WD Black SN850X vs Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus SSD Comparison

PCIe 4 NVMe SSD Comparison – WD Black SN850X vs Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus

If you have been out of the loop in the world of SSDs in the last couple of years, you may have missed the tremendously improvements in performance and storage that have occurred since 2020. Every since the commercial availability of PCIe 4.0 m.2 NVMe SSD arrived, we have since a continuous cycle of drives arriving from the big players in the world of storage, with barriers and records being broken every couple of months! Whether you are a desktop PC user, a laptop/Macbook owner or a PS5 gamer, if you have been looking at upgrading your storage to the current generation of drives, then chances are you have come across these two fantastically fast SSDs – The Spring 2021 generation Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus and the Summer 2020 released WD Black SN850X – two drives that, although released a little over a year apart, present tremendous strengths in different areas of the SSD market. The Sabrent and WD Black PCIe4 SSDs have very rarely left my ‘top 5 recommended SSDs’, but which one is best for you? Although both are 2280 length SSDs, after that, the architecture inside each is remarkably different. You see, Sabrent though itself not a NAND manufacturer, utilizes long-running partnerships with 3rd Party companies such as Phison, Micron and SK-Hynix, whereas WD develops their SSDs using in-house teams and acquired companies that are part of the Western Digital family, such as Sandisk and HGST. This means that although both brands are targeting the same areas of the solid-state storage industry, their results arrive with very different build styles that ends up prioritizing very different user needs. Today I want to compare two of the fastest PCIe4 M.2 NVMe SSDs that either company has ever commercially released (to date). Here is how the two drives compare in base line architecture:

Brand/Series	Sabrent Rocket Plus 1TB – $159.99, 2TB – $299.99, 4TB – $699.99, 8TB – $1499.99	WD Black SN850X 1TB – $159, 2TB – $289, 4TB –$699
PCIe Generation	PCIe Gen 4	PCIe Gen 4
NVMe Rev	NVMe 1.4	NVMe 1.4
NAND	3D TLC Micron B47R 176L	BiCS4 114L TLC
Max Capacity	8TB Double Sided	4TB
Controller	Phison E18-PS5018	WD_BLACK G2 NVMe Controller
Warranty	5yr	5yr
NASCompares Review
NASCompares YouTube Review

I want to look at these two SSDs and compare them on Price, Value, Architecture, Performance and Durability, in order to help you decide which of these two SSDs is best for your PC or PS5 Storage needs. Let’s begin.

WD Black SN850X vs Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus – Price & Capacity

Now, the prices below for the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus and WD Black SN850X SSD are from Amazon.com / Amazon.co.uk as of August 9th 2022 and do not take into account any promotions/deals. It is worth highlighting that due to a huge range of reasons (hardware shortages locally, cost of living rises affecting buy patterns, post-pandemic supply chain issues and a pain in the bum that was Chia crypto currency in 2021) the price and availability of SSDs have been particularly unstable. Still, even if we JUST look at this snapshot of the pricing of these drives, spread across the available capacities, we can definitely see that the prices for the WD Black SN850X are unusually mixed across the different currencies. Now, the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus has been in the market much longer now and has had time to spread itself out and have a more balanced pricing structure (much as the original SN850 did a couple of years ago).

Now, the more recently released WD Black SN850X SSD was released by the brand almost 2 years after the original SN850 drive (one of the first, if not THE first 7,000MB/s commercial SSDs in the market). This was because in the intervening 12-24 months since the original’s release, many other SSD brands and manufacturers had continued to develop on the PCIe4 SSD space and release faster and more enduring drives (the price of arriving first I guess). No, of all the SSD brands that arrived on the scene, the ne that has seems to really make the biggest splash in the consumer SSD space is Sabrent. A brand that had been largely associated with HDD/SSD peripherals, adapters and post-production kit, Sabrent released the THEN fastest PCIe 4 SSD in the market (April 2021), as well as arriving at a price point a pinch lower than most other brands ANY arriving with an on-board heatshield and higher durability rating than others in the market. Now, fast forward to now and even though the WD Black SN850X is lower in price by a pinch, the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus still arrives at quite a close price (whilst also arriving in a new 8TB 2280 form – another industry first at the PCIe4 m.2 level) and recently upgrading the whole range from 96L 3D TLC NAND to an impressive 176L and with that, slightly higher durability. Therefore, when it comes to the price and value, I think we have to call this a bit of a tie.

WD Black SN850X SSD = Best Price

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus = Best Value

*TBC at the time of writing and will be addressed/confirmed later. The video below will break down the definitions and meaning of the terms used throughout this review and the comparison tables

** Pricing for the SN850X is quite varied online at launch and regardless of tax and currency exchange rates, the pricing here (taken from the official WD store) seems a bit uneven. This will hopefully even out soon.

WD Black SN850X vs Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus – Reported Read & Write Speed

Next, we should discuss the traditional sequential performance of the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus and WD Black SN850X SSD, as this is by far the most common way drives have been compared (despite the rise in importance of IOPS and durability when it comes to SSDs, in the eyes of many the ‘MB/s’ and ‘GB/s’ figure will always reign supreme). As both of these drives are part of the m.2 PCIe 4 x4 NVMe generation of SSDs, that means that each drive has 8,000MB/s of PCIe bandwidth to attempt to saturate and, frankly, they do an incredible job of it! Now, it is important to keep things relative when you see performance stats, as the capacity of the drive plays a HUGE part in hitting higher speeds. The reason for this is because the actual storage on an SSD is the NAND, one or more modules on the PCB that scale in density and frequency depending on the scale of the drive total capacity. So, for example, a 1TB SSD will either be a single block of NAND at 1024GB or two blocks of NAND at 512GB. Two blocks mean that the drive can be read/written to twice as much and tends to increase performance in most cases. This same logic extends to higher capacities (e.g. 2TB = 1x 1TB or 4x 512GB) and depending on the quality of the NAND (e.g MLC vs TLC, or 96L vs 176L) and factors such as power use and heat, different SSD brands tend to pick their physical architecture differently. This is very much the case when it comes to the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus and WD Black SN850X SSD, meaning that the scaling performance of each drive model as you jump between each capacity tier is quite pronounced. Note that sequential performance refers to big ‘blocks/blobs’ of data when data, is not hugely spread across the drive in small chunks (that is more accurately measurable in IOPS, which we will touch on in a bit). Another key point to remember is that these reported speeds are supplied by the brands themselves, in test scenarios running high high-end CPU+GPU combos (eg, 12-16 Core Xeon/Ryzen and 64GB Memory) that they represent to maximum performance possible, but domestic and mid-range commercial users are going to hit max performance thresholds a good 10-15% lower. Use the links at the top of the article to see the full testing and benchmarks of the WD Black SN850X and Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus in my 11th gen i5 + 16GB RAM setup.

Now, the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus having it’s NAND quality improved upon at the start of 2022 certainly resulted in an improvement in the drive’s performance in a few areas and it certainly beats the WD Black SN850X SSD in Write performance on the bulk of the capacities by a small margin. The WD Black SN850X on the other hand makes it’s own improvements over the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus when it comes to Read performance, showing increases on every capacity tier in Sequential Read. Once again, this means that I have to call something of a tie between the WD Black SN850X and the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus, as they both show of their own strengths in key areas.

WD Black SN850X and Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus = A TIE

WD Black SN850X vs Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus – Reported IOPS

Now, unlike the traditional performance benchmarks of transfer speeds in sequential Read/Write, IOPS has a much more important place in modern SSD use – especially as we start to see the capabilities of CPU, Memory and GPUs to harness the bandwidth of PCIe NVMe (such as Microsoft Direct Storage and modern gen consoles). Because modern high-scale computer processes (databases, loading game sandboxes and AI engines) use incremental loading and in-world loading on the fly, the abilities of an SSD to load vast numbers of smaller assets into the memory (either directly towards the GPU or unpacked by the CPU first) is incredibly important. The IOPS figure presented by SSD manufacturers is presented as a 4K random IOPS operation in Read and Write (4K being an incredibly small packet size and random, meaning constantly accessing data locations across the NAND). Both the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus and the WD Black SN850X SSD score very, very high in IOPS (once again, based on high-end PC hardware and benchmarks by the brand themselves) and either one will do a fantastic job of loading/recording vast scales of low-volume/high-frequency data – but which one does it better?

Now, THIS is where the WD Black SN850X takes a very clear and decisive lead over the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus. Western Digital has always made significant strides in their SSDs to prioritize random IOPS performance. This makes alot of sense, now that we are reaching the point where your PC/Console device does not have a storage bottleneck (unlike SATA all these years) and at this point, the sheer speed that an SSD can push tremendously high frequency but low volume data packets (such as game world data, databases and metadata) is quite a big factor in choosing the correct SSD for your needs. The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus DOES provide some high IOPS numbers and these grow right to the 1 million mark at the 8TB level, but the WD Black SN850X manages to cross this even in the smaller capacities and peaks at 1.1 Million read IOPS and 1.2 Million Write IOPS – A high point across practically the whole PCIe4 NVMe SSD Tier! A clear win for WD here.

WD Black SN850X SSD = Highest IOPS Rating

WD Black SN850X vs Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus – NASCompares Tests

Now, up to this point, we have been looking at the reported maximum performance of the WD Black SN850X and Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus that was benchmarked by the respective brands. Although these are tremendously useful figures in isolating the max read/write for them both, the systems that they are tested with do not really represent the average user. So, in my reviews and benchmark video/article for each SSD, I use a Windows 10 Pro machine, running on an Intel Core i5 6-Core 11th Gen Processor, 16GB of DDR4 2666Mhz Memory and the M.2 NVMe SSD for the review being accessed as an additional drive (not OS, but still on a PCIe Gen 4×4 m.2 bandwidth slot). These are some of the results of that testing in traditional performance and IOPS:

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus ATTO 4GB Test R/W	WD Black SN850X ATTO 4GB Test R/W

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus Crystal Disk 4GB Test R/W	WD Black SN850X Crystal Disk 4GB Test R/W

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus AS SSD 5GB IOPS	WD Black SN850X AS SSD 5GB IOPS

In terms of Read performance in transfer rates and IOPS, we can still draw accurate comparisons between these drives, even in this more domestic class test machine. In all tests, the WD Black SN850X reported much higher IOPS as predicted, but the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus was able to achieve a pinch higher in Sequential read and write across all the tests. I will also highlight that I tested both a 2TB and 4TB of either drive and in both cases, these results played out largely the same

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus = Better Sequential Read and Write Performance

WD Black SN850X SSD = Better IOPS Scores

WD Black SN850X vs Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus – Endurance & Durability

Unlike the other points in this comparison of the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus and WD Black SN850X, the Endurance and Durability of an SSD is an area that is overlooked often enough that I wanted to take a moment to focus a little more on this – you can thank you years from now! The importance of SSD durability and endurance in 2022/2023 is actually pretty massive. Now that the devices we use all feature incredibly powerful processors, often cloud/network hybrid AI processes and graphical handling that will be instantly bottlenecked by traditional hard drives, SSDs are no longer just the ‘boot’ drive for our OS and are now the day to day working drive. This combined with SSD being used as caching and larger SSD capacities allowing suitable substitution for HDDs entirely means that the CONSTANT concern about SSDs lifespan and the durability of those NAND cells is now quite paramount. SSDs wear out – it’s as simple as that. The more you write, the more wear those individual NAND cells suffer – degrading performance over the years and inevitably leading to drive failure. Likewise, the smaller the drive, the greater likelihood that you will be writing, then rewriting, then rewriting, time and time again. The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus and WD Black SN850X are no exception and alongside massive research and development in better controllers and interfaces to improve performance, the way NAND is improved has led to SSDs lasting lover than ever before. However, SSDs and NAND are not built equally and there is actually quite a large difference in durability between the WD Black SN850X and the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus. The Storage industry typically measures the predicted durability and endurance of an SSD as TBW, DWPD and MTBF. They are:

TBW = Terabytes Written, rated as the total number of terabytes that this SSD can have written to it in its warranty covered lifespan. So if the TBW was 300TB and the warranty is 5 years of coverage, that would mean that the drive can receive on average (with deleting/overwriting data each repeatedly) 60 Terabytes per year (or 5TB a month). After this point, the manufacturer highlights that durability, endurance and performance will decline. Often highlighted as an alternative to warranty length when gauging the predicted lifespan of a SSD.

DWPD = Drive Writes Per Day / Data Writes Per Day, this is a decimalized figure that represents what proportion of the capacity of an SSD (where 1.0 = 100% capacity) can be filled, erased and/or rewritten on a daily basis. This is provided using the warranty period and TBW figure. So, for example, if a 500GB drive has a 0.3DWPD rating, that is approx 150GB of data per day

MTBF = Mean Time Between Failure, which is the interval between one failure of an SSD and the next. MTBF is expressed in hours and most industrial SSDs are rated in the Millions of Hours. MTBF and MTTF (Mean Time to Failure) have largely become overlooked in recent years in favour of TBW and DWPD in SSDs, but are still stated on most Data Sheets.

So, now you know what those large Terbyte stats, hours and decimal point details are on the average SSD datasheet. So where do the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus and WD Black SN850X stand on this:

On balance, the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus was able to pull a small victory over the WD Black SN850X SSD. That higher quality NAND and higher quantity NAND distribution of modules on the PCB (and perhaps the running temperature too, but that is unconfirmed) with everything running for longer on the Sabrent drive by a small margin. It is with highlighting that the MTBF rating of the WD Black SN850X WAS higher, but MTBF is limited in it’s application/suitability of measuring outside of a data-center and/or environments that entail high frequency off rewrites. Also, the fact that the Sabrent maintains that TBW/DWPD at even the 8TB on a 2280 PCB is certainly impressive!

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus = Higher Durability Overall

WD Black SN850X vs Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus – Conclusion

There is a good reason why the original WD Black SN850 and Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus still continue to be amoung the most popular PCIe4 M.2 SSDs in the market – they are both such outstanding drives! So now that the Sabrnet Rocket 4 Plus has upgraded it’s NAND to 176L (as well as the O2 firmware ‘G’ version of the drive that facilitates Microsoft DirectStorage) and WD has released an upgraded drive in the WD Black SN850X, comparing them was never going to be easy. The WD Black SN850X is the better drive for mixed-use, game streamers and post-production, thanks to it’s higher IOPS rating and excellent sustained performance ratings (though keep an eye on the heat in laptop usage). The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is the better choice for professional esports gamers (particularly the G version), PS5 and use in large-scale databases, where an element of 24×7 use and high data recycle rates come into play. Both are excellent drives and deserve their places at the top of the food chain of consumer SSDs in 2022 and whichever one you choose, either drive is absolutely top-tier!

Brand/Series	Sabrent Rocket Plus	WD Black SN850X
Best Performance	Draw – IOPS vs Transfer Adv/Dis	Draw – IOPS vs Transfer Adv/Dis
Best Endurance/Durability	✓
Best Price for TB		✓
Best Extras	✓
Best Value	✓
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