PlayStation 5 SSD and leaked Samsung 980 Pro outmuscled by Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus but Cerny advises future PS5 owners to "hold off" on M.2 drive purchases

The US company Sabrent has conveniently revealed its Rocket 4 Plus SSD and in doing so has instantly snatched a lot of limelight away from the upcoming Samsung 980 Pro drive. We reported about the latter recently as it appeared Samsung had quietly launched the superfast SSD, but it now seems that the company accidentally leaked its products as no further information was revealed and the relevant page has been taken down. Samsung’s mistake is Sabrent’s advantage, as now the Rocket 4 Plus can claim to be the world’s fastest NVMe SSD, and when the South Korean company finally officially reveals the 980 Pro, the Rocket 4 Plus will still be the speed champion.

This is due to the fact that unless the specifications that were published along with Samsung’s 980 Pro were inaccurate, then the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus has a huge lead in the write speeds. While both drives can apparently offer sequential read speeds of 7,000 MB/s, the Rocket 4 Plus (2 TB SKU) can deliver up to 6,850 MB/s sequential write speeds – leaving the 980 Pro (1 TB SKU) trailing on up to 5,000 MB/s. There’s not only the speeds to take into account here, as Sabrent is going to offer higher storage capacities too, with the fast Rocket 4 Plus coming in 500 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB flavors. The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus also holds up very well against the PS5’s famous SSD, which has recently been shown sort of in action in PlayStation’s latest promo for the next-gen console (see clip below).

The PS5 SSD can manage speeds of 5.5 GB/s for raw data and typical 8-9 GB/s for uncompressed data (after decompression via Kraken), so it seems the Rocket 4 Plus could play quite nicely with the next-gen console’s existing hardware. However, before rushing out to buy one, future PS5 owners need to remember the wise words offered up by the console’s lead architect Mark Cerny. In his PS5 deep dive presentation, Cerny revealed that Sony was testing numerous devices for compatibility and that people should “hold off on getting that M.2 drive” until the company was able to provide a list of reliable third-party drives.

Sabrent hasn’t given any availability date or prices for the 500 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB Rocket 4 Plus drives yet, but it is possible to pick up an older model from the same company in the form of the 1 TB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD for a reasonable price of US$299.99. But this drive “only” manages up to 3,400 MB/s (read) and 3,000 MB/s (write) speeds, so it might be worth waiting around for the much faster 4 Plus variant, especially if it ends up being compatible with the PS5.

Edited September 4: Added "(after decompression via Kraken)". The PS5 can unpack data at a typical 8-9 GB/s utilizing Kraken for decompression, with a theoretical maximum rate of 22 GB/s.

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