Review Sabrent Rocket 5 2TB SSD review: Rocketing to new height

[Admin]

The Sabrent Rocket 5 is one of the fastest SSDs on the market, and the fastest drive we’ve ever tested in terms of sustained writes. It still has high power consumption and low power efficiency, like other PCIe 5.0 drives, but desktop enthusiasts won't care.

Sabrent Rocket 5 2TB SSD review: Rocketing to new height : Read more

 

[emike09]

Could care less about 14GB/s reads. PCI-e 4 speeds are plenty. Hell, even PCIe 3 speeds are plenty for most situations. Give me affordable 8+TB drives at PCIe 3 or 4 speeds.

 

[NeoMorpheus]

Could care less about 14GB/s reads. PCI-e 4 speeds are plenty. Hell, even PCIe 3 speeds are plenty for most situations. Give me affordable 8+TB drives at PCIe 3 or 4 speeds.

Wondering the same thing, why they always go for speed but not for capacity?

I would love a cheap enough 8 tb nvme for a nas. Given the ethernet port speed limitations, the nvme doesnt need to be that fast.

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

Wondering the same thing, why they always go for speed but not for capacity?

Only so much they can stick onto a 2280. I imagine if they had a 22110 or better yet, the size of the old 2.5" SSDs, they could put a lot more capacity in them. But the common physical format is just the M.2 stick now.

 

[emike09]

Only so much they can stick onto a 2280. I imagine if they had a 22110 or better yet, the size of the old 2.5" SSDs, they could put a lot more capacity in them. But the common physical format is just the M.2 stick now.

U.2 and U.3 exists. But only in the server/datacenter world or with hacky adapters and compromises. There was a terrible attempt to bring it to the prosumer world but that failed miserably. I put the ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 Gen 4 on my Asus X299 board to expand my NVMe capacity since I couldn't get enough NVMe storage, but that's still a weird solution even though it works great and my mobo/CPU supports it well.

But I'm with ya. Bring back 2.5" form factor SSDs. Hell I'd take a monster 3.5" SSD.

 

[Notton]

For the upper end of what is possible, WD/Kioxia has a 2TB/die density NAND chip, and there is room to slap 4 of those onto a single 2280 stick, if dual sided.

Quite a lot of 4TB 2280 sticks use either 2x2TB or 4x1TB chips, the latter of which usually require dual sided.

The pricing on the 4TB Sabrent Rocket 5 at $730 is insane.
Crucial T700 4TB is $600 regular, and is on sale for $473.

 

[Amdlova]

Got a cheap 22110 toshiba xd5 at ebay. For storage only.
Can't see near future using some o of these pci 5 ssd... my pci 4 idle burn it self. My old pci 3 intel 670p stay at ambient temps.
These new ssd it's good only for small benchmarks for daily use its only pain

 

[NeoMorpheus]

But I'm with ya. Bring back 2.5" form factor SSDs. Hell I'd take a monster 3.5" SSD.

Sadly, sata ports slowness might be the reason they dont do it, but again, the ethernet port its even slower.

That said, i’m pretty sure that if they went for size instead of speed(on some models of course) the prices wouldnt be this insane.

 

[emike09]

Sadly, sata ports slowness might be the reason they dont do it, but again, the ethernet port its even slower.

Oh I'm not saying bring back SATA, hell no. Just the 2.5" or even 3.5" form factor with PCI-e connectivity. 2.5" drives exist with PCI-e in the U.2/3 standard, they're just not available in the consumer world.

 

[NeoMorpheus]

Oh I'm not saying bring back SATA, hell no. Just the 2.5" or even 3.5" form factor with PCI-e connectivity. 2.5" drives exist with PCI-e in the U.2/3 standard, they're just not available in the consumer world.

Ah ok, makes sense.

 

[Leptir]

I've recently bought a 4TB 990 Pro and for the life of me I can't understand how this Rocket 5 drive can justify costing twice as much. Yeah, it's faster, but only in some scenarios. I'd buy it in an instant if it would speed up my work (software development), but it won't. Certainly not by enough to even remotely justify the price.

I'm sure that eventually all drives will be PCIe 5, but for now this technology is ridiculously overpriced and the performance gains are of little irrelevant to most people, even power users. Seems to me that the Rocket 5 is the ideal drive for people with more money than common sense. At least until the price comes down.

 

[Flayed]

Yes, it is priced at about 4x more than I am prepared to pay for storage per TB. I don't suppose the recent earthquake in Taiwan is going to help much. I don't think I will be buying another SSD for quite some time.

 

[palladin9479]

Wondering the same thing, why they always go for speed but not for capacity?

I would love a cheap enough 8 tb nvme for a nas. Given the ethernet port speed limitations, the nvme doesnt need to be that fast.

Well two points, first is that speed is capacity for NVME. Like how GPU's with higher memory also have larger member bus's and thus more memory bandwidth, NVME's with more NVRAM chips have both more capacity and more bandwidth. You can also put multiple chips in serial but that gets real expensive real quick.

If you really want capacity then there are some PCIe cards that let you connect multiple SSD's and use some form of RAID.

https://www.amazon.com/EZDIY-FAB-Expansion-Heatsink-Platform-Bifurcatin/dp/B0B5CF3J99

 

[NeoMorpheus]

Well two points, first is that speed is capacity for NVME. Like how GPU's with higher memory also have larger member bus's and thus more memory bandwidth, NVME's with more NVRAM chips have both more capacity and more bandwidth. You can also put multiple chips in serial but that gets real expensive real quick.

If you really want capacity then there are some PCIe cards that let you connect multiple SSD's and use some form of RAID.

https://www.amazon.com/EZDIY-FAB-Expansion-Heatsink-Platform-Bifurcatin/dp/B0B5CF3J99

Not an expert in this at all, but was thinking in how memory modules are more expensive the faster they are, so in reverse, developing slower modules but with more capacity.

Again not an expert, so that might be absolutely flawed thinking on my part.

 

[Eximo]

Nothing really stopping you from getting a PCIe 4x card to U.2 or U.3 adapter and getting yourself a fat 2.5" enterprise drive. They are still pretty expensive though, but capacities up to like 30TB are on the market.

My last motherboard actually had U.2, never did use it.

 

[palladin9479]

Not an expert in this at all, but was thinking in how memory modules are more expensive the faster they are, so in reverse, developing slower modules but with more capacity.

Again not an expert, so that might be absolutely flawed thinking on my part.

Not really, you have to understand how NVME is made and what it really is.

Basic generic architecture.

System ChipSet (now this is inside CPUs) -> PCI/PCI-X/PCI-e BUS -> Host Bus Adapter -> Drive(s).

So back in the day we would have a SAS RAID5 disk array.

ChipSet -> PCI-X 133 -> SAS HBA -> 6x SAS cables -> 6x SAS drives.
All six drives could be accessed simultaneously and data was stripped across all six of them. Parity information took 1/6 of the bandwidth so we had an effective bandwidth of 5 drives.

NVME does something similar only everything from the HBA forward is all integrated into a single device.

ChipSet -> PCIe -> NVMe
Inside the NVMe it's
HBA controller -> parallel circuit paths -> NVFLASH memory chips.

If we have two paths to two NVFLASH chips then we have the effective bandwidth of two chips. If we have four paths to four NVFLASH chips, then we have the effective bandwidth of four chips. If we have five or six paths to five or six chips, then that is the bandwidth of five to six chips. The wider your path the more complicated your controller has to be and the more chips you need to to use, which makes the whole thing more expensive. You could do something like two paths to four chips (two each), but your still spending similar money for half the bandwidth.

 

[thestryker]

Could care less about 14GB/s reads. PCI-e 4 speeds are plenty. Hell, even PCIe 3 speeds are plenty for most situations. Give me affordable 8+TB drives at PCIe 3 or 4 speeds.

Wondering the same thing, why they always go for speed but not for capacity?

I would love a cheap enough 8 tb nvme for a nas. Given the ethernet port speed limitations, the nvme doesnt need to be that fast.

Welcome to the price everyone is paying for the death of the 2.5" drive for clients. There are plenty of solutions on the market, but none are sold to consumers anymore. There were some Skylake era consumer boards that had U.2 connectors and HEDT boards also did. Now you can get the same capability through OCuLink and SlimSAS, but these aren't in consumer products either. M.2 was accepted by consumers and nothing is going to un-ring that bell.