The Seagate FireCuda 530 is presently the quickest NVMe SSD in the marketplace. It not solely bested the perfect of the remainder in our real-world and artificial benchmarks, it did so by a wholesome margin in a number of assessments. When you can afford it and you’ll find it, you will not remorse it.
This assessment is a part of our ongoing roundup of the perfect SSDs. Go there for info on competing merchandise and the way we examined them.
Design and specs
The FireCuda 530 is a 2280 (22mm vast, 80mm lengthy), PCIe 4 x4, NVMe SSD. Seagate, like many different distributors nowadays, are loath to disclose the fantastic particulars of their SSDs, so we’ve taken to stripping off the labels and studying the chip numbers. The 2TB mannequin I examined has 2GB of SK Hynix DDR4 major cache. It makes use of a Phison PS6108 controller, and it shops bits on 176-layer 3D Micron TLC (Triple-Degree Cell/3-bit) NAND. Good things.
SeagateSeagate warns that the floor of the 530 could also be sizzling. That’s beneath heavy use, after all. That is a picture of the 2TB mannequin we examined.
Alas, an SSD as quick because the FireCuda 530 goes to be costly, however the greater downside on the time of this assessment is availability: It was offered out in all capacities in any respect main on-line retailers, together with Greatest PurchaseTake away non-product hyperlink and Amazon. A Seagate consultant mentioned the corporate anticipated the drives to resurface later in August. Primarily based on the costs proven on Newegg.com you will pay $160 for 500GBTake away non-product hyperlink, $260 for 1TBTake away non-product hyperlink; $540 for the 2TBTake away non-product hyperlink capability we examined, and a cool $1,000 for 4TBTake away non-product hyperlink. Newegg’s product pages estimate availability by August 30.
For some cause, the fashions with a preinstalled warmth sink carry a relatively giant upcharge. Get your individual for lower than $15.
The 2TB and 4TB drives are double-sided, whereas the 512GB/1TB capacities are single-sided. This can be a potential consideration in case your laptop computer is super-thin.
Seagate has nice religion within the Firecuda 530’s longevity, probably as a result of the 176-layer NAND may permit larger over-provisioning, or is just extra strong. The drives are warrantied for 5 years and rated for 640TBW (512GB mannequin), 1,275TBW (1TB), 2,550TBW (2TB), and 5,100TBW (4TB), respectively. TBW stands for TeraBytes Written, i.e. the variety of bytes that could be written earlier than the drive wears out. Rankings over one TB written per GB of capability, as they’re right here, are very beneficiant.
To high off its act of certitude, Seagate will recuperate knowledge from a failed FireCuda 530 for the primary three years of possession, freed from cost. Let’s hope that’s one thing you by no means should make the most of. Seagate’s in all probability relying on that. I child. Largely.
Efficiency
There’s no suspense on this efficiency part, because the article title and opening paragraph overtly tout the FireCuda 530’s efficiency. That mentioned, we had been a bit stunned by the the margin of victory. The 2TB mannequin beat the previous champ, the Samsung 980 Professional, in each take a look at save one, and trounced it by a hefty margin in a number of. That’s obtained to make Phison and Seagate fairly completely happy—Samsung hasn’t been knocked off it’s best-of-breed perch fairly often.
IDGYou may say the Firecuda whupped the competitors. At the very least in PCIe 4. PCIe 3 limits the newest NVMe’ SSD’s sustained throughput efficiency.
Learn ‘em and weep, rival distributors. The Firecuda 530 is the quickest drive we’ve examined in each artificial benchmarks and real-world transfers.
IDGShorter bars are higher and the Firecuda 530 has a number of these for our 48GB switch assessments.
The FireCuda 530 was the primary SSD to jot down our 450GB take a look at file in lower than 200 seconds. And based on AS SSD 2 (not proven), it additionally had extraordinarily low learn entry instances of 0.016 milliseconds. The random entry write time from that benchmark was really excessive, at 0.16 ms, however that by no means reared its head within the real-world assessments.
IDGThis was a relatively astounding 450GB write time, shaving almost 20 seconds of the earlier finest. Shorter bars are higher.
Briefly, the FireCuda 530 is the quickest NVMe x4 PCIe 4 SSD you should buy. Notice that the 500GB model is a considerably slower author than the others, particularly over PCIe 4. Seagate gives estimated efficiency numbers within the FireCuda 530’s knowledge sheet.
I do have to subject our new normal warning: Seagate is a reliable firm, however the latest chip shortages and different components have had some SSD vendor swapping elements–in uncommon instances, similar to with Adata, to destructive impact.
The PCIe 3 assessments utilized Home windows 10 64-bit working on a Core i7-5820K/Asus X99 Deluxe system with 4 16GB Kingston 2666MHz DDR4 modules, a Zotac (NVidia) GT 710 1GB x2 PCIe graphics card, and an Asmedia ASM3242 USB 3.2×2 card. It additionally comprises a Gigabyte GC-Alpine Thunderbolt 3 card, and Softperfect Ramdisk 3.4.6 for the 48GB learn and write assessments.
The PCIe 4 testing was completed on an MSI MEG X570 motherboard socketing an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-core CPU, utilizing the identical Kingston DRAM, playing cards, and software program. All testing is carried out on an empty, or almost empty drive. Efficiency will lower because the drive fills up.
You need the quickest? That is it
The Seagate FireCuda 530 is the quickest NVMe SSD we have seen that is out there for PCIe 3 and particularly PCIe 4 techniques. It’s a bit dear, however the further money additionally delivers excellent longevity and help. Extremely really useful.