Sabrent has expanded its lineup of Rocket-branded SSDs with new options aimed at gamers.
Now available for pre-order, Sabrent’s Rocket 4 Plus G is a “state-of-the-art” PCIe Gen 4 M.2 NVMe SSD that counts DirectStorage, content creation, high capacity, and “downright lethal 7 GB/s+ of bandwidth” among its product features and usage cases. Comprehensive tech specs haven’t been published on its official product page yet, but 1 TB ($169.99), 2 TB ($299.99), and 4 TB ($699.99) SKUs are available, all of which are complemented with a free “gaming heatsink” for those who pre-order (it costs $29.99 separately).
Sabrent’s new Rocket Rocket 4 Plus G SSDs also feature a form of “game-optimized firmware” dubbed O₂ GO, which should ensure greater performance, according to the manufacturer.
At the core of our Rocket 4 Plus G is our newest O₂ GO firmware. It is specially engineered to elevate our cutting-edge hardware to all-new levels. Sustain high levels of performance throughout your long gaming session, without ever missing a beat.
The warranty tab on Sabrent’s Rocket Rocket 4 Plus G product page can confirm that these drives are backed by a two-year warranty, which can be extended to five years with registration.
Sabrent’s other Rocket products include Rocket NVMe SSDs, Rocket NVMe 4.0 SSDs, Rocket Q4 NVMe SSDs, Rocket Q NVMe SSDs, Rocket 4 Plus SSDs, and the Rocket NVMe 2242 SSD, an M.2 2242 PCIe 3.0 NVMe TLC SSD that’s available in capacities of up to 2 TB.
Another Rocket product that Sabrent recently introduced is the Rocket 4 Plus Destroyer 2, a x16 PCIe 4.0 RAID card with eight independent M.2 slots and a Broadcom Gen4 PEX switch for 64 GB of fast storage.
Source: Sabrent
Based on my experience (and many others) of sudden failure, I wouldn't put anything important on a Sabrent drive.
It should suffice for a steam drive though, as all of that content is instantly replaceable by re-downloading.
I'm just trying to figure out what other 4TB m.2 drives are on the market. Granted I haven't kept up lately, but last time I checked, I couldn't find any M.2 drives larger than 2TB. Could this just be a "we crammed lots of storage on to one drive" tax?
As long as it isn't a QLC drive, it might actually have a lot of money in NAND in it.
Probably because it is trickier to fit it all on a single m.2 stick. That, and if - like many systems out there - you only have one m.2 slot, you don't have much of a choice if you want more storage...
And since it exists on consoles, it's really just a critical mass sort of thing.
Also, I think you're good on waiting. Outside of something like Direct Storage, there's really very little utility for desktop users with these PCIe 4.0 SSDs.
Maybe it'll prove me wrong, but I think a handful of big games will get paid some money to implement it, so they can show the logo off and get some high profile use out there.... and then after the buzz dies off it'll just kinda exist but not be worth the hassle of implementation.
Once you get to PCI 5 drives and 16+ core CPUs and such - really... how much is this going to shave off from that?
It isn't about bandwidth. It's about latency... (ok and bandwidth some) The real benefit of direct storage is out of order data requests from storage without the CPU having to deal with it. As long as you have the bandwidth to support it you are removing hops and that removes latency.
The problem with it is that, as you said, if it's not used for such steaming - which will require the feature - then I don't see much of an advantage either.