INTRODUCTION

   The 2nd generation of PCIe Gen 4x4 M.2 NVMe drives has taken the market by storm with performance numbers surpassing 7000-6000MB/s in reads and writes respectively. This practically means that 1^st generation PCIe Gen 4x4 M.2 NVMe drives and their performance (5000MB/s) were surpassed in record time (less than a year really) so people who were quick to get one for their brand new AMD systems may feel somewhat disappointed. Still technology waits for noone and so today I’ll be testing one such model, the Rocket 4 Plus 2TB by Sabrent.

   Sabrent is a leading American manufacturer of computer peripherals and accessories, bringing uniquely styled quality products to consumers worldwide. 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.

   For the Rocket 4 Plus PCIe Gen 4x4 M.2 NVMe drive is based on the brand new NVMe v1.4 compatible PS5018-E18 NAND flash controller by PHISON which is the successor to their highly popular and successful NVMe v1.3 compatible PS5016-E16 NAND flash controller. Just for the record even though both controllers feature 8-channels together with 32-bit ARM Cortex R5 CPUs (dual-core for the E16 and tri-core for the E18) sporting their CoXProcessor technology the E18 is capable of reaching speeds of up to 7400MB/s while the E16 can only go up to 5000MB/s. Aside the PHISON PS5018-E18 NAND flash controller the Rocket 4 Plus 2TB M.2 NVMe is paired with Micron’s 512Gb 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash and DDR4 SDRAM at 1600MHz by SKhynix (1GB for the 1TB model and 2GB for the 2TB model). As for the PS5018-E18 NAND flash controller it features the 4th Gen LDPC engine (low-density parity check) along with end-to-end data path protection, wear levelling, thermal throttling (70 degrees Celsius limit), TRIM, bad block management, dynamic range SLC cache and SmartECC (RAID ECC) and fully supports AES-256bit hardware encryption and TCG Opal 2.0 and Pyrite. Sabrent also covers the entire Rocket 4 Plus line with a 5-year limited warranty and as for endurance numbers it reports 700TBW for the 1TB model and 1400TBW for the 2TB model (MTBF of 1.6 million hours for both).