Sabrent’s Rocket 2230 Wants To Make Your Notebook Faster Than Your Desktop
How does one go about making a miniature drive faster than the previous generation’s full-sized parts? How about just chopping down a current drive to tiny spec by eliminating half the NAND and all of the DRAM Cache…at least when compared to its recently-reviewed Rocket 4 Plus 2TB? To be far more fair, here’s how the Rocket 2230’s base specs compare to recently-reviewed 1TB drives of the 80mm variety.
| Sabrent Rocket 2230 | Adata Legend 960 1TB | Patriot Viper VPR400 1TB | MSI Spatium M470 1TB | |
| Form Factor | M.2 2230 | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 |
| Capacity | Up To 1TB | 1.0TB | 1.0TB | 1.0TB |
| Flash | Micron 176L TLC (B47R) | Micron 176L TLC (B47R) | Micron 176L TLC (B47R) | BiCS4 96L TLC |
| Interface | PCIe 4.0 x4 (NVMe 1.4) | PCIe 4.0 x4 (NVMe 1.4) | PCIe 4.0 x4 (NVMe 1.4) | PCIe 4.0 x4 (NVMe 1.3) |
| Controller | Phison PS5021-E21T | Silicon Motion SM2264F | InnoGrit IG5220 | Phison PS5016-E16 |
| Cache | None (HMB) | 2x 4Gb DDR4-2400 | None (HMB) | DRAM |
| Endurance | Up to 600TBW | 780 TBW | 800 TBW | 1,600 TBW |
| Warranty | 5-years | 5-years | 5-years | 5-years |
| Max Read | Up To 5000MB/s | Up to 7400 MB/s | Up to 4600 MB/s | Up to 5000 MB/s |
| Max Write | Up to 4300 MB/s | Up to 6000 MB/s | Up to 4400 MB/s | Up to 4400 MB/s |
| 4k Rand Rd | Up to 450k IOPS | Up to 730k IOPS | Up to 600k IOPS | Up to 600k IOPS |
| 4k RandWt | Up to 920k IOPS | Up to 610k IOPS | Up to 500k IOPS | Up to 600k IOPS |
Suddenly the max-capacity 1TB version looks far more interesting, even if its lack of cache puts it in the Spatium M470’s wheelhouse regarding capability. We are, after all, comparing the Rocket 2230 to drives that have over twice as much component space. A few more numbers will show us how various capacities of the Rocket 2230 compare to each other:
Yes, the 512GB version appears to have the fastest sequential read and random 4k write performance. Regardless, Sabrent threw in a few benchmark results comparing its 1TB model to the SteamDeck’s Kingston OM3PDP3512B-A01 as proof of concept:
Sabrent is of course quite pleased to point out all the ways in which a Rocket 2230 upgrade could benefit the most demanding SteamDeck users, having both better performance and a higher available capacity, but do PC users care? We can think of a few other places where the Rocket 2230’s compact size is a requirement, and one of those is my Ultrabook. Thank you very much Sabrent!
