The Sabrent ROCKET NVMe PCIe SSD is an end-user M.2 SSD that leverages the PCIe Gen3 x4 interface and 3D TLC NAND. Distinguished by the color of their branding, the black and blue Rocket is the mid-range line of Sabrent’s SSD portfolio. We also reviewed the high-end Sabrent Rocket PCIe 4.0 SSD back in July. Nonetheless, one of the more notable highlights of the Sabrent line is its generous range of capacities, which includes a 4TB model. The drive also supports SMART and TRIM commands and features Advanced Wear Leveling, Bad Block Management, and Over-Provisioning.
The Sabrent ROCKET NVMe PCIe SSD is an end-user M.2 SSD that leverages the PCIe Gen3 x4 interface and 3D TLC NAND. Distinguished by the color of their branding, the black and blue Rocket is the mid-range line of Sabrent’s SSD portfolio. We also reviewed the high-end Sabrent Rocket PCIe 4.0 SSD back in July. Nonetheless, one of the more notable highlights of the Sabrent line is its generous range of capacities, which includes a 4TB model. The drive also supports SMART and TRIM commands and features Advanced Wear Leveling, Bad Block Management, and Over-Provisioning.
Backed by a 1-year warranty (5 years if you register the drive with Sabrent), the Rocket currently goes for roughly $50 (256GB), $80 (512GB), $150 (1TB), $280 (2TB), and $750 (4TB). We will be looking a the 2TB model for this review.
Drive Capacity | 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB |
Interface | PCIe 3.1 x4 |
Maximum Read Speed | up to 3,400 MB/s |
Maximum Write Speed | up to 3,000 MB/s |
Random Read Speed | up to 650,000 IOPS |
Random Write Speed | up to 650,000 IOPS |
Drive Type | SSD |
Form Factor | M.2 2280 |
SMART Support | Yes |
TRIM Support | Yes |
Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) | 1,800,000 Hours |
Power Draw | 6.6 W 5.3 W |
Supported Voltage | 3.3 VDC |
Operating Shock | 1500 G |
Operating Temperature | 32 to 158°F / 0 to 70°C |
Storage Temperature | -40 to 185°F / -40 to 85°C |
Certifications | BSMI, CE, FCC, RoHS, as per Manufacturer |
Dimensions (W x H x D) | 0.87 x 0.15 x 3.15″ / 22 x 3.7 x 80 mm |
Weight | 0.2 oz / 6 g |
Warranty Length | Limited 1-Year Warranty (5 years with registration) |
Package Weight | 0.12 lb |
Box Dimensions (LxWxH) | 5.9 x 4.7 x 1.1″ |
Testbed
Our SSD reviews leverage a Lenovo ThinkSystem SR850 for application tests (Note: we had to use an adapter card instead of a front bay slot due to a compatibility issue) and a Dell PowerEdge R740xd for synthetic benchmarks. The ThinkSystem SR850 is a well-equipped quad-CPU platform, offering CPU power well in excess of what’s needed to stress high-performance local storage. Synthetic tests that don’t require a lot of CPU resources use the more traditional dual-processor server. In both cases, the intent is to showcase local storage in the best light possible that aligns with storage vendor maximum drive specs.
Lenovo ThinkSystem SR850
Dell PowerEdge R740xd
Houdini by SideFX
The Houdini test is specifically designed to evaluate storage performance as it relates to CGI rendering. The testbed for this application is a variant of the core Dell PowerEdge R740xd server type we use in the lab with dual Intel 6130 CPUs and 64GB DRAM. In this case, we installed Ubuntu Desktop (ubuntu-16.04.3-desktop-amd64) running bare metal. The output of the benchmark is measured in seconds to complete, with fewer being better.
The Maelstrom demo represents a section of the rendering pipeline that highlights the performance capabilities of storage by demonstrating its ability to effectively use the swap file as a form of extended memory. The test does not write out the result data or process the points in order to isolate the wall-time effect of the latency impact on the underlying storage component. The test itself is composed of five phases, three of which we run as part of the benchmark, which is as follows:
Here, we see the Sabrent Rocket with a score of 3,407.9 seconds, which placed it near the bottom of the leaderboard.
SQL Server Performance
Each SQL Server VM is configured with two vDisks: 100GB volume for boot and a 500GB volume for the database and log files. From a system resource perspective, we configured each VM with 16 vCPUs, 64GB of DRAM, and leveraged the LSI Logic SAS SCSI controller. While our Sysbench workloads tested previously saturated the platform in both storage I/O and capacity, the SQL test is looking for latency performance.
This test uses SQL Server 2014 running on Windows Server 2012 R2 guest VMs and is stressed by Quest’s Benchmark Factory for Databases. StorageReview’s Microsoft SQL Server OLTP testing protocol employs the current draft of the Transaction Processing Performance Council’s Benchmark C (TPC-C), an online transaction-processing benchmark that simulates the activities found in complex application environments. The TPC-C benchmark comes closer than synthetic performance benchmarks to gauging the performance strengths and bottlenecks of storage infrastructure in database environments. Each instance of our SQL Server VM for this review uses a 333GB (1,500 scale) SQL Server database and measures the transactional performance and latency under a load of 15,000 virtual users.
SQL Server Testing Configuration (per VM)
For our SQL Server transactional benchmark, the Sabrent Rocket posted a solid 3,161 TPS, which was only behind the pair of Samsung 970 EVO Plus drives for third place.
Moving on to latency, the Sabrent Rocket continued its great SQL performance with just 2ms in average latency, again only trailing the Samsung 970 EVO Plus drives.
Sabrent ROCKET NVMe SSD VDBench Workload Analysis
When it comes to benchmarking storage devices, application testing is best, and synthetic testing comes in second place. While not a perfect representation of actual workloads, synthetic tests do help to baseline storage devices with a repeatability factor that makes it easy to do apples-to-apples comparison between competing solutions. These workloads offer a range of different testing profiles ranging from “four corners” tests, common database transfer size tests, to trace captures from different VDI environments. All of these tests leverage the common vdBench workload generator, with a scripting engine to automate and capture results over a large compute testing cluster. This allows us to repeat the same workloads across a wide range of storage devices, including flash arrays and individual storage devices. Our testing process for these benchmarks fills the entire drive surface with data, then partitions a drive section equal to 5% of the drive capacity to simulate how the drive might respond to application workloads. This is different than full entropy tests which use 100% of the drive and take them into a steady state. As a result, these figures will reflect higher-sustained write speeds.
Profiles:
For random 4K read, the Sabrent Rocket showed middle-of-the-pack best-performing drive with a peak score of 407,107 IOPS at a latency of 313.3µs before a slight spike at the very end.
With random 4K write, the Rocket showed weak performance (placing second to last) with a peak score of 117,090 IOPS with a latency of 1091µs.
The Rocket performed much better when switching over to sequential read workloads, placing second in 64K read (just behind the SK Hynix Gold) with a peak performance of 3,8911 IOPS or 2.43GB/s at a latency of 410.9µs.
The Sabrent Rocket showed weaker write performance again in the sequential 64K test, peaking at just 11,250 IOPS (or 703MB/s) at a latency of 1,414ms. This placed it near the bottom of the leader board.
Next, we looked at our VDI benchmarks, which are designed to tax the drives even further. These tests include Boot, Initial Login, and Monday Login. Looking at the Boot test, the Sabrent Rocket PCIe Gen3 showed mid-range performance, peaking at 93,986 IOPS with a latency of 353.5µs before taking hit in performance at the end of the test.
VDI Initial Login, the Rocket showed some serious spikes in latency and IOPS throughout, peaking of 37,009 IOPS with a latency of 807µs before hitting a few last spikes.
Finally, VDI Monday Login saw the Rocket among the bottom performers with a peak score of 30,523 IOPS and a latency of 522µs before dropping off again
Overall, the Sabrent ROCKET M.2 form factor NVMe SSD is a viable, budget-friendly choice for those looking to upgrade their system. The Rocket is Sabrent’s mid-range model from the company’s consumer storage portfolio (the higher-end model is the Rocket Q4 NVMe PCIe 4.0) and is released to compete alongside other mid-range lines like the Samsung EVO Plus. Featuring 3D NAND and the PCIe Gen3 interface, it comes in a wide range of capacities from 250GB to 4TB, which gives users plenty of flexibility when deciding on the right drive for their needs.
Sabrent Rocket PCIe Gen3 on Amazon
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