PC World - USA (2021-02)

FEBRUARY 2021 PCWorld 95

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus NVMe

SSD (2TB)

PROS

• Excellent performance.


• Exceptional sustained writes from the 2TB version.


• Nice-looking copper color scheme.
  CONS


• 1TB version ran out of cache before the end of our
  450GB write.
  BOTTOM LINE
  This drive is a worthy competitor to Samsung’s
  980 Pro, at least in the 2TB version. The 1TB will run
  out of juice on very long writes, something the
  980 Pro won’t do. Regardless, for the price, an
  excellent SSD.
  $399

64-bit running on a Core i7-5820K/Asus X99

Deluxe system with four 16GB Kingston

2666MHz DDR4 modules, a Zotac (Nvidia)

GT 710 1GB x2 PCIe graphics card, and an

The 2TB Rocket 4 Plus wrote 450GB faster than its
980 Pro rival, though the latter was only 1TB. The
1TB Rocket 4 Plus took 358 seconds.

450GB Write

258

290

209

450GB Single File Write

Seconds

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus (PCIe) Samsung 980 Pro PCIe 4

Seagate FireCuda 520 PCIe 4 Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus (PCIe 3)

250

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

As you can see, the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus was

no match for the Samsung 980 Pro with 4K

files. It was also bested in writes by the Seagate

FireCuda 520.

Sequential Write (Q=32, T=1)

2,684

3,284

1,893

CrystalDiskMark 6

MBps

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus (PCIe) Samsung 980 Pro PCIe 4

Seagate FireCuda 520 PCIe 4 Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus (PCIe 3)

1,6 4 8

Sequential Read (Q=32, T=1)

2,684

1,86 4

2,094

2,000

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

Asmedia ASM2142 USB 3.1 card. It also

contains a Gigabyte GC-Alpine Thunderbolt

3 card, and Softperfect Ramdisk 3.4.6 for the

48GB read and write tests.

The PCIe 4 testing was done on an MSI

MEG X570 motherboard socketing an AMD

Ryzen 7 3700X 8-core CPU, using the same

Kingston DRAM, cards, and software. All

testing is performed on an empty, or nearly

empty drive. Performance will decrease as the

drive fills up.

BOTTOM LINE

Though there’s room for improvement in

small- and 4K file performance, there’s little

else to complain about with the Sabrent

Rocket 4 Plus in its 2TB incarnation. That it

can wrestle at all with the 980 Pro at this

price point is a feather in Sabrent’s (and

Phison’s) cap.