Phison U18 in a Strong Providing

Sabrent’s lineup of inside and exterior SSDs is fashionable amongst fanatics. The first cause is the corporate’s tendency to be among the many first to market with merchandise based mostly on the newest controllers, whereas additionally delivering a superb worth proposition. The corporate has a long-standing relationship with Phison and adopts its controllers for a lot of of their merchandise. The corporate’s 2 GBps-class transportable SSD – the Rocket nano V2 – relies on Phison’s U18 native controller, and has been accessible out there for effectively over a 12 months now.

This evaluate takes an in depth take a look at the Rocket nano V2 Exterior SSD, together with an evaluation of its efficiency consistency, energy consumption, and thermal profile.

Introduction and Product Impressions

Fast developments in flash expertise (together with the event of 3D NAND and enhancements in TLC reliability) have been accompanied by the looks of quicker host interfaces for exterior gadgets within the final decade. Collectively, they’ve contributed to bus-powered direct-attached storage gadgets rising in each storage capability and speeds. The Kind-C commonplace has additionally achieved widespread acceptance within the client market. Protocols resembling USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 / USB4 and Thunderbolt using on prime of the Kind-C connector have enabled the introduction of palm-sized flash-based storage gadgets able to delivering 2 GBps+ speeds.

One of many major challenges with high-speed storage gadgets is the thermal side. Bridge-based options with a number of protocol conversion chips are likely to dissipate extra energy as a result of further parts. Excessive-performance transportable SSDs up to now have had no choice however to make use of them – first, with SATA bridges, after which with NVMe bridges. The introduction of native UFD controllers able to hitting 10 Gbps and 20 Gbps from Phison and Silicon Movement has opened up but another choice on this class. The Essential X6, outfitted with the Phison U17, was reviewed in August 2021 and was one of many first retail merchandise to surpass the SATA speeds barrier by hitting 800 MBps speeds with out utilizing a NVMe bridge. Across the identical time, Silicon Movement’s SM2320 powered the Kingston XS2000 to 2 GBps speeds and not using a bridge within the center.

Merchandise based mostly on Silicon Movement’s SM2320 have gained loads of client mindshare as a result of they’ve sometimes been in a position to hit the interface velocity limits for sequential accesses in each the ten Gbps and 20 Gbps classes. Phison’s U17 and U18 have been launched with barely decrease peak efficiency numbers, and regardless of distributors like Essential selecting them up for the X6, the merchandise did not make any waves. The most effective implementation of Phison’s U17, in our opinion, was seen within the OWC Envoy Professional Mini. The introduction of quicker flash has since allowed transportable SSDs (PSSDs) based mostly on the Phison’s native UFD controllers to hit larger speeds. Consequently, we have now seen an uptick of their adoption. Merchandise such because the PNY EliteX-PRO, Sabrent Rocket Nano v2, and the Corsair EX100U are based mostly on the Phison U18 controller. The EliteX-PRO’s efficiency was nothing to put in writing dwelling about. We reached out to Sabrent for a pattern of the Rocket nano V2 to find out if it might be the ‘OWC Envoy Professional Mini equal’ for the U18 controller.

The PNY EliteX-PRO, Corsair EX100U, and the Sabrent Rocket nano V2 all use the identical {hardware} platform – Phison’s U18 controller with 128L 3D TLC NAND from SK hynix. Nevertheless, the firmware configuration, thermal answer, and case design are considerably completely different.

The Rocket nano V2 is small at approx. 72mm x 32mm x 14mm, however has a stable really feel to it, due to its aluminum building and 50g weight. The drive has a silicone cowl that lends it safety in opposition to dents and scratches on the metallic section whereas additionally offering for a restricted quantity of ruggedness.

The Rocket nano V2 help S.M.A.R.T passthrough, as proven within the CrystalDiskInfo screenshots under. Regardless of TRIM not being famous within the options checklist, we discovered a NTFS quantity on the PSSD efficiently processing TRIM instructions from Home windows. All S.M.A.R.T options resembling temperature learn outs labored effectively.

S.M.A.R.T Passthrough – CrystalDiskInfo
Sabrent Rocket nano V2 2TBLexar ARMOR 700 2TBEssential X10 Professional 2TBLaCie Rugged Mini 2TBSDP PRO-BLADE 2TBPNY EliteX-PRO 4TBKingston XS2000 2TB	Lexar ARMOR 700 2TBEssential X10 Professional 2TBLaCie Rugged Mini 2TBSDP PRO-BLADE 2TBPNY EliteX-PRO 4TBKingston XS2000 2TBSabrent Rocket nano V2 2TB

The desk under presents a comparative view of the specs of the completely different transportable SSDs offered on this evaluate.

Previous to wanting on the benchmark numbers, energy consumption, and thermal answer effectiveness, an outline of the testbed setup and analysis methodology is offered.

Testbed Setup and Analysis Methodology

Direct-attached storage gadgets (together with thumb drives) are evaluated utilizing the Quartz Canyon NUC (primarily, the Xeon / ECC model of the Ghost Canyon NUC) configured with 2x 16GB DDR4-2667 ECC SODIMMs and a PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD – the IM2P33E8 1TB from ADATA.

Probably the most enticing side of the Quartz Canyon NUC is the presence of two PCIe slots (electrically, x16 and x4) for add-in playing cards. Within the absence of a discrete GPU – for which there isn’t a want in a DAS testbed – each slots can be found. In truth, we additionally added a spare SanDisk Excessive PRO M.2 NVMe SSD to the CPU direct-attached M.2 22110 slot within the baseboard as a way to keep away from DMI bottlenecks when evaluating Thunderbolt 3 gadgets. This nonetheless permits for 2 add-in playing cards working at x8 (x16 electrical) and x4 (x4 electrical). Because the Quartz Canyon NUC does not have a local USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 port, Silverstone’s SST-ECU06 add-in card was put in within the x4 slot. All non-Thunderbolt gadgets are examined utilizing the Kind-C port enabled by the SST-ECU06.

The specs of the testbed are summarized within the desk under:

The testbed {hardware} is just one section of the analysis. Over the previous few years, the everyday direct-attached storage workloads for reminiscence playing cards have additionally advanced. Excessive bit-rate 4K movies at 60fps have change into fairly frequent, and 8K movies are beginning to make an look. Sport set up sizes have additionally grown steadily even in transportable sport consoles, due to excessive decision textures and paintings. Preserving these in thoughts, our analysis scheme for transportable SSDs and UFDs includes a number of workloads that are described intimately within the corresponding sections.

• Artificial workloads utilizing CrystalDiskMark and ATTO
• Actual-world entry traces utilizing PCMark 10’s storage benchmark
• Customized robocopy workloads reflective of typical DAS utilization
• Sequential write stress check

Within the subsequent couple of sections, we have now an outline of the efficiency of the Sabrent Rocket nano V2 in these benchmarks. Previous to offering concluding remarks, we have now some observations on the drives’ energy consumption numbers and thermal answer additionally.

Artificial Benchmarks – ATTO and CrystalDiskMark

Benchmarks resembling ATTO and CrystalDiskMark assist present a fast take a look at the efficiency of the direct-attached storage system. The outcomes translate to the instantaneous efficiency numbers that customers can anticipate for particular workloads, however don’t account for adjustments in conduct when the unit is topic to long-term conditioning and/or thermal throttling. One more use of those artificial benchmarks is the flexibility to assemble info concerning help for particular storage system options that have an effect on efficiency.

Sabrent claims switch speeds of 1500 MBps, and that’s backed up by the ATTO benchmarks offered under. ATTO benchmarking is restricted to a single configuration by way of queue depth, and is barely consultant of a small sub-set of real-world workloads. It does permit the visualization of change in switch charges because the I/O measurement adjustments, with optimum efficiency being reached round 512 KB for a queue depth of 4.

ATTO Benchmarks
TOP: Sabrent Rocket nano V2 2TBLexar ARMOR 700 2TBEssential X10 Professional 2TBLaCie Rugged Mini 2TBSDP PRO-BLADE 2TBPNY EliteX-PRO 4TBKingston XS2000 2TB	BOTTOM: Lexar ARMOR 700 2TBEssential X10 Professional 2TBLaCie Rugged Mini 2TBSDP PRO-BLADE 2TBPNY EliteX-PRO 4TBKingston XS2000 2TBSabrent Rocket nano V2 2TB

CrystalDiskMark makes use of 4 completely different entry traces for reads and writes over a configurable area measurement. Two of the traces are sequential accesses, whereas two are 4K random accesses. Internally, CrystalDiskMark makes use of the Microsoft DiskSpd storage testing instrument. The ‘Seq128K Q32T1’ sequential traces use 128K block measurement with a queue depth of 32 from a single thread, whereas the ‘4K Q32T16’ one does random 4K accesses with the identical queue configuration, however from a number of threads. The ‘Seq1M’ traces use a 1MiB block measurement. The plain ‘Rnd4K’ one makes use of solely a single queue and single thread . Evaluating the ‘4K Q32T16’ and ‘4K Q1T1’ numbers can rapidly inform us whether or not the storage system helps NCQ (native command queuing) / UASP (USB-attached SCSI protocol). If the numbers for the 2 entry traces are in the identical ballpark, NCQ / UASP will not be supported. This assumes that the host port / drivers on the PC help UASP.

CrystalDiskMark Benchmarks
TOP: Sabrent Rocket nano V2 2TBLexar ARMOR 700 2TBEssential X10 Professional 2TBLaCie Rugged Mini 2TBSDP PRO-BLADE 2TBPNY EliteX-PRO 4TBKingston XS2000 2TB	BOTTOM: Lexar ARMOR 700 2TBEssential X10 Professional 2TBLaCie Rugged Mini 2TBSDP PRO-BLADE 2TBPNY EliteX-PRO 4TBKingston XS2000 2TBSabrent Rocket nano V2 2TB

The efficiency of the Rocket nano V2 in these two artificial benchmarks intently mirrors that of the PNY EliteX-PRO. Give the similarity within the platforms, it isn’t shocking. Total, for small information spans resembling 32 GB, the SM2320-based PSSDs surpass the efficiency of the U18-based ones.

AnandTech DAS Suite – Benchmarking for Efficiency Consistency

Our testing methodology for storage bridges / direct-attached storage models takes into consideration the same old use-case for such gadgets. An outline of the AnandTech DAS Suite and its parts is offered right here.

Audio and Video LearnAudio and Video WriteBlu-ray Folder LearnBlu-ray Folder WriteDisk-to-Disk LearnDisk-to-Disk WriteISOs LearnISOs WriteImages and Paperwork LearnImages and Paperwork WriteBroaden All

It may be seen that there isn’t a vital gulf within the numbers between the completely different models for many workloads. For all sensible functions, the common consumer will discover no distinction between them in the midst of regular utilization, however energy customers could discover the SM2320-based PSSDs and bridge-based PSSDs higher for informal transfers. Energy customers could wish to dig deeper to know the bounds of every system. To handle this concern, we additionally instrumented our analysis scheme for figuring out efficiency consistency.

Efficiency Consistency

Elements influencing the efficiency consistency embody SLC caching and thermal throttling / firmware caps on entry charges to keep away from overheating. That is vital for energy customers, as the very last thing that they wish to see when copying over 100s of GB of knowledge is the switch price happening to USB 2.0 speeds.

Along with monitoring the instantaneous learn and write speeds of the DAS when processing the AnandTech DAS Suite, the temperature of the drive was additionally recorded. In earlier opinions, we used to trace the temperature all by way of. Nevertheless, we have now noticed that SMART read-outs for the temperature in NVMe SSDs utilizing USB 3.2 Gen 2 bridge chips find yourself negatively affecting the precise switch charges. To keep away from this drawback, we have now restricted ourselves to recording the temperature solely throughout the idling intervals. The graphs under current the recorded information.

AnandTech DAS Suite – Efficiency Consistency
TOP: Sabrent Rocket nano V2 2TBLexar ARMOR 700 2TBEssential X10 Professional 2TBLaCie Rugged Mini 2TBSDP PRO-BLADE 2TBPNY EliteX-PRO 4TBKingston XS2000 2TB	BOTTOM: Lexar ARMOR 700 2TBEssential X10 Professional 2TBLaCie Rugged Mini 2TBSDP PRO-BLADE 2TBPNY EliteX-PRO 4TBKingston XS2000 2TBSabrent Rocket nano V2 2TB

The primary three units of writes and reads correspond to the AV suite. A small hole (for the switch of the video suite from the inner SSD to the RAM drive) is adopted by three units for the Dwelling suite. One other small RAM-drive switch hole is adopted by three units for the Blu-ray folder. That is adopted up with the large-sized ISO recordsdata set. Lastly, we have now the one disk-to-disk switch set. These workloads present the primary divergence level of the Sabrent Rocket nano V2 from the PNY EliteX-PRO. Because of its aluminum physique and inside thermal answer, the drive is ready to maintain its cool, hitting a most of simply 55C (in comparison with the 76C f the PNY EliteX-PRO). Consequently, we should not have the thermal throttling throughout the disk-to-disk switch set, and the total workload completes a lot quicker than it did on the PNY EliteX-PRO.

PCMark 10 Storage Bench – Actual-World Entry Traces

There are a variety of storage benchmarks that may topic a tool to synthetic entry traces by various the combo of reads and writes, the entry block sizes, and the queue depth / variety of excellent information requests. We noticed outcomes from two fashionable ones – ATTO, and CrystalDiskMark – in a earlier part. Extra severe benchmarks, nevertheless, truly replicate entry traces from real-world workloads to find out the suitability of a selected system for a selected workload. Actual-world entry traces could also be used for simulating the conduct of computing actions which can be restricted by storage efficiency. Examples embody booting an working system or loading a selected sport from the disk.

PCMark 10’s storage bench (launched in v2.1.2153) addresses this side with quite a lot of traces, as defined right here.

Element Scores

The varied part scores are graphed within the galler under.

The Rocket nano V2 is constantly within the backside half of the pack, however the delta will not be excessive.

Total Scores

PCMark 10 studies an total rating based mostly on the noticed bandwidth and entry occasions for the total workload set. The rating, bandwidth, and common entry latency for every of the drives are offered under.

Full System Drive Benchmark Bandwidth (MBps)Full System Drive Benchmark Latency (us)Full System Drive Benchmark RatingBroaden All

The PCMark 10 Storage Bench workloads are comparatively gentle, and never sufficient to deliver out the delta between the PNY EliteX-PRO and the Rocket nano V2. They each find yourself with comparable scores, whereas the bridge-based answer is on prime and the SM2320-based PSSDs make up the center of the pack.

Miscellaneous Elements and Concluding Remarks

The efficiency of the storage bridges / drives in numerous real-world entry traces in addition to artificial workloads was introduced out within the previous sections. We additionally seemed on the efficiency consistency for these instances. Energy customers may additionally be all in favour of efficiency consistency below worst-case situations, in addition to drive energy consumption. The latter can be vital when used with battery powered gadgets resembling notebooks and smartphones. Pricing can be an vital side. We analyze every of those intimately under.

Worst-Case Efficiency Consistency

Flash-based storage gadgets are likely to decelerate in unpredictable methods when topic to a lot of small-sized random writes. Many benchmarks use that scheme to pre-condition gadgets previous to the precise testing as a way to get a worst-case consultant quantity. Thankfully, such workloads are unusual for direct-attached storage gadgets, the place workloads are largely sequential in nature. Use of SLC caching in addition to firmware caps to stop overheating could trigger drop in write speeds when a flash-based DAS system is topic to sustained sequential writes.

Our Sequential Writes Efficiency Consistency Take a look at configures the system as a uncooked bodily disk (after deleting configured volumes). A fio workload is about as much as write sequential information to the uncooked drive with a block measurement of 128K and iodepth of 32 to cowl 90% of the drive capability. The inner temperature is recorded at both finish of the workload, whereas the instantaneous write information price and cumulative whole write information quantity are recorded at 1-second intervals.

Sequential Writes to 90% Capability – Efficiency Consistency
TOP: Sabrent Rocket nano V2 2TBLexar ARMOR 700 2TBEssential X10 Professional 2TBLaCie Rugged Mini 2TBSDP PRO-BLADE 2TBPNY EliteX-PRO 4TBKingston XS2000 2TB	BOTTOM: Lexar ARMOR 700 2TBEssential X10 Professional 2TBLaCie Rugged Mini 2TBSDP PRO-BLADE 2TBPNY EliteX-PRO 4TBKingston XS2000 2TBSabrent Rocket nano V2 2TB

The Sabrent Rocket nano V2 shines right here with glorious efficiency consistency – sustaining near 800 MBps by way of 90% of the drive’s capability. The temperature on the finish was solely 61C. The PNY EliteX-PRO with comparable {hardware} presents a stark distinction – thermally throttling with temperatures ending up at 76C regardless of the write speeds falling to the 450 MBps vary after lower than 6 minutes of sustained visitors.

Among the SM2320-based PSSDs such because the Essential X10 Professional and the Lexar ARMOR 700 current higher numbers on this check, however the Rocket nano V2 stands out within the Phison crowd and in opposition to different SM2320-based PSSDs such because the LaCie Rugged Mini.

Energy Consumption

Bus-powered gadgets can configure themselves to function throughout the energy supply constraints of the host port. Whereas Thunderbolt ports are assured to provide as much as 15W for consumer gadgets, USB 2.0 ports are assured to ship solely 2.5W (500mA @ 5V). On this context, it’s fascinating to have a fine-grained take a look at the facility consumption profile of the varied exterior drives. Utilizing the ChargerLAB KM003C, the bus energy consumption of the drives was tracked whereas processing the CrystalDiskMark workloads (separated by 5s intervals). The graphs under plot the instantaneous bus energy consumption in opposition to time, whereas singling out the utmost and minimal energy consumption numbers.

CrystalDiskMark Workloads – Energy Consumption
TOP: Sabrent Rocket nano V2 2TBLexar ARMOR 700 2TBEssential X10 Professional 2TBLaCie Rugged Mini 2TBSDP PRO-BLADE 2TBPNY EliteX-PRO 4TBKingston XS2000 2TB	BOTTOM: Lexar ARMOR 700 2TBEssential X10 Professional 2TBLaCie Rugged Mini 2TBSDP PRO-BLADE 2TBPNY EliteX-PRO 4TBKingston XS2000 2TBSabrent Rocket nano V2 2TB

Sabrent slips up a bit on the facility entrance – the drive idles at 0.76W (round 100 mW larger than most different PSSDs based mostly on native controllers). The sleep mode additionally triggers solely after 50+ minutes of visitors absence – that is distinction to different PSSDs the place the sleep mode could be noticed within the graphs above (triggered inside 20 minutes of the top of visitors). This might be a minor challenge when the drive is used with notebooks, however does not matter for desktop utilization.

Remaining Phrases

The Sabrent Rocket nano V2 2 TB model is priced at $182, which is across the identical ballpark as different 2 TB PSSDs based mostly on native controllers.

The worth proposition of the Rocket nano V2 could seem weak if solely the marketed switch numbers and efficiency over small workloads / entry spans is taken into account. There’s scope for enchancment by way of energy administration and efficiency over brief bursts. Nevertheless, the drive actually shines with glorious efficiency consistency for sustained writes over lengthy durations (frequent, for instance, in video recording situations). The superb thermal design ensures that the internals don’t get too scorching, and the silicone cowl ensures dealing with security. Total, it’s a promising selection for a lot of use-cases, and choosing it over drives just like the Essential X10 Professional and Lexar ARMOR 700 is determined by the end-user’s necessities and form-factor desire.