907 The 4TB Rocket 4 Plus handles PCMark10’s Full System Drive benchmark very well with good performance figures for all the test traces. The standout figure in the creative tests is the 900MB/s for the Heavy Use Adobe Photoshop trace while in the file transfer tests the 3,907MB/s for the cp1 write test is also impressive. Overall in PCMark 10’s Full System Drive benchmark, Sabrent's 4TB Rocket 4 Plus sits behind WD’s Black SN850 and Samsung SSD 980 PRO. It is the fastest of the Phison E18 powered drives we’ve tested to date. To test 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. We use the following file/folder types: 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, averaging 441MB/s when writing to the drive and 377MB/s when reading the data back. As usual, it's 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 SSDs 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 4TB Rocket 4 Plus saw transfer speeds for the large file transfers rocket and times taken drop dramatically. Seven of the transfers topped well over 2.5GB/s for writing to the drive with four just a shade under 3GB/s. The recently launched flagship 4TB Rocket 4 Plus drive completes the current line-up (at the time of writing) of Sabrent's high-performance PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD family. We've already looked at the 1TB and 2TB models. The Rocket 4 Plus drives are the first we've seen that uses Phison’s next-generation PS5018-E18 controller. For the 4TB 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 and DRAM cache ICs. 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. Following on from the success of the first PCIe Gen 4 controller, the PS5016-E16, the E18 is built on a smaller process, (12nm compared to 28nm) with an increased core count and a faster interconnect speed of 1,600 MT/s, twice that of the E16. 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 performance figures for the 4TB Rocket 4 Plus as up to 7,200MB/s for reads and up to 6,900MB/s for writes. Using the ATTO benchmark we couldn’t quite hit those official maximums but the 6,890MB/s read and 6,450MB/s write scores we did achieve are once again the fastest we have seen to date for a PCIe Gen 4 drive, the previous two fastest drives being the 1TB and 2TB versions of the Rocket 4 Plus. However, we could confirm the Sequential read rating with CrystalDiskMark 7 with the drive producing a peak figure of 7,512MB/s. But as with the ATTO Sequential write figure we were unable to confirm the official figure with CDM Sequential testing, the best we saw was 6,794.9MB/s. The same applied to our own Sequential tests with reads producing 7,106.29MB/s and writes coming in at 6,764.43MB/s. As for 4K random performance, Sabrent quote figures of up to 650,000 IOPS for reads and up to 700,000 IOPS for writes. The best figures we saw from the drive under testing came from using the Peak Performance profile in CrystalDiskMark 7 with which we were able to confirm the official random read figure with a test result of 655,963 IOPS. However, the write result of 596,309 IOPS was a fair way short of the official figure. We found the 4TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus on Scan UK for £771.98 inc VAT HERE. Discuss on our Facebook page HERE. Pros Sequential performance. Pricing. Cons Need to register the drive before you get the full 5-year warranty period. Couldn’t match the official random write figures under testing. Needs a PCIe 4.0 supporting motherboard for best performance. KitGuru says: Sabrent's 4TB Rocket 4 Plus very ably shows the direction of travel for high-performance NVMe drives by making use of the PCIe 4.0 specification together with faster 2nd generation controllers, combined with denser NAND, to produce very fast, high capacity drives.
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