Sabrent Rocket 4 PLUS 2TB NVMe SSD review - Specifications & Features

Specifications & Features

Sabrent is offering three versions of the Rocket 4 PLUS SSD; 1TB, 2TB, and expected soon a 4TB model. For endurance, our tested 2TB model has been rated at 1400 TBW. The series will be fitted with TLC written 3D NAND flash memory (vertically stacked over 96 layers). This allows the company to offer Sabrent proper storage volumes. So instead of using Planar NAND, 3D NAND is used. 3D TLC NAND is physical vertical NAND cell stacking not to be confused with chip stacking in a multi-chip package. In 3D NAND, NAND layers, not chips, are stacked in a single IC. The good news is continued cost reduction, smaller die sizes and more capacity per NAND chip. Also, installed NAND toolsets in the wafer fabs can, for the most part, be reused, thereby extending the useful life of fab equipment. Unleashed by the PCIe 4.0 ready AMD B550/X570 chipset and soon Intel Rocket Lake-S / Z590 , the SSD reaches up to an advertised 7100 MB/sec sequential read – fourteen times the performance of many SATA SSDs and seventy times faster than some hard disk drives. The performance stems from the hugely increased bandwidth of PCIe 4.0 (PCI-Express Generation 4), a feature that will be made available to customers for the first time as part of the AMD X570 chipset and 3rd Generation AMD Ryzen Desktop Processors. Easily fitting into a PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, the NVMe interface has been bumped upwards to the new 1.4 protocol and high-density TLC NAND combine with a Phison PS5018-E18 controller to enable a new level of single-drive SSD performance. Boasting staggering numbers.

Phison PS5018-E18 controller

Taiwan's Phison is known for its flash NAND controllers and became very influential the past few years. The PS5018-E18 controller is based on a Cortex-R5 ×3, processor design and is manufactured at TSMC 12nm. By bringing this controller towards NVMe revision 1.4 the transfer rate per channel has increased from 800MT/s towards 1200 Increased to MT/s. And when you math that, that means a maximum transfer speed of roughly 7GB/s for both sequential reads and writes. Here's a nice value as well, random read/write performance would be listed at 1 million IOPS, and all that with an expected peak energy consumption of 3W.

Model #	SB-ROCKET4-PLUS-1TB	SB-ROCKET4-PLUS-2TB
Capacity	1TB	2TB
Interface	PCIe Gen4 x 4	PCIe Gen4 x 4
NAND	TLC Micron 96L	TLC Micron 96L
Controller	PS5086-E18	PS5018-E18
Max Sequential Read	7000 (MB/s)	7100 (MB/s)
Max Sequential Write	5300 (MB/s)	6600 (MB/s)
Random 4K QD32 (IOPS) Read	350K	650K
Random 4K QD32 (IOPS) Write	700K	700K
Power Supply	3.3V	3.3V
Form Factor	M.2 2280	M.2 2280
Endurance	700 TBW	1400 TBW
Warranty	5 years with registration	5 years with registration