Review Seagate FireCuda 530 M.2 NVMe SSD Review: Performance Above All

[Admin]

The Seagate FireCuda 530 is built for professionals and enthusiasts searching for the most reliable and fastest SSD that they can get their hands on.

Seagate FireCuda 530 M.2 NVMe SSD Review: Performance Above All : Read more

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

"Rather than operate the flash at 1,600 MTps as we had hoped for and expected, the 530’s flash operates at just 1,200 MTps "

Well, built-in product segmentation already - 1,600 will go with the next Firecuda "540" model, or a 530 "Extreme" one later.

 

[FastrThnU]

"Very impressive sstained write speeds and endurance" Come on guys...be professional.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Question: Why didn't you include the FireCuda 520 as well? TH reviewed the 1TB 520, but since this is the 2TB 530, it's not an apples to apples comparison. Plus the 520 is quite a bit less expensive at $380 vs the 520's $490 for 2TB.

 

[OMGPWNTIME]

Edit: Great article

 

[PapaCrazy]

More performance than Samsung Pro with twice the endurance and the same 5 year warranty?

Adios Samsung.

 

[Sleepy_Hollowed]

More performance than Samsung Pro with twice the endurance and the same 5 year warranty?

Adios Samsung.

No kidding, and the data recovery is icing on the cake. This is only possible on non encrypted data hence probably why the drive has no hardware encryption.

For a gaming drive or a data crunching drive that doesn’t require encryption, this is the undisputed champion.

 

[samopa]

After two (out of eight) Seagate FireCuda 520 2TB fails less than 10 months, I had swear to myself not buy their product again. Yes they replace the broken SSDs because its under warranty, but the lost data on the SSDs are irreplaceable and cost me few contracts and projects, not counting the intangible losses.

 

[mdd1963]

"The FireCuda 530 is a premium device for built professionals..., "

Can those who are in less than optimum shape use them too?

 

[saunupe1911]

test this in a PS5!

 

[hannibal]

test this in a PS5!

it has allready been tested on PS5.

 

[saunupe1911]

it has allready been tested on PS5.

When? Who published the results? Nevermind...just found one

Seagate Firecuda 530 PS5 SSD Expansion Test

Testing the Seagate Firecuda 530 SSD on the PS5 Time for another PS5 SSD Expansion Test and this time it is one of the hottest pick for the best M.2 NVMe upgrade drives, the Seagate Firecuda 530. Now that Sony has enabled the ability to expand the storage of the Playstation 5 in the latest software

nascompares.com

 

[maestro0428]

Couple of missteps in the article. Where is the ed? Nice drives, but Ill stick with Optanes.

 

[t-dome]

Why is the drive only rated at around 1275 rewrites if it supports 3000 program/erase cycles? Shouldn't those numbers be closer together?

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

Couple of missteps in the article. Where is the ed? Nice drives, but Ill stick with Optanes.

Sadly, unless you are only buying the DC series, they won't be making consumer models anymore. Intel has decided to drop the consumer lines, and who knows if the enterprise line will continue.

 

[rmiller1959]

I have a practical question, but let me set the context first. I have a 500 GB Samsung 980 Plus M.2 SSD in an ASRock Z590 motherboard so I get the full PCIe 4.0 speed benefit, and it serves as my OS and apps drive. I am not a gamer or a graphics designer; the most demanding work I do is in spreadsheets, large PDFs, and the occasional statistics app (IBM SPSS, Qualtrics, et al.). I have not even filled up half of the drive, so a 1 TB or 2 TB drive would be overkill. Would a Seagate Firecuda 530 drive, probably the 1 TB variety, give me a discernible boost in performance (speed in loading apps, browser pages, and the like) that is worth the $200-plus expense, or am I fine with what I have?

 

[seanwebster]

Why is the drive only rated at around 1275 rewrites if it supports 3000 program/erase cycles? Shouldn't those numbers be closer together?

Because of various reasons such as wear leveling, garbage collection, and bad block management eat up some cycles over a device's lifetime and the fact that most SSDs endurance ratings have to do with manufacturer's warranty liability more than absolute device endurance.

I have a practical question, but let me set the context first. I have a 500 GB Samsung 980 Plus M.2 SSD in an ASRock Z590 motherboard so I get the full PCIe 4.0 speed benefit, and it serves as my OS and apps drive. I am not a gamer or a graphics designer; the most demanding work I do is in spreadsheets, large PDFs, and the occasional statistics app (IBM SPSS, Qualtrics, et al.). I have not even filled up half of the drive, so a 1 TB or 2 TB drive would be overkill. Would a Seagate Firecuda 530 drive, probably the 1 TB variety, give me a discernible boost in performance (speed in loading apps, browser pages, and the like) that is worth the $200-plus expense, or am I fine with what I have?

Practically, it would be a waste of money since you already have a fast PCIe Gen4 SSD. An "upgrade" would make sense if you needed the better-sustained write performance or higher capacity.

 

[rmiller1959]

Practically, it would be a waste of money since you already have a fast PCIe Gen4 SSD. An "upgrade" would make sense if you needed the better-sustained write performance or higher capacity.

Thank you! That is the straightforward, common-sense answer I was hoping for!

 

[Tyberious]

No kidding, and the data recovery is icing on the cake. This is only possible on non encrypted data hence probably why the drive has no hardware encryption.

For a gaming drive or a data crunching drive that doesn’t require encryption, this is the undisputed champion.

The 530 is actually encrypted its just not in the datasheet. I already reported this to Seagate and they will be updating the datasheet to correctly reflect this.

 

[Shadowthief]

I have a question.

I need an SSD for a lab application, where we have to write sequentially at 5 GB/s, for as long as possible (until the storage is full). For that, we're thinking of installing 2 x FireCuda 530 2TB in RAID, to ensure bandwidth > 5 GB/s in sustained sequential writes.

According to your figure of "Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery", even after the SLC cache is saturated, the performance drops to 4 GB/s. Thus, theoretically, with 2 x FireCuda 530, the total sustained write performance should be above 5 GB/s that we need.

However, in different reviews, such as this https://www.techadvisor.com/review/seagate-firecuda-530-3807659/, it states that after the SLC cache is exhausted, performance drops to 1.500 MB/s, which is below what we need.

Are you sure that the sequential write performance will only drop to 4 GB/s, even after the SLC Cache is saturated?

Bonus question: for the 530 4TB, you state that performance drops even lower after sequentially writing 3 TB. Is there also a limit to the 2TB version? According to the same figure, performance for the 2TB drops even lower after > 400 seconds, which according to my calculations, means that the SSD is out of storage anyway. Also, the SLC Cache of the 2TB version should be about 250 GB, right? I could not find information on the exact SLC Cache numbers anywhere.