Sabrent‘s latest and fastest M.2 NVMe is now available on Amazon.com here. The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is a Gen4 NVMe M.2 SSD featuring speeds of up to 7100MB/s sequential read and up to 6600MB/s sequential write speeds. Technically speaking, that’s a bit faster than the also new Samsung 980 Pro and WD Black SN850 Gen4 SSDs. Sabrent dubs the Rocker 4 Plus as the “world’s fastest NVMe SSD”. Check out more details below.
Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus Gen4 – World’s Fastest NVMe SSD
The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus Gen4 NVMe SSD is powered by a Phison PS5018-E18 controller and Micron B27B TLC (BGA 132) NAND flash chips. There’s also a SKhynix DDR4 cache placed in between the controller and the NAND chips.
Based on the paper, the Rocket 4 Plus is capable of up to 7100MB/s sequential read speed and up to 6600MB/s sequential write speed. You do need a PCIe Gen4 compatible motherboard and supporting CPU. Currently, only the AMD X570 and B550 motherboards support PCIe 4.0 interface. An AMD Ryzen Zen 2 or Zen 3 CPU is also needed to take advantage of the PCIe 4.0 interface.
For systems with PCIe 3.0 interface, the Rocket Plus 4 will work, but speeds are down to 3,400MB/s sequential read and 3,000MB/s sequential write. No point in getting a Gen4 SSD if you’re system isn’t capable of fully taking advantage of its speed.
Unfortunately, these are only the available information at this time. We don’t know it’s random read and write speeds yet. These are also important in determining the overall performance of the SSD. I don’t see any information regarding its TBW and MTTF rates as well. Though, I’m not worried about these two since large capacity drives tend to have higher TBW.
Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus Features:
- NVMe M.2 PCIe Gen4 x4 Interface.
- PCIe 4.0 Compliant / NVMe 1.3 Compliant.
- Power Management Support for APST / ASPM / L1.2.
- Supports SMART and TRIM commands.
- Supports ONFi 2.3, ONFi 3.0, ONFi 3.2 and ONFi 4.0 interface.
- Advanced Wear Leveling, Bad Block Management, Error Correction Code, and Over-Provision.
- Upgradeable Firmware.
Price and Availability
The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus Gen4 SSD is now available in 1TB and 2TB capacities. Sabrent is also planning to release a 4TB capacity soon. There is also a variant that comes with a custom heatsink, but I don’t see it listed yet. If your motherboard doesn’t have a heatsink for M.2 drives, it’s best to get the one with the heatsink. Fast NVMe SSD like this tends to get hot. For the latest pricing and availability, check it below.
Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus Gen4 NVMe SSD available on Amazon.com here
Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus vs WD Black SN850 and Samsung 980 Pro
As of now, I can’t make a detailed comparison yet, since there is still a lot of missing information. All I can say for now is that in terms of sequential read speed, the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is 100MB/s faster than both the WD Black SN850 and Samsung 980 Pro. Not really a significant advantage here.
Check out our Samsung 980 Pro review here
It is in sequential write speed that the Rocket 4 Plus is substantially faster than the Samsung 980 Pro and WD Black SN850. The Rocket 4 Plus has a sequential write speed of up to 6,600MB/s; meanwhile, the SN850 has up to 5,300MB/s and the 980 Pro has only 5,000MB/s.
Again, I’m more interested in finding out the random performance of this drive. The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus may be the (theoretically) the fastest in the paper. But we also need to see its actual performance and thermals. Nevertheless, Sabrent finally has a drive that can compete with the SN850 and 980 Pro. I expect other SSD manufacturers will follow using the same PS5018-E18 controller and Micron NAND flash chips.
