If you’re looking to take your computer’s performance to the next level, you need to buy an NVMe drive. The Rocket Q4, a PCIe Gen4 SSD, touts speed, so let’s take a look and see if it holds true.
Old hard drives, or « spinning rust » as some call it, are good for mass storage, but nobody will ever mistake them for high performance. SATA SSD drives are much faster than the old drives, and were a breakthrough over a decade ago, but pale in comparison to today’s NVMe SSD drives. Today, we take a look at Sabrent’s 2TB Rocket Q4 NVMe 4.0 SSD drive. The Sabrent Rocket Q4 utilizes the M.2 2280 form factor, which is standard for these types of drives, has a Phison PS5016-E16 controller, and Micron 96L QLC NV memory. It’s available in 1TB,2TB, and 4TB models. For this review, I’m looking at the 2TB version. Performance varies based on the capacity, so the sweet spot appears to be the 2TB model, which roughly doubles the speed of writes. Current Amazon.com pricing as of this writing is $160 for the 1TB model, $320 for the 2TB version, and $750 for the 4TB drive. That equates to roughly $0.16/GB for both the 1TB and 2TB model and $0.19/GB for the 4TB model, making the 2TB version the sweet spot for both price and performance. Utilizing QLC, the endurance of the drive is rated at 400TB, which shouldn’t be a concern for most users. The drive comes with a five year warranty, but requires registration; if you don’t register the drive, then the warranty only lasts for one year, which is pretty bad. The drive requires PCIe 4.0 to run at maximum performance. You can use the Rocket in a PCIe 3.0 motherboard, but will obviously lose some performance by doing so. It’s clear that Sabrent is trying to convey that it is offering a premium product, something that the packaging helps reinforce. While the Samsung and AData NVMe drives I have both came in plastic containers, the Sabrent Rocket Q4 sits inside a copper colored metal clamshell. Inside, the drive itself is nestled in foam padding. While I appreciate the presentation, part of me feels like it’s a waste of material. Regardless, it looks pretty nice.
