![SABRENT Rocket Q4 2230 NVMe 4.0 2TB High Performance PCIe 4.0 M.2 2230 SSD Compatible with Steam Deck, ASUS ROG Ally, Mini PCs [SB-213Q-2TB]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41QldUwQDlL._AC_UF480,480_SR480,480_.jpg)
Warning: Long Review. Context and experience with SSDs
I recently purchased this device for my newest Alienware 17R4. Now at two months old and the EVO 960 PCI 1TB SSD, almost a month old, the games I had on the Crucial MX300 2TB SATA 2.5 Inch SSD- CT2050MX300SSD1 were moved to this new 960 EVO and there is a VERY noticeable increase in speed and performance over all compared to the previous Alienware 17 that I still own and installed a Samsung 850 EVO 1 TB 2.5-Inch SATA III SSD (MZ-75E1T0B/AM . I have nothing but good things to say about the 850 as I had made it the boot drive/game drive on the previous system. I decided SSDs were the way to go for this new system. So I bought the Crucial 2TB SSD for the open SATA III port and it worked well enough, but some games were suffering severe lag, and I thought it may be the Crucial SSD, as it was a lot thinner and lighter than the Samsung 850 EVO 2.5inch SSD from the previous system. Turns out it was not the drive but the game itself which had been copied straight from the old system onto the new one, though the game had a severe outdoor lag that the game never had on the previous system. The old one has a 4thGen Core i7 2.80GHz overclocked to 3.2GHz, 16GB DDR3 RAM, 2GB Nvidia Geforce GTX 960m. But looking at the specs, the newer Crucial is just as fast as the SATA III 850 EVO, but cheaper, much lighter, smaller and twice the storage for less $$$ than the 850 EVO cost me (it needs a caddy to fit into the drive space available)..
In searching for a replacement drive, this system comes with a 2.5inch drive port (where the Crucial was installed) a boot drive slot for a PCI which currently has a crappy factory 128GB M.2 PCIe SSD which is small and slower by far, another such port where this 960 EVO is now installed, and there is still an open mSATA slot. I plan to replace the boot drive with another one of these same 960 EVOs which will bring my storage to 4TB, the largest I have ever had yet. With the mSATA I'm hoping it will be 5 or 6 TB later. I looked at the Samsung 850 EVO M.2 SATA III, but found it was the same speed as the first SSD on the previous system, though cheaper. It was still more expensive than the Crucial and only 1TB, so I looked into the 960 EVO/PROs, and was surprised how much faster the 960s were compared to the 850 EVO and Crucial SSDs (around 3X faster read/write speeds over both the 2.5inch SATA III and the M.2 SATA III). So I had the choice between the EVO and the PRO, and I saw that the PRO is several hundred dollars more expensive than the EVO for a mere 300MB/s of speed. The EVO is already 3x the speed of the Crucial, and the difference in performance was amazing. Moving 80GB of data used to take about a half hour on the SATA III 850 EVO and Crucial 2TB, now takes 10 minutes or less on the 960 EVO PCIe. This 960 EVO is actually less expensive than the 1TB 850 EVO SATA III I bought in 2015.
TL;DR Amazing speed. Perfect for gaming. Buy the 1TB 960 EVO PCIe instead of the 1TB 960 PRO PCIe. The 300 or so MB/s of speed of the PRO is not worth the $120-$150 increased cost. Very happy with the amazing look and performance of my games.
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1.4 GBs read and 1.3 GBs write connected to PCIe 2.0 x4
Update2:2.5 years and still working perfectly. Super product. Moved to an external case and then to new pc. It always worked as expected.UPdate:PCIe x4 nvme expansion card connected to the NorthBridge increased the read speed by about 20%. Now 1.72 GBs read and 1.51 GBs write speed. This is probably the maximum speed that PCIe 2.0 will ever reach. The RX470 performs the same at x8 as it did at x16 so adding the x4 expansion card in the second x16 (x8 with both x16 used) did not affect the video speed. Still 100% satisfied.------------Functions as expected. It is attached to a PCIe 2.0 x4 M.2 socket that is connected to a 950 southbridge so it is limited to about 75% of the a3 link (max 2.0 GBs) due to all the other devices being attached to the SB (14 usb 2.0, 6 SATA3, GB network, PCI etc.). So I expected a maximum read speed maximum of about 1.5 GBs.Another person with the same motherboard posted a much lower score and that is probably due to their PC being configured improperly. My case is just about maxed out with 2 SSD, 4 HDD, PCIe hdd/usb3 controller for the DVD, Samsung 960 M.2, and RX470. MB and Video are overclocked for new games 5GHZ+ and 15%, older games 4.9GHZ and 5%. Older games have problems when the CPU is over 4.9 GHZ or video over 9.5%. New games run just fine at 5 GHZ and 15%.Samsung's program shows 1.4 GBs read and 1.3 GBs write with IOPS 115k and 101K.Crystalmark shows a similar benchmark 1.4 GBs read and 1.3 GBs write.Only way to get it to function faster is with a PICe add-in card so that it would be attached to the nothbridge. It would probably function at 90%+ of the pcie 2.0 x4 capacity of 2GBs. There is no way to get PCIe 3.0 speed of 4GBs (3.2 actual) from a PCIe 2.0 connection. An impractical solution to getting a faster data transfer rate would be to purchase a PCIe 2.0 x8 raid controller and attach 8 0.5GBs SSDs running in a Stripe 0 configuration (is that possible?).I am very satisfied with the 1.3GBs speed of the Samsung 960.PC:ASUS 970 Pro Gaming/Aura ATX DDR3 AM3+FX-8370ARCTIC Liquid Freezer 240Enermax Ostrog ADV Mid Tower Computer Case with Revolution DUO 700W 80 PLUS GOLD Power Supply inside (Limited Edition), ECA3380AS-BL(w/PSU)ASUS PCE-AC55BT B1 Wireless-AC1200 Bluetooth 4.2 PCIe/mPCIe adapterADATA XPG V1 DDR3 2133MHz (PC3 17000) 16GB (8GBx2) Memory Modules, Red (AX3U2133W8G10-DR)PowerColor AMD Radeon RED DEVIL RX 480 4GB GDDR5 DL-DVI-D / HDMI / DP x3 PCI-Express 3.0 Graphics CardSamsung 960 EVO Series - 250GB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V6E250BW)Transcend 4-port PCI Express USB/Serial ATA Combo Adapter
