Fast and cheap: Sabrent's 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD hits £78 at Amazon UK
A great deal for a high-end NVMe SSD.
Sabrent's Rocket PCIe 4.0 SSD is one of best cheap PCIe 4.0 SSDs that doesn't cut corners in terms of NAND type (it's TLC, rather than the cheaper QLC) and cache (it's got a DRAM cache). This makes it a good performer even in sustained write scenarios, as you might encounter in video editing and the like, while its good random read/write speeds are good for gaming. Sabrent has discounted the drive to £77.99 on Amazon UK, which is a good price for this level of performance.
So what exactly can you expect from this drive? Well, the rated sequential speeds are 5000MB/s and 4400MB/s for reads and writes respectively, which puts it amongst the best 'first-gen' PCIe 4.0 SSDs but behind the 'second-gen' models that hit 7000MB/s or more, like the more modern WD SN850x and Samsung 990 Pro that lead our best gaming SSD charts.
Similarly, its random performance is great but not quite chart-topping, with the 1TB model in this deal rated for 750K IOPS for both reads and writes. That's considerably faster than cheaper QLC and DRAM-less drives, and only really falls behind recent PCIe 4.0 SSD releases like those mentioned earlier, which tend to hover at or above 1000K IOPS in both metrics.
In any case, at £78 for a 1TB size you're paying significantly less than you would for one of those top of the line drives. For reference, the same size Samsung 990 Pro costs £167 on Amazon at the moment, while the SN850x is a little cheaper at £95 - but that's still £18 more than this drive, so for primarily gaming uses I reckon the Sabrent is the better option!
What do you think of this drive - have you tried it before or are you willing to give it a go? Let me know in the comments!