[SOLVED] The Sabrent Rocket vs. the Aorus NVMe Gen 4?

MoreMoneyThanSense

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What are the main differences between the Sabrent Rocket NVMe 4.0 SSD 2TB and the Gigabyte AORUS NVMe Gen4 SSD 2TB?

I know they are both very similar but I am asking specifically what the differences are, since they are priced a little differently.
 
Solution
So technically the Pro?

From what I can tell, the EVOs use TLC NAND with SLC cache (slower for longer writes, shorter lifespans due to more bits per cell, but fine for quick writes I guess), whereas Pro uses MLC (fewer bits per cell, longer lifespan, faster speeds overall, at the expense of decreased storage potentials compared to the TLC/QLC stuff). Is that pretty much it?
Yes, sort of.

The 'shorter lifespan' is mostly a non-issue.
In normal consumer use, you're talking about 2 decades vs 3 decades. Seriously.

Given a 1TB Pro vs a 2TB EVO Plus, at near the same price...I'd get the EVO Plus.

Now..if this were a database server with thousands of hits and writes per hour...the Pro would be indicated.

USAFRet

Titan
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Why do you say that? And what do you mean by rebadgers? What issues have been arising (I haven't heard of any as of yet)?
Exactly. We've not heard of any issues yet, because these are so new.

Early on in the SATA III SSD world, the Samsung 840 EVO was great. Not until a little while later did issues arise. Eventually fixed with a firmware update, but the problem existed.
Similarly with Kingston A300 line.

Personally, I like to let other people spend their money in finding problems.


Rebadgers?
Does Sabrent or Auros manufacture their own cips? No.
It would have to be an exceptional price for me to consider something other than Samsung, Crucial, Intel.
 

MoreMoneyThanSense

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To play devil's advocate a moment, what was the Samsung 840 EVO problem and how long did it take before it was fixed? And at least it seemed to have been fixed with an update -- was any serious damage caused prior to the update that led to people needing to re-purchase drives?

From what I can see on Google it was a performance degradation issue?

"As Allyn notes in his latest report, the slow speeds turned out to be caused by the SSD controller working extra hard to apply error correction to the data being received from flash memory that had been (reportedly) miscalibrated at the factory. This miscalibration was causing the 840 EVO to erroneously adapt to cell voltage drifts over time. This effect occurs to some degree in all flash-based storage, but TLC NAND (as is used in the 840 EVO) is the most susceptible to this cell voltage drift. Ambient temperature can also impact the slower read speeds, as the controller is forced to work outside of its normal load levels. This can result in the controller thermally throttling itself when asked to perform too many error correction operations."
 

MoreMoneyThanSense

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Would Sabrent push out a similar fix if an issue was later discovered?

I'm not sure what tends to happen in practice, but according to

https://www.sabrent.com/product/SB-...al-ssd-maximum-performance-solid-state-drive/

it does have "upgradeable firmware" so I assume yes, Sabrent would push out such a fix if one were needed, if I am understanding this correctly?

Sorry I can't tell if the question is serious or rhetorical or sarcastic or what, lol. But I'd say yes, I think so.
 

USAFRet

Titan
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Yes, they do have that function.
Actually creating the patch for an issue is a whole other thing.

I'm just saying...I personally wouldn't jump onto a brand new technology, from a second tier manufacturer.
What is the price difference between those 2 drives, and one from Samsung or Crucial?

Also, what will you use this for?
On what system?
 

MoreMoneyThanSense

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Yes, they do have that function.
Actually creating the patch for an issue is a whole other thing.

I'm just saying...I personally wouldn't jump onto a brand new technology, from a second tier manufacturer.
What is the price difference between those 2 drives, and one from Samsung or Crucial?

Also, what will you use this for?
On what system?

On my system I would be using it for a mix of gaming, virtual machines, video editing, Photoshop, Chrome, streaming, coding, scripting, kicad, some 3d modeling.

Planned system is 3950x, Aorus Xtreme mobo, 32 or 64 GB GSkill Trident Z Neo RAM, 2080 ti, with the CPU and GPU watercooled. I was planning to use the Aorus Xtreme's built in heatsinks for the Gen 4 NVMe M2 SSD card.
 

MoreMoneyThanSense

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And the price diff between those and a similar Samsung/Crucial/Sandisk?

I'm not sure which are most similar, I need to do more research on that.

The 2TB model I had been looking at was about $410 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TLZVBNC/

I tried looking into the other Gen 3 models but there were so many options and it was hard to get recs; everyone was trying to save me money (which don't get me wrong, I appreciate) and focus on price/performance models, but I make a good living and am willing to pay more for quality.

Meanwhile there aren't many Gen 4 models to choose from and they're all uber-fast so it was a no-brainer for me to at least start looking there.
 

USAFRet

Titan
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"and am willing to pay more for quality "

Then we need to be looking at Samsung/Crucial...;)

Given your desired motherboard and other parts, the 4.0 is not a bad way to go.
But I'd wait a little bit until the major players roll out their offerings.
 

MoreMoneyThanSense

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"and am willing to pay more for quality "

Then we need to be looking at Samsung/Crucial...;)

Given your desired motherboard and other parts, the 4.0 is not a bad way to go.
But I'd wait a little bit until the major players roll out their offerings.

How much longer might we expect? I was hoping to have this thing up and built by early/mid November or so, in terms of timeline.

If I weren't to get the Gen 4 stuff, for the sake of argument, what models would you recommend among Samsung / Crucial?
 

MoreMoneyThanSense

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So technically the Pro?

From what I can tell, the EVOs use TLC NAND with SLC cache (slower for longer writes, shorter lifespans due to more bits per cell, but fine for quick writes I guess), whereas Pro uses MLC (fewer bits per cell, longer lifespan, faster speeds overall, at the expense of decreased storage potentials compared to the TLC/QLC stuff). Is that pretty much it?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
So technically the Pro?

From what I can tell, the EVOs use TLC NAND with SLC cache (slower for longer writes, shorter lifespans due to more bits per cell, but fine for quick writes I guess), whereas Pro uses MLC (fewer bits per cell, longer lifespan, faster speeds overall, at the expense of decreased storage potentials compared to the TLC/QLC stuff). Is that pretty much it?
Yes, sort of.

The 'shorter lifespan' is mostly a non-issue.
In normal consumer use, you're talking about 2 decades vs 3 decades. Seriously.

Given a 1TB Pro vs a 2TB EVO Plus, at near the same price...I'd get the EVO Plus.

Now..if this were a database server with thousands of hits and writes per hour...the Pro would be indicated.
 
Solution

MoreMoneyThanSense

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Yes, sort of.

The 'shorter lifespan' is mostly a non-issue.
In normal consumer use, you're talking about 2 decades vs 3 decades. Seriously.

Given a 1TB Pro vs a 2TB EVO Plus, at near the same price...I'd get the EVO Plus.

Now..if this were a database server with thousands of hits and writes per hour...the Pro would be indicated.

Ahh I see, then yeah I agree with you, EVO Plus would make more sense then.

Interesting though that the 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus (from what I can tell) is $500 on Newegg:

https://www.newegg.com/samsung-970-evo-plus-2tb/p/N82E16820147744

which is even more expensive than the 2TB Gen 4 Sabrent Rocket. Is there a reason for this or is the premium mostly reputation / reliability / branding / etc?