Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1TB NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD On Linux

Last year Sabrent launched the Rocket 4 Plus PCIe 4.0 NVMe solid-state drive and left me puzzled for months finding that the Linux performance was coming in short of expectations under Linux. However, Sabrent recently released a firmware update (v1.2) for the Rocket 4 Plus and now the drive seems to be much better positioned under Linux.

At launch the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus NVMe solid-state drive was coming in short of expectations and similar to the odd performance I have been seeing out of the Samsung 980 PRO under Linux also performing worse than expected. But it looks like things have smoothed out with the v1.2 firmware update available for the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus. The firmware update was made available to download in June while for a while now new drives have been shipping using this latest version.

Unfortunately Sabrent's firmware updating for their SSDs still rely on a Windows utility -- no OS-independent bootable ISO option nor any integration around FWUPD with the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS). So unfortunately firmware updates for Sabrent drives are a chore to those who exclusively run Linux but hopefully they will expand their firmware update methods moving forward, at least the new drives have already been shipping with this v1.2 update.

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1TB as we've been testing thanks to Sabrent is rated for sequential reads up to 7000MB/s and sequential writes up to 5300MB/s. Random reads are rated for 350k IOPS and random writes up to 700k IOPS. The 1TB model carries a MSRP of $299 USD and is backed by a five year warranty while having a 700 TB TBW endurance rating. The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus makes use of a Phison PS5018-E18 controller and Micron 96L TLC memory.

With testing was also the Sabrent M.2 2280 SSD Rocket Heatsink (SB-HTSK). This aluminum/copper NVMe SSD heatsink retails for $25 USD.