Sabrent Rocket Q4 2 TB

[W1zzard]

The Sabrent Rocket Q4 is a PCI-Express 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD that uses QLC NAND flash paired with a Phison E16 controller. Performance, especially in synthetic tests, is good, and the super-large SLC cache is able to soak up even the largest bursts of write activity. A very decent heatsink is included, too.

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[newtekie1]

I'd rather save $100 and get a PCI-E 3.0 TLC drive.

 

[Timelessest]

Why do they release SSD with PCIE-4 that have such a weak performance? Are they betting that people won't see any reviews?

 

[Dammeron]

This cooling is sooo unnecessary. The whole point of heatpipes is to transfer big amounts of heat from one point to another in a short timespan - very useful with big radiators, where it would take time to reach the end of the fins, or laptops, where cooler isn't mounted directly on the chip.

Here, they just slapped a small, shallow-cut block of alloy on top of the heatpipes - why not just mount it directly on the SSD?!!! The temps show that it doesn't work any better!!! (also it's super fugly).

 

[W1zzard]

heatpipes

These are not heatpipes, they are solid copper rods. I cut them open, check my pics on the photos page

 

[Dammeron]

These are not heatpipes, they are solid copper rods. I cut them open, check my pics on the photos page

Sorry, I missed that pic, but that actually makes it even worse. Such useless waste of materials...

 

[EatingDirt]

I agree with the conclusion. At $300 it's... a bit much, as in most cases you'll be better of with a Gen 3 TLC drive. It's trying to find the balance of Gen 4 & value and I don't think it's quite hit the mark. At $250-$270 it might be worth considering.

 

[Wooden Law - Black]

Why do they release SSD with PCIE-4 that have such a weak performance? Are they betting that people won't see any reviews?

To get a PCIe 4.0 with low cost (than other PCIe 4.0 drives with TLC NAND) and big SLC cache (despite the ADATA S70 has TLC NAND with bigger cache)? A big SLC cache is required for QLC drives, is not a quality.

 

[newtekie1]

Why do they release SSD with PCIE-4 that have such a weak performance? Are they betting that people won't see any reviews?

Because they are hoping people will just see the sequential read/write speeds with data sizes that will fit in the SLC cache and think they drive is blazing fast. There are too many people out there that think sequential reads/writes matter when they rarely ever do. Of course, those are the same people that probably think PCI-E 4.0 SSDs make a difference too...

 

[Jism]

Why do they release SSD with PCIE-4 that have such a weak performance? Are they betting that people won't see any reviews?

You got it wrong. PCI-E 4.0 is just the interface. Its just as backwards compatible (To PCI-E 3.0) as any video card or so. It just offers more bandwidth per lane then generation 3.

Apart from the performance; you do get a heatsink along with it that you could push towards your next generation NVME SSD. And 5 year warranty on the drive.

Personally i'd buy a NVME SSD that does have lots of capacitors onboard. In the case of a power faillure it offers enough time to flush the cache and write anything to disk before data loss might occur.

 

[Chrispy_]

QLC drives can't take advantage of PCIe 4.0, and because of the extra costs of making this drive PCIe 4.0, it's way too expensive, period.

I would consider QLC if it was both big (so 4TB or more) and at least 20% cheaper per TB than the cheapest TLC drive. I'm not taking the performance or endurance hit of QLC without the accompanying decrease in costs. It is inferior and anyone paying more for it is being conned. If 10c/GB is the price of decent budget drives, QLC cannot cost more than 8c/GB and even then I think I'd rather just pay the extra for TLC's performance consistency and endurance. At least at 8c/GB I'd consider QLC for some applications; Right now it's a hard no.

Part of me also wonders if direct writes to QLC wouldn't be quite so abysmal if they didn't use ALL available space as an SLC cache. If even 10% of the free space was reserved as QLC to stream direct writes to in the event of the SLC cache being full, the drive wouldn't be trying to handle an incoming stream of data from the host whilst also running garbage collection AND reading from SLC AND writing to QLC-mode NAND all at the same time.

Cheap TLC drives like the WD SN550 aren't going to set the world on fire, but they're fast enough all of the time. Never will your performance drop so low that you'd be better off using a mechanical drive. Isn't that the point of SSDs? To be better than a mechanical drive?

 

[W1zzard]

QLC drives can't take advantage of PCIe 4.0

Technically it can, sequential speeds are higher than 3.5 GB/s, ISO transfer test confirm it.

 

[Chrispy_]

Technically it can, sequential speeds are higher than 3.5 GB/s, ISO transfer test confirm it.

Agreed - but do peak sequential reads really matter that much in the real world? Reads are almost always hindered by decompression rates or decryption and for most of your real-world testing benchmarks this drive is beaten by a large number of PCIe 3.0 models, and even some SATA drives in a non-trivial number of tests.

As for the writes, 3500MB/s is PCIe 3.0 speeds, no?

 

[W1zzard]

but do peak sequential reads really matter that much in the real world?

Not at all, at least not for the vast majority of real-life scenarios. Btw, if anyone has ideas for additional real-life tests for SSD reviews, always happy to explore new ideas.

As for the writes, 3500MB/s is PCIe 3.0 speeds, no?

It's a bit higher, nearly all Gen 3 drives cap out at around 3.0 GB/s writes

 

[pantherx12]

What a pointless heatsink.

Rather get one of the stick on copper ones from AliExpress for a couple of quid.

 

[dicobalt]

DirectStorage requires an NVMe SSD to store and run games that use the "Standard NVM Express Controller" driver. Does this drive use this driver?

 

[W1zzard]

DirectStorage requires an NVMe SSD to store and run games that use the "Standard NVM Express Controller" driver. Does this drive use this driver?

Yes, just like every other M.2 NVMe drive, unless you manually install a different driver

 

[Athlonite]

Shoosh in many ways the Adata SX8200Pro is a better drive than this I wonder just how poorly this SSD would have performed if made to run at PCIe gen3 x4 because it wasn't a stellar showing at PCIe Gen4 x4

 

[Space Lynx]

These are not heatpipes, they are solid copper rods. I cut them open, check my pics on the photos page

Just a question, you said this "These little copper pipes do look like heatpipes. I was curious and cut them open—they're solid copper. While not heatpipes, they still contribute to cooling."

Seems to me you implying that solid copper would cool worse than copper heatpipes? I assumed it would be the other way around, just curious for some clarification.

 

[W1zzard]

Seems to me you implying that solid copper would cool worse than copper heatpipes? I assumed it would be the other way around, just curious for some clarification.

It depends on your definition of "cool better". Heatpipes are REALLY good at taking heat from x to y, the longer the distance the more of a difference vs a solid. However, for short distances, or weird orientations the differences are minimal

Heat Pipe Thermal Conductivity | Celsia

Heat pipe thermal conductivity definition, explanatiion, equation. Links to online heat sink calculators for heat pipes & vapor chambers. CLICK NOW

celsiainc.com

Characteristics of Heat Transfer for Heat Pipe and Its Correlation

In spite of wide application of heat pipe in microelectronics cooling system, a complete understanding of heat pipe mechanism has not yet been completed. An experimental investigation of heat transfer performance of a heat pipe for dry condition and with three different liquids as acetone...

www.hindawi.com

 

[Chrispy_]

Shoosh in many ways the Adata SX8200Pro is a better drive than this I wonder just how poorly this SSD would have performed if made to run at PCIe gen3 x4 because it wasn't a stellar showing at PCIe Gen4 x4

The only problem with the SX8200Pro is that it's one of the bait-and-switch models. You could have an SX8200Pro that bears zero resemblance to the one W1zzard reviewed:

TPU covered the news here, but THG went into a full retest of the two bait-and-switch models compared to the initial version sent out as review samples. The drop in copy performance is severe, but the real eye-opener is the switch from 65GB of SLC cache to about 6GB of SLC cache!

 

[newtekie1]

the real eye-opener is the switch from 65GB of SLC cache to about 6GB of SLC cache

The minor performance difference between V1 and V2 wouldn't really be anything to even write about, but that V3 cache size is just stupid. I assume that is a firmware bug.

 

[Wooden Law - Black]

I assume that is a firmware bug.

I don't think so, the V3 revision (SM2262G - 575 MHz) uses worse NAND Flash as performance (Samsung V4, 64L TLC) than V1 and V2 revision. Also, the flash interface speed of V3 revision is slower, 525 MT/s.

 

[newtekie1]

I don't think so, the V3 revision (SM2262G - 575 MHz) uses worse NAND Flash as performance (Samsung V4, 64L TLC) than V1 and V2 revision. Also, the flash interface speed of V3 revision is slower, 525 MT/s.

Yeah, but none of that would be a reason to reduce the SLC cache size to just 6GB.

 

[Athlonite]

The only problem with the SX8200Pro is that it's one of the bait-and-switch models. You could have an SX8200Pro that bears zero resemblance to the one W1zzard reviewed:

View attachment 207429View attachment 207430

TPU covered the news here, but THG went into a full retest of the two bait-and-switch models compared to the initial version sent out as review samples. The drop in copy performance is severe, but the real eye-opener is the switch from 65GB of SLC cache to about 6GB of SLC cache!

I'd like to see all 7 versions pitted against the original review and LTT did a test with 6 different ones they purchased from users mine wasn't the same specs as any of them so I have a 7th different model SX8200Pro which use's 96L Intel nand instead of the originals 64L Intel nand