Phison U18 in a Stable Providing

Sabrent’s lineup of inner and exterior SSDs is widespread amongst fanatics. The first motive 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 wonderful 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 moveable SSD – the Rocket nano V2 – relies on Phison’s U18 native controller, and has been obtainable available in the market for effectively over a 12 months now.

This assessment 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 sooner host interfaces for exterior units within the final decade. Collectively, they’ve contributed to bus-powered direct-attached storage units rising in each storage capability and speeds. The Sort-C commonplace has additionally achieved widespread acceptance within the shopper market. Protocols reminiscent of USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 / USB4 and Thunderbolt using on high of the Sort-C connector have enabled the introduction of palm-sized flash-based storage units able to delivering 2 GBps+ speeds.

One of many major challenges with high-speed storage units is the thermal facet. Bridge-based options with a number of protocol conversion chips are inclined to dissipate extra energy because of the further parts. Excessive-performance moveable 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, geared up 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 a number of shopper 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 choosing them up for the X6, the merchandise did not make any waves. The very best implementation of Phison’s U17, in our opinion, was seen within the OWC Envoy Professional Mini. The introduction of sooner flash has since allowed moveable SSDs (PSSDs) based mostly on the Phison’s native UFD controllers to hit greater speeds. Consequently, we now have 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 jot down residence about. We reached out to Sabrent for a pattern of the Rocket nano V2 to find out if it could possibly 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. Nonetheless, 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 strong really feel to it, due to its aluminum development and 50g weight. The drive has a silicone cowl that lends it safety towards dents and scratches on the metallic section whereas additionally offering for a restricted quantity of ruggedness.

The Rocket nano V2 assist S.M.A.R.T passthrough, as proven within the CrystalDiskInfo screenshots under. Regardless of TRIM not being famous within the options record, we discovered a NTFS quantity on the PSSD efficiently processing TRIM instructions from Home windows. All S.M.A.R.T options reminiscent of 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 moveable SSDs offered on this assessment.

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 units (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.

Essentially the most enticing facet 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 reality, we additionally added a spare SanDisk Excessive PRO M.2 NVMe SSD to the CPU direct-attached M.2 22110 slot within the baseboard with the intention to keep away from DMI bottlenecks when evaluating Thunderbolt 3 units. This nonetheless permits for 2 add-in playing cards working at x8 (x16 electrical) and x4 (x4 electrical). For the reason that Quartz Canyon NUC would 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 units are examined utilizing the Sort-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 develop into fairly widespread, and 8K movies are beginning to make an look. Sport set up sizes have additionally grown steadily even in moveable sport consoles, due to excessive decision textures and art work. Conserving these in thoughts, our analysis scheme for moveable SSDs and UFDs entails 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 now have an summary of the efficiency of the Sabrent Rocket nano V2 in these benchmarks. Previous to offering concluding remarks, we now have some observations on the drives’ energy consumption numbers and thermal answer additionally.

Artificial Benchmarks – ATTO and CrystalDiskMark

Benchmarks reminiscent of ATTO and CrystalDiskMark assist present a fast take a look at the efficiency of the direct-attached storage gadget. The outcomes translate to the instantaneous efficiency numbers that buyers can count on for particular workloads, however don’t account for modifications 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 collect info concerning assist for particular storage gadget 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 when it comes to queue depth, and is barely consultant of a small sub-set of real-world workloads. It does enable the visualization of change in switch charges because the I/O dimension modifications, 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 dimension. 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 dimension 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 dimension. The plain ‘Rnd4K’ one makes use of solely a single queue and single thread . Evaluating the ‘4K Q32T16’ and ‘4K Q1T1’ numbers can shortly inform us whether or not the storage gadget 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 isn’t supported. This assumes that the host port / drivers on the PC assist 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 stunning. Total, for small information spans reminiscent of 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 standard use-case for such units. An outline of the AnandTech DAS Suite and its parts is out there 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 WriteIncrease 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 typical person will discover no distinction between them in the middle of regular utilization, however energy customers could discover the SM2320-based PSSDs and bridge-based PSSDs higher for informal transfers. Energy customers could need to dig deeper to know the boundaries of every gadget. To deal with this concern, we additionally instrumented our analysis scheme for figuring out efficiency consistency.

Efficiency Consistency

Points influencing the efficiency consistency embody SLC caching and thermal throttling / firmware caps on entry charges to keep away from overheating. That is essential for energy customers, as the very last thing that they need to see when copying over 100s of GB of knowledge is the switch fee 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 evaluations, we used to trace the temperature all by way of. Nonetheless, we now have 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 downside, we now have 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 interior SSD to the RAM drive) is adopted by three units for the House 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 now have 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. Due to its aluminum physique and inner thermal answer, the drive is ready to preserve its cool, hitting a most of simply 55C (in comparison with the 76C f the PNY EliteX-PRO). Consequently, we would not have the thermal throttling throughout the disk-to-disk switch set, and the complete workload completes a lot sooner than it did on the PNY EliteX-PRO.

PCMark 10 Storage Bench – Actual-World Entry Traces

There are a selection 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 widespread ones – ATTO, and CrystalDiskMark – in a earlier part. Extra critical benchmarks, nevertheless, truly replicate entry traces from real-world workloads to find out the suitability of a selected gadget for a selected workload. Actual-world entry traces could also be used for simulating the conduct of computing actions which might 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 facet with a wide range of traces, as defined right here.

Element Scores

The varied element scores are graphed within the galler under.

The Rocket nano V2 is persistently within the backside half of the pack, however the delta isn’t excessive.

Total Scores

PCMark 10 experiences an general rating based mostly on the noticed bandwidth and entry occasions for the complete 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 RatingIncrease 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 related scores, whereas the bridge-based answer is on high and the SM2320-based PSSDs make up the center of the pack.

Miscellaneous Points 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 appeared on the efficiency consistency for these circumstances. Energy customers might also be fascinated with efficiency consistency underneath worst-case situations, in addition to drive energy consumption. The latter can be essential when used with battery powered units reminiscent of notebooks and smartphones. Pricing can be an essential facet. We analyze every of those intimately under.

Worst-Case Efficiency Consistency

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

Our Sequential Writes Efficiency Consistency Take a look at configures the gadget 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 dimension 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 fee 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 related {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 site 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 towards different SM2320-based PSSDs such because the LaCie Rugged Mini.

Energy Consumption

Bus-powered units can configure themselves to function inside the energy supply constraints of the host port. Whereas Thunderbolt ports are assured to provide as much as 15W for shopper units, 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 ability 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 towards 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 ability entrance – the drive idles at 0.76W (round 100 mW greater than most different PSSDs based mostly on native controllers). The sleep mode additionally triggers solely after 50+ minutes of site visitors absence – that is distinction to different PSSDs the place the sleep mode will be noticed within the graphs above (triggered inside 20 minutes of the tip of site visitors). This could possibly be a minor difficulty when the drive is used with notebooks, however would 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 when it comes to energy administration and efficiency over quick bursts. Nonetheless, the drive actually shines with glorious efficiency consistency for sustained writes over lengthy durations (widespread, for instance, in video recording eventualities). The superb thermal design ensures that the internals don’t get too sizzling, and the silicone cowl ensures dealing with security. Total, it’s a promising alternative for a lot of use-cases, and choosing it over drives just like the Essential X10 Professional and Lexar ARMOR 700 relies on the end-user’s necessities and form-factor choice.