Actually, the price has dropped even further and it can now be had from Amazon or B&H Photo for only $171:
Sabrent Rocket 5 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 5.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive - PCPartPicker
You know, back when I worked at Tiger Direct, Sabrent was just a cheap off-brand for semi-obscure things like sound cards and expansion cards for things like extra USB ports, FireWire ports, eSATA ports, card readers and IDE (PATA) controllers. It's amazing just how far the company has come and it's pretty cool to see them as a market leader in this category. Good for them!
Now, considering what it is, $171 is a great price but it's important to remember that really fast PCIe5 NVMe drives often create a lot of 🔥🔥🔥 and can get as hot as the sun. The Sabrent Rocket, as one of the fastest in its class, would be no exception to this so in order to ensure long-term reliability, an active NVMe cooler would be necessary so add about $20 to the price of the Sabrent Rocket for the bare minimum:
Thermaltake MS-1 M.2 2280 SSD Cooler, Heatsink with 8000 RPM Micro Blower Fan - $20
This would probably do the trick but that little fan at 8000RPM would probably give out a sound like a cicada in heat and would drive me up the wall.
I think that for $15 more, this would be better:
Team Group T-FORCE DARK Air Flow M.2 2280 SSD Cooler - $35
Sure, $35 is almost double the price of $20, but it's still only $15 more and it seems like a much better solution that would be a lot easier to live with.
Therefore, I would argue that the real price of the Sabrent Rocket 1TB PCIe5 NVMe drive would actually be $206 if you don't want to melt it and/or your motherboard. If someone is in the almost unique position in which the read and write speeds of the Sabrent Rocket 5 would make a difference over other options that come with an active cooler like:
PNY XLR8 CS3150 1TB for $174
or the RGB model for slightly ($11) more:
PNY XLR8 CS3150 RGB 1TB for $185
I think that there's a reason the 1TB is so cheap because it's
much slower than the 2TB and 4TB versions, especially when it comes to write performance. I think that it's probably older tech that Sabrent is trying to clear out because the 2 and 4TB versions, while only 7% faster in read performance, are a whopping 26% faster in write performance and that's HUGE:
Sabrent Rocket 5 1TB:
Theoretical Read: 13,000 MB/s
Theoretical Write: 9,500 MB/s
Sabrent Rocket 5 2TB & 4TB:
Theoretical Read: 14,000 MB/s
Theoretical Write: 12,000 MB/s
The Rocket 5 1TB is faster than the PNY XLR8 CS3150, but only by 13% in read speed and 12% in write speed. If you take the big cooler's price into consideration, the Rocket 5 is 18% more expensive than the CS3150 (or 11% more than the RGB model). The PNY has two small fans which means that they won't have to spin very fast and won't be as loud or annoying as the Thermaltake MS-1 cooler.
PNY XLR8 CS3150 1TB:
Theoretical Read: 11,500MB/s
Theoretical Write: 8,500MB/s
Now, for full disclosure, I think that, right now anyway, no PCIe5 NVMe drive is worth buying for most people. Having said that, given the choice, I'd probably choose the PNY XLR8 CS3150 non-RGB over the Sabrent Rocket 5 1TB because the performance is almost there, the price is better and I like the twin-fan cooling solution that's included with the CS 3150 more than the large and obtrusive Team tower-style active cooler.
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