At first, we would like to thank Sabrent for offering a sample of their Rocket 4 Plus NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 4TB SSD 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:

 

PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, NVMe 1.3 compliant. APST/ASPM/L1.2 support.

Supports SMART and TRIM functions. Works in an enclosure.

Wide flash compatibility. Uses TLC with DRAM.

Advanced endurance features for a long drive lifespan.

Upgradeable firmware and software support.

4.0-capable motherboard and M.2 heatsink are recommended, but the drive is backward compatible with PCIe 3.0 and 2.0 M.2 sockets.

 

Product Specifications:

 

Series: Rocket 4 Plus

Model: SB-RKT4P-4TB

Device Type: Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Used For: Consumer

 

Details

Form Factor : M.2 2280

Capacity: 4TB

Memory Components: 3D TLC NAND

Interface: PCI-Express 4.0 x4

Controller: Phison PS5018-E18

Cache: DDR4

 

Performance

Max Sequential Read: Up to 7000 MBps

Max Sequential Write: Up to 6850 MBps

4KB Random Read: Up to 650,000 IOPS

4KB Random Write: Up to 700,000 IOPS

Terabytes Written (TBW): 3000TB

MTBF : 1,600,000 hours

HeatSink: No

 

Environmental

Operating Temperature: 0°C ~ +70°C

Storage Temperature: -40°C ~ +85°C

Max Shock Resistance: 1500G

 

Dimensions & Weight

Height: 3.60mm

Width: 22mm

Depth: 80mm

 

We are back revisiting the Rocket 4 Plus drive from Sabrent, but now the 4TB version for even more storage space, while retaining durability of TLC ICs (a rating of 3000TB, which is quite impressive!).

The drive has arrived in a very compact cardboard enclosure, which is additionally sealed with a transparent plastic film on the outside, advertising the free Acronis True Image cloning software, for Sabrent drives only!

 

 

 

The cardboard layer does show a photo of the drive in the frontal area, along with the capacity and supported bus:

 

 

 

On the side, we will also note the product code name:

 

 

 

On the back, Sabrent has additionally placed the product serial number:

 

 

 

After removing the top packaging layer, we will note the premium aluminum enclosure all Sabrent drives come in; these are customized in terms of color depending on the series of the products, while the side sticker acts as a hinge:

 

 

 

 

Besides the drive, which is well protected in a soft foam material, we will also get a small documentation book:

 

 

 

The installation guide will show the inexperienced user on how to perform the actual procedure:

 

 

 

The top area of the drive is covered by a thin copper foil, which acts as a heatspreader; on it we will see the Sabrent logo, the product branding but also the drive capacity:

 

 

 

On the back, a large plastic sticker does cover the rest of the components (four NAND ICs and one DRAM cache), while including information on the product internal code name, the serial number but also logos of the supported standards;

 

 

 

After removing the copper foil, we will note the placement of the components on the top area of the PCB; we have here four more NAND ICs, the DRAM cache and also the main controller:

 

 

 

The controller is again a Phison PS5018-E18-41, built on the TSMC 12nm process, with eight channels, a speed of 1600MT/s per channel and support for DDR4 caching. In terms of architecture we do have a 32-bit ARM Cortex R5 (three CPUs) CoXProcessor Technology processor, data reliability is assured by 4th Gen LDPC engine, End-to-End Data Path Protection and SmartECC and many other security features are included as well:

 

 

 

The SK Hynix H5AN8G6NDJ DRAM cache comes with a capacity of 1GB and an operating speed of 2666MHz. With the extra chip on the opposite side, we do have a total of 2GB of cache:

 

 

 

Each NAND IC is a Micron IA8HG94AYA 176-layer 3D TLC; with a capacity of 512GB, we have a total of 8 chips on the board:

 

 

 

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

 

In order to start the secondary stage of tests, we needed to fill up the drive over 50%; the IDLE temperature of the drive was very good before writing to it:

 

 

 

The write process started at optimal levels:

 

 

 

The first drop in performance we have noted after writing about 430GB to the drive:

 

 

 

The temperature at this stage remained at optimal levels:

 

 

 

After writing around 1250GB, we noted that the speed has dropped further, but still around 1.3GB/s should be sufficient for quite a bit of users:

 

 

 

The temperature was not a concern at all even after all this intensive workload:

 

 

 

The speed remained about the same till the end of our test:

 

 

 

The maximum temperature we have noted was 62 degrees Celsius:

 

 

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 4 Plus from Sabrent does offer good performance and quite a bit of capacity when talking about the 4TB SKU, packing the proven Phison PS5018-E18 controller, 2GB of DDR4-2666 DRAM for caching and no less than eight Micron 176-layer 3D NAND TLC ICs. TLCs not only assure a sustained write rate for longer, a higher transfer rate when writing directly to the TLC portion of the chips but are also more durable than QLC, with a rating of 3000TB for the specific 4TB SKU.

 

The HD Tune Writes specific workload does show that the drive can sustain good performance levels:

 

 

 

The drive comes with an impressive 5 years of warranty when registered and can be found online for about 360 Euros on Amazon.de. In terms of pricing, it is near other high-end drives from other manufacturers, sporting the same type of NAND and controller, but some do lack DRAM caching.

 

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus NVMe 4.0 Gen4 PCIe M.2 4TB SSD is Recommended for:

 

 

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