The new PCI-E 4.0 platform has paved the way for new horizons for storage peripherals. In fact, if graphics cards do not vary much performance with the transition from PCI 2.0 to 3.0 and 4.0, due to the 16x (lines used) and the large quantities of very fast VRAM that allow you to cache all the textures, for SSDs it is very different. In fact, we found a huge performance increase with the leap from the SATA600 interface to the PCI-E of the NVMe SSDs, which allowed to break the limit of 600MB / S.
Typically, if you have a graphics card installed on an upper-mid-range motherboard, the VGA will leverage 16 lines, while the NVMe SSD will leverage 4, or 8 at best. If we take a PCI-E 3.0 motherboard, the theoretical maximum bandwidth for 8 lines is 8Gb / s (read plus write). This implies that an NVMe SSD will be limited to this bandwidth speed. And this is where the new gen4 standard opens up new horizons, doubling the bandwidth. On 8 lines it is possible to reach 16GB / s, more than enough to allow the brand new Seagate Firecuda 530 to put all its speed on the track.
Small, powerful and fast, very fast indeed. These are the characteristics of the new Seagate gem. The manufacturer certifies 7300 Mb / s and 6000 Mb / s respectively for sequential reading and writing, parameters that make it one of the fastest solid state drives on the market, at least at the time of writing. The drive is based on the powerful Phison PS5018-E18 controller, coupled with Micron’s brand new 176 TLC 3D flash memory. The E18 has integrated a penta-core CPU whose primary core runs at 1GHz, DRAM architecture with 8GB DDR4 3200 MHz Hynix, all components that are intended to accelerate low-level access to Micron TLC memories.
The controller is built with 12nm architecture to ensure low operating temperatures, supports ASPM, SPTA and L 1.2 technologies, and has an overheat protection that activates throttling when above 90 ° C. This threshold has been raised compared to the past, as previous models throttled once above 70 ° C. This should ensure high performance continuity even during intensive read and write operations of tens or hundreds of GB, such as game installations or video rendering.
Temperatures should be more under control in this new SSD from Seagate, but to cut the bull’s-eye the manufacturer has also launched a variant with an integrated heatsink, which is the one that was given to us for this review. As you can see from the photo, the heatsink is small and compact, low-profile, so it won’t be an obstacle if you’ve mounted CPUs with large air coolers or multi-GPU configurations.
The form factor is M.2 2280 and to install it on your motherboard, you need a free slot of this type with a PCI-4.0 interface. If desired, it is also possible to install it on motherboards with a PCI-3.0 interface, but we do not recommend it as the performance would be heavily castrated, more than half. Since the purchase price is on average double that of a PCI-E gen4 SSD, you would be spending money unnecessarily, unless you have a motherboard change planned in the very short term.
This Firecuda 530 is also one of the few PS5 certified SSDs. The excellent performance is in fact suitable for installing PS5 apps: just place the SSD in the docking station and that’s it, being a plug & play peripheral that does not require special knowledge or actions from the user. Unfortunately, we haven’t had a chance to test the solid state drive on Sony’s new console (but we hope to do so soon and we won’t fail to update the review). We then launched into an intensive test on the PC, testing the disc on two platforms: a PCI-E.4.0 and a PCI-E 3.0, in order to also check the limits of the old interface.
First of all, we launched storage-specific benchmarks by looking for consistency with the performance declared by the manufacturer, using software such as CrystaldiskMark, Atto Disk Benchmark and PCMark. After that, we recreated some real-world usage scenarios, such as starting games, transferring large amounts of data or large files, and turning the PC on and off.
As for the benchmarks (see the screenshot with complete results attached), in CrystaldiskMark we obtained 7300 Mb / s in reading and 6100 Mb / s in writing, results also confirmed by ATTO Disk Benchmark (7400-6200 Mb / s), while in PCMark10 we got a quickscore of 3210 and a fullscore of 3050. These tests were done on Windows 10. Curious to see the differences on PCI-E 3.0, we installed the disk on an older motherboard, an MSI x370 Titanium ( the top AMD up to four years ago) with Ryzen 2700x. Well, with CrystalDiskmark we have achieved sequential reads of 3300 Mb / s and 3100 MB / s in reading and writing respectively, which is less than half of the potential of the disk.
Moving on to the more real-world tests, we tried to copy a 50GB folder crammed with mixed files, including large HD movies and very small files like jpg, png and pdf. Leveraging the Firecuda as the target and another gen4 SSD as the source, so as not to create bottlenecks of any kind. The test was completed in about 1600 seconds and final temperatures reached just 70 ° C, which is twenty less than the thermal throttling threshold. So we didn’t stumble on any performance losses. Surely the model without a heatsink could do a few tens of degrees more and maybe go to lose a little bit.
We then launched a few games to see the loading times. Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War takes up a whopping 170GB with the latest updates, and we loaded the game in just ten seconds. The crucial P1 gen3 we had as a comparison took an extra 8 seconds, which is in line with the nearly halved sequential read speed. Less demanding games really start in a snap of your fingers that aren’t even worth timing. Windows startup? Just 2 seconds, not even time to sit on the chair and the PC is ready to use. Ditto for the shutdown. Windows updates also gain significantly, and formatting and installing from scratch take just about ten minutes. Between fiber for software and game downloads and lightning-fast installations, you can format or restore a PC in minutes thanks to the speed of the Firecuda 530.
When it came to taking stock, the Firecuda 530 literally blew us away with its speed. In fact, it’s the fastest SSD we’ve ever come across, and it’s also the fastest gaming solid-state drive on the market right now. With its exceptional speed, low operating temperatures (we recommend the model with integrated heatsink), the drive is excellent as a primary drive or as storage for heavy files such as next-generation games.
Thanks to its exceptional sequential read and write speeds, it also lends itself well to heavy rendering jobs with very high definition files, therefore also a good solution for those who delight in video editing, it being understood that it is always a consumer product dedicated to gaming, since for the professional sector there are the IronWolf and SkyHawk lines. Plus, PS5 compatibility is ensured, so you can purchase it to expand your PS5 app storage.
Consider, however, that to take advantage of the performance it offers you need a latest generation motherboard and a performing CPU. The model from Firecuda 530 1TB with heatsink costs around € 260, an average price double to NVMe gen3 SSDs, which however also offer more than half the performance. If you need top performance because you’re building an uncompromising gaming PC, the Firecuda 530 is the drive to choose. Plus, a 5-year warranty and 3-year free data recovery are included with coverage against accidental damage and natural disasters, which is no small feat that is often priceless.
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