Sabrent Rocket Q4 and Corsair MP600 CORE NVMe SSDs Reviewed: PCIe 4.0 with QLC
by Billy Tallis on April 9, 2021 12:45 PM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
Our AnandTech Storage Bench tests are traces (recordings) of real-world IO patterns that are replayed onto the drives under test. The Destroyer is the longest and most difficult phase of our consumer SSD test suite. For more details, please see the overview of our 2021 Consumer SSD Benchmark Suite.
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| 99th Percentile Latency | 99th Percentile Read Latency | 99th Percentile Write Latency | |||||||
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The 4TB Sabrent Rocket Q4 turns in excellent scores on The Destroyer, helped greatly by the fact that the test fits entirely within the drive's SLC cache so write latency is minimal. The 2TB Corsair MP600 CORE still has decent overall performance with solid 99th percentile latency scores indicating that it doesn't run into the kind of severe latency spikes that can be common with QLC NAND.
The major downside is that these are among the most power-hungry drives, consuming a bit more energy than the TLC-based Phison E16 drive and significantly more than any of the other drives in this batch.
AnandTech Storage Bench - Heavy
The ATSB Heavy test is much shorter overall than The Destroyer, but is still fairly write-intensive. We run this test twice: first on a mostly-empty drive, and again on a completely full drive to show the worst-case performance.
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| 99th Percentile Latency | 99th Percentile Read Latency | 99th Percentile Write Latency | |||||||
| Energy Usage | |||||||||
The shorter duration of the Heavy test means that smaller drives can also get good mileage out of their SLC caches, so the 4TB Sabrent Rocket Q4 loses the advantage it had on The Destroyer. The Rocket Q4 and the Corsair MP600 CORE both turn in good scores overall for low-end drives, with clear improvement over the Phison E12 QLC drives.
However, on the full-drive test runs the 2TB MP600 CORE is showing some elevated latency. It's not as bad as on QLC SATA drives and some competing QLC NVMe drives, so overall this isn't a serious concern, but it does emphasize how QLC SSDs need a lot of capacity (and a lot of SLC cache) in order to stay close to the performance of TLC SSDs.
AnandTech Storage Bench - Light
The ATSB Light test represents ordinary everyday usage that doesn't put much strain on a SSD. Low queue depths, short bursts of IO and a short overall test duration mean this should be easy for any SSD. But running it a second time on a full drive shows how even storage-light workloads can be affected by SSD performance degradation.
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| 99th Percentile Latency | 99th Percentile Read Latency | 99th Percentile Write Latency | |||||||
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Both of the Gen4 QLC drives provide top-tier performance for the empty-drive runs of the Light test, and they also still provide acceptable performance on the full-drive test runs with no serious latency spikes. As with the other ATSB tests, they come in last place for energy efficiency.
PCMark 10 Storage Benchmarks
The PCMark 10 Storage benchmarks are IO trace based tests similar to our own ATSB tests. For more details, please see the overview of our 2021 Consumer SSD Benchmark Suite.
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| Full System Drive | Overall Score | Average Bandwidth | Average Latency | ||||||
| Quick System Drive | Overall Score | Average Bandwidth | Average Latency | ||||||
| Data Drive | Overall Score | Average Bandwidth | Average Latency | ||||||
The two PCIe Gen4 QLC drives offer good performance on the Quick System Drive and Data Drive tests, which are relatively shorter and more focused on sequential IO. The longer Full System Drive test with more random IO stresses these drives enough for their low-end nature to show through - in stark contrast to the Intel SSD 670p that manages very good scores on both of the system drive tests.
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pdegan2814 - Wednesday, April 14, 2021 - link
The endurance rating of the standard MP600 is exactly why I bought it as well. It blows most other SSDs out of the water in that regard. And it's more than fast enough for my needs.ozzuneoj86 - Friday, April 9, 2021 - link
All I get from any SSD review lately is that SK Hynix needs to release a Gen4 drive, since their Gen3 drive leads by a good margin in many tests already. Unless you need more than 1TB on a single drive, there's not much reason to go with anything but the P31 (or the 980 Pro if money is no object). Very high efficiency (less power is less heat), high performance, high consistency (empty vs full) and competitively low price. The only thing preventing me from getting a P31 myself is that I'm sure they'll put out a Gen4 version before long, and unless they screw something up it should be among the best drives available.ozzuneoj86 - Friday, April 9, 2021 - link
Sorry, I forgot about the SN850 and 970 Pro... those are also competitive, but much more expensive.bernstein - Saturday, April 10, 2021 - link
The problem with the p31 is that it was never available. at least in europe. And there is no 2tb model...ozzuneoj86 - Sunday, April 11, 2021 - link
Sorry to hear they are hard to get in Europe. The P31 is very easy to get in the US for $135 and often goes on sale for less at Amazon.But I agree, not having a 2TB option is unfortunate.
Samus - Sunday, April 11, 2021 - link
We can get the 1TB regularly for (MSRP?) $130-$135 at retail and online in the USA, but as you and ozzuneoj said, not having a 2TB variety is a missed opportunity for Hynix because this has been my go-to drive for nearly a year in just about every upgrade I do (I use nothing else in laptops or SFF\ITX systems where the power efficiency and low heat are most beneficial)On top of that, I have installed dozens and zero have failed. An amazing accomplishment from Hynix. I've used the S31 in legacy systems with SATA ports and it's equally excellent especially for the price, though the MX500 is still my go-to drive for legacy systems because it is often slightly cheaper, and again, I have seen zero failures from those drives over the years.
Come on Hynix make a 2TB model already...
back2future - Sunday, April 11, 2021 - link
that's not the point for data retention . Having data on a SSD (nand flash, type slc, mlc, tlc, qlc) it would be necessary specification for customers (beside TBW) how to store SSDs or power cycle for long term data security?While having been impressed with performance (compared to non-raid HDD) since first time SSD experience, few information about long term data security is minor customer support on that item?
Hulk - Friday, April 9, 2021 - link
I'm pleasantly surprised by the very good performance metrics for these drives. The combination of 1/4 drive SLC cache with the "housekeeping" in the background makes for a fast, yet economical drive. I have a feeling prices on these will drop pretty quickly and they'll be a great buy in 6 months to a year. I don't think I'd use them in a laptop and I think I'd go 2TB or larger for the sake of performance and endurance though.shabby - Friday, April 9, 2021 - link
Quality(endurance) , price, performance... choose two. With qlc you can only choose one 🙄Hulk - Friday, April 9, 2021 - link
I'm not so sure about that. 225GB day written for 5 years for the 2TB drive. If you aren't in a server situation I don't know how you'd ever get near that number.