Image Credit – Sabrent
 
TweakTown’s Jon Coulter has taken a deep dive into the absolutely tiny Sabrent Rocket NVMe 2230 class M.2 drive, and was pleased by what he found.
For those that don’t know, Sabrent has risen to become one of the most recommended SSD manufactures today as they usually offer excellent performance coupled with excellent prices. This is in no small part thanks to the Phison based controllers they use in their designs. Phison units are used across the industry and are shared with other SSDs from the likes of Corsair, Inland, MSI, and Gigabyte.
Also for those that don’t know, the 2230 standard for M.2 drives is absolutely tiny at just 1.18 inches in length. The Sabrent Rocket 2230 comes in at this length while still...

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msystems

King of Cable Management
Apr 28, 2017
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Although 2230s are mainly found in handhelds and specialty SBCs I found they are also super useful for general SFF builds when paired with a usb-nvme bridge and stuffed in a case with vhb tape. The usb bridges still aren't nearly fast enough, so the immense speed of this Sabrent 4.0 drive would be wasted.

So for I have only tested 10gbps ones so. But there appears to be 20gbps bridges like this based on ASMedia ASM2364 which are also just as small and suitable for the 2230 form factor. That is pretty close to saturating a Gen 3.0 2230 nvme, and the controller is super inexpensive and doesn't need thunderbolt. In due time we might get 40gbps usb-nvme bridge that is still small. There are 40gbps Thunderbolt bridges using JHL7440 but the pcb is going to be larger, like 2280 sized, wasting the purpose of the 2230 ssd.

I'm hoping these catch on for SFF. Its much better than using sata drives, and super tiny. This is a diy project I did to make my own 2230 nvme enclosure.



The only other comparable thing size wise is the Framework storage module.

The main limitation is actually motherboard vendors only including a single usb type-E internal 10gbps port. So if you have a front USB connector, you can't even use this. We need more like 3-4 of these internal 10gbps ports, and less sata ports.
 
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