At first, we would like to thank Sabrent for offering a sample of their Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 2TB SSD + Heatsink for testing and reviewing.

 

 

About Sabrent:

 

“At Sabrent, we create products that help people realize the power of technology and make people’s lives easier and better.

We have a proven track record to consumers and distribution partners, who are part of the rapidly growing Sabrent family.

 

Deliver the latest technology at an affordable price.

offer a broad product selection, specializing in items that sell.

Maintain large inventory levels and provide same day shipping.

Attractive retail packaging.

Instant live customer service and technical support, including remote access sessions.

No-nonsense product exchanges.

 

Sabrent’s commitment is to offer the latest technology and the highest quality consumer electronic products at an affordable cost to everyone. Since its founding, Sabrent has consistently delivered to market a full line of computer peripherals and accessories that incorporate style, quality and the latest technologies available.”

 

Product Features:

 

Next Level SSD

 

Our legendary Rocket SSD lineup has a drive for everyone. Want a bit more speed than a Gen3 drive can provide? Want to guarantee you get quality hardware inside? Do you want a drive that will work in a PC, console, enclosure, and everything in between? Then the Rocket NVMe 4.0 is for you - a premium drive without a premium cost: more speed, no compromises.

Don’t settle for PCIe 3.0

Have a new motherboard that can handle PCIe 4.0? Supercharge your experience with a Gen4 NVMe SSD. The future is only getting faster.

Get tried and true hardware

Our Rocket NVMe 4.0 comes with TLC and DRAM to make sure you never suffer any performance pitfalls. Be fast, day or night, and leave the competition in the dust.

Ready for computers and consoles

The Rocket NVMe 4.0 utilizes an eight-channel controller to reach speeds of up to 5,000 MB/s, enough to get you there on the PS5 or with DirectStorage. Sometimes all you need is a little push to prepare you for tomorrow.

 

Superior Build Quality - A premium drive without compromise

 

We pride ourselves on offering affordable, reliable drives for every type of user. We believe that no one should have to compromise on storage - your files, your games, your drive: guaranteed.

 

Product Specifications:

SKU: SB-ROCKET-NVME4-HTSK-2TB

UPC: 840025245617

Performance: Up to 5000/4400 MB/s Seq. Read/Write

Endurance: Up to 3,350TB Total Bytes Written

 

Dimensions

Length: 3.15 in.

Width: 0.86 in.

Height: 0.11 in.

Weight: 0.2 oz.

 

Package Content

M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 NVMe TLC SSD

Heatsink

User manual

 

In this article we will check out another interesting SSD from Sabrent, the Rocket NVMe 4.0 2TB which is also bundled with an optional heatsink. The full package comes sealed with a transparent plastic layer:

 

 

 

On the top area of the packaging, we will note a photo with the final product, but also the total capacity of the Rocket NVMe 4.0 drive:

 

 

 

If we turn it on the side, we will note the full list of product features:

 

 

 

A detailed product description is presented on the opposite area:

 

 

 

In the back, we will note features of the combined product:

 

 

 

After removing the top packaging layer, we will end up with two separate products:

 

 

 

We will first look at the Rocket NVMe 4.0 2TB drive, which is packed inside a very compact enclosure:

 

 

 

On the back, we will note the product internal code name, but also its serial number:

 

 

 

The premium packaging style of Sabrent can be found again with the aluminum casing that does sport the same colors as the heatsink of the product. The casing is composed of two halves, which are joined together by a large sticker:

 

 

 

 

An installation guide is found inside, while the Rocket NVMe 4.0 is additionally protected inside a foam mold:

 

 

 

The manual shows the installation procedure for less-technical customers:

 

 

 

The drive is covered by a thin sheet of copper, which is meant to act as a heatspreader, in order to evacuate the heat faster when helped by the airflow inside the case:

 

 

 

On the back side of the PCB, we will note a DRAM IC for caching purposes, but also two NAND ICs covered by a small sticker which contains the SSD internal code name but also the serial number:

 

 

 

By removing the top copper foil, we will note a central controller, a DRAM cache chip but also two NAND Flash ICs:

 

 

 

The Sabrent PH-SBT-RKT-401 controller is practically a renamed Phison PS5012-E16 with support for PCIe 4.0 interface:

 

 

 

Each of the SK Hynix H5AN8G8NCJ DDR4 chips have a capacity of 1GB and run at a frequency of 2666MHz:

 

 

 

The four TABHG65AWV are Toshiba 96-layer BiCS4 3D TLC NAND:

 

 

 

The Rocket NVMe heatsink is packaged individually:

 

 

 

On the side, Sabrent has printed a product description:

 

 

 

The back area shows the main product highlights, along with the package contents:

 

 

 

After lifting the top cover, we will note the documentation sitting right in front:

 

 

 

The lower layer does include the cooler, along with the necessary screws and a screwdriver:

 

 

 

Installation is well explained depending on if it’s single sided or dual sided:

 

 

 

We do get the main heatsink, an extra pad for use when we are dealing with a single-sided PCB, but also the backplate with a pre-applied heat pad:

 

 

 

The aluminum block integrates three copper heatpipes and features four screw holes for mounting it to the backplate:

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the bottom area, there is an additional pre-mounted heat pad:

 

 

 

The first step would be to remove the protective film from the backplate:

 

 

 

We can then attach the SSD to the heat pad, to align with the screw cutout:

 

 

 

Finally, we will need to remove the film from the heatsink, attach it to the drive and keep the whole assembly secure with four screws:

 

 

 

 

 

Test Bench:

The test system did incorporate a AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 6-core CPU, a Sabrent Rocket 2x16GB DDR5 4800MHz C40 memory kit, a PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon RX 5700 video card but also a Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus NVMe 4.0 2TB SSD; all these were connected to the BIOSTAR X670E VALKYRIE AM5 motherboard. As a power supply we have chosen a Cooler Master 850W non-modular and the system was running the latest Windows 11 OS build as well.

The drive has arrived unformatted, but for testing purposes, we have formatted it NTFS:

 

 

With the help of AIDA64, we could extract more information regarding the drive:

 

The Tests

 

3DMark

Quick System Drive Benchmark

 

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

 

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

 

CrystalDisk Test Suite (Random)

 

HDTune Test Suite

Blank SSD

 

PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite

 

Anvil [Read]

Anvil [Write]

PCMark 10

Quick System Drive Benchmark

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

 

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

Blank SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Blank SSD

 

Before starting the second stage of the tests, with the drive filled over 50%, we have monitored the IDLE temperature of the drive, which was hovering around 46 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

The writes started at optimal speed:

 

 

 

Thanks to the elaborated cooling solution, the drive temperature has grown very little:

 

 

 

The write speed has stabilized to about 2.8GB/s after a while:

 

 

 

During this time, we noted a temperature increase to only 55 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

A speed drop we noted only after 700GB of data written, which is a great result!

 

 

 

Currently, the temperature recorded was only 61 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

Even if the data transfer window did show a higher variance in speed, Task Manager has displayed a continuous write till the end of the test with a speed of about 580MB/s in average, which is still much better than with QLC drives, which did record about 150MB/s when the SLC cache was depleted:

 

 

 

The maximum temperature we did record was 72 degrees Celsius, while the controller worked hard to free up some of the SLC cache:

 

 

 

The Tests

 

3DMark

Quick System Drive Benchmark

 

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

 

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

 

CrystalDisk Test Suite (Random)

 

HDTune Test Suite

Filled SSD

 

PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite

 

Anvil [Read]

Anvil [Write]

PCMark 10

Quick System Drive Benchmark

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

Filled SSD

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

Filled SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Filled SSD

 

The Rocket NVMe 4.0 SSD from Sabrent coupled with the custom cooling system is a great solution for keeping a steady performance for longer, while the TLC NAND with DRAM caching will make sure that the write speed will hover around 600MB/s even after the SLC caching has been depleted. The installation can be easily performed even by non-technical people by following the included instructions, while the necessary screwdriver is supplied as well.

 

Judging by the read/write rates, this can be considered a well-performing PCIe 4.0 mainstream drive, a considerable upgrade over PCIe 3.0 models.

 

The HD Tune Pro write workload does show very little variance during the entire test:

 

 

 

The endurance is also a good aspect of this drive, having a total of 3350 TBW and in terms of warranty we are talking about 2 years without registration, while the registration process will bring the warranty up to 5 years.

 

At the time of the review, the combo could be found online for about $220 on Amazon.

Sabrent Rocket NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 2TB SSD + Heatsink is Recommended for:

 

 

We would like to thank again to Sabrent for making this review possible!