The Bottom Line
Admittedly, I'm a little late to the party when it comes to the Gen4 Rocket NVMe. Nevertheless, we have the 500GB capacity in house, ready to go through testing, so let's see how it stacks up against the likes of the 980 Pro from Samsung.
As many of you know, the Rocket NVMe 4.0 is Sabrent's first PCIe 4.0 solution built on the Phison E16 platform. Capacity options start at 500GB and run to 2TB while performance, for our 500GB model, is rated at 5000 MB/s read and 2500 MB/s write. Endurance over the five-year warranty period is rated at 850TBW.
The MSRP of the 500GB Rocket NVMe 4.0 with the heat sink kit comes in at $129.99, while you can pick up the bare SSD for $119.99. Both options have a five-year warranty.
Our kit's packaging offers the SSD and heatsink in separate boxes, with the capacity listed bottom right for the NVMe.
Looking over the drive, we have a copper "sticker" that aides heat dissipation through the raw surface area.
On the backside, we have a second sticker that offers capacity and model number.
Inside the box for the heat sink, we find two thermal pads of different thickness and the top and bottom sections for the heat sink. The heat sink is secured via four screws on the sides.
CDM is a staple in performance testing; version 7 has seen some updates in the testing workloads. Sequential Read taps 5000 MB/s pretty easily while write goes well over marketing at 2626 MB/s write.
Running through Quick System Drive in PCMark, we find the Rocket NVMe 4.0 landing 200 points behind the 980 Pro at 2895.
Price/Performance is always a test of a vendor's ability to determine their products' value aspect. The Rocket NVMe 4.0 handles this quite a bit better than the 980 Pro, a full 3% in our charts.
Phison has been the driving force behind pushing NVMe solutions towards PCIe 4.0. While they have a good number of partners in Corsair, GIGABYTE, Patriot, and Galax, Sabrent has been the one standout this year as they have conquered many milestones in such a short time. As PCIe 4.0 pushes towards the mainstream, this Rocket NVMe 4.0 solution serves as a solid entry-level platform for Sabrent, with the new Rocket 4 Plus serving as their new flagship moving forward.
The Rocket NVMe 4.0 was right on with marketing numbers, 5000 MB/s read and 2600 MB/s write. 4KQ1 gave us an impressive 64 MB/s read and 294 MB/s write. Quick System Drive landed the Sabrent right behind the 980 Pro, still quite good overall with a sizable lead over any Gen 3 solution.
Pricing for the Rocket NVMe 4.0, as of this writing, is a bit high if you look at all the E16 solutions on the market. Selling for $119.99, the Sabrent is $20 more than the MP600 from Corsair and $30 more than the Gen4 AORUS. I would expect that Sabrent will adjust pricing relatively soon with competing solutions, but only time will tell.
Tyler's Test System Specifications
- Motherboard: ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula X570 (buy from Amazon)
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (buy from Amazon)
- RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB 2x8GB DDR4 3600 (buy from Amazon)
- Cooler: Corsair Hydro H60 (buy from Amazon)
- Case: Corsair Carbide 275R (buy from Amazon)
- OS Storage: Corsair MP600 1TB (buy from Amazon)
- Power Supply: Corsair RM850x (buy from Amazon)
- OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)