Seagate FireCuda 540 SSD Review: Premium Performance Meets Outstanding Warranty
The Seagate FireCuda 540 is a fast and reliable PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD with a great warranty. FireCuda’s performance is also good to excellent across the board, including sustained workloads, helping drive this push towards future DirectStorage gaming titles. You’ll need a PCIe 5.0 capable motherboard to get the most out of it, especially since the drives arrive bare, so you’ll need a motherboard with built-in M.2 cooling and a high-end price point. Seagate’s attention to detail with this drive makes it suitable for workstations as well, if you can apply your own cooling.
My first intuition was that the FireCuda 540 and Corsair MP700, drives that share the same hardware and also adopt the bare drive approach. E26 reference heatsink, Inland TD510comes with a small fan for active cooling, which is annoying to the power supply, noisy and usually useless, so it’s a good plan to do away with it. It also makes sense to let the user decide how the drive is cooled, as visual match is important in high-end machines. As well as having another option, Crucial T700 and Gigabyte Aorus 10000but Seagate wanted something simple with this drive.
In my opinion, it works in Seagate’s favor. The 3-year data recovery service is a great addition to the MP700. The TD510 comes with an additional 1-year warranty, but the FireCuda 540 makes up for it with a higher TBW durability rating. This drive avoids risk by using a standard pSLC cache configuration, but attention has also been paid to flash quality, including mitigating the possibility of counterfeit hardware. Seagate has been able to differentiate in a difficult area by focusing on Seagate’s doing the right thing, and evidence suggests the company’s enterprise experience played a role. increase.
However, these benefits come at a price. Recovery services and higher TBWs come with price increases. While the TBW rating in particular may seem absurdly high, FireCuda drives have historically excelled at write caching. A conservative pSLC cache design can also benefit this kind of workload. The drive also supports hardware encryption, which is often lacking in consumer products. Overall, these differences help differentiate the FireCuda 540 well from the rest of the pack, but you’ll have to decide if the extra security is worth the price premium.
specification
| product | 1TB | 2TB | 4TB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $189.99 | $319.99 | to be decided |
| form factor | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 |
| interface/protocol | PCIe 5.0 x4 | PCIe 5.0 x4 | PCIe 5.0 x4 |
| controller | Phison E26 | Phison E26 | Phison E26 |
| drum | LPDDR4 | LPDDR4 | LPDDR4 |
| flash memory | 232 layer micron TLC | 232 layer micron TLC | 232 layer micron TLC |
| sequential read | 9,500MB/s | 10,000MB/s | to be decided |
| sequential light | 8,500MB/s | 10,000MB/s | to be decided |
| random read | 1.3M | 1.49 million | to be decided |
| random write | 1.5M | 1.5M | to be decided |
| safety | TCG Opal 2.01 (SED) | TCG Opal 2.01 (SED) | TCG Opal 2.01 (SED) |
| Endurance (TBW) | 1000TB | 2000TB | 4000TB |
| part number | ZP1000GM3A004 | ZP2000GM3A004 | ZP4000GM3A004 |
| guarantee | 5 years (3 years relief) | 5 years (3 years relief) | 5 years (3 years relief) |
The FireCuda 540 is available in 1TB and 2TB, but Seagate plans to offer a 4TB option in the future as well. His first two are priced at $189.99 and $319.99 respectively on Amazon at the time of review, but have a lower MSRP. The actual selling price is likely to be even lower as the 540 Face runs similarly. Inland TD510, At the time of this writing, 2TB is available for $269.99. The TD510 comes with a heatsink, but depending on your build, the reference design may not be needed or even be detrimental. Additionally, FireCuda has a neat trick.
The trick is the 3-year Rescue Data Recovery service, which is a great feature for Seagate hard drives. iron wolf pro and FireCuda. The service includes his one attempt at data recovery and, if successful, the data is encrypted and sent back. Data recovery from SSDs is different and can be more difficult than data recovery from HDDs, but there are many cases where SSD data can be forensically recovered with the right tools. I have confirmed with Seagate that they are able and willing to take such steps, including through the use of donor SSD controllers. This is a big selling point for SSDs.
FireCuda also comes with a standard 5-year warranty, guaranteeing 1000 TB writes per TB of storage. This TBW rating is higher than many similar drives. It’s rare to do that many writes under warranty, but his FireCuda drives in the past, such as the 530, were popular for use in NAS and write caching due to their compatibility and conservative pSLC cache . Seagate confirmed its focus on making the 540 a reliable drive for a wide range of workloads. For this reason, it should come as no surprise that the drive supports his 4KiB sectors (4Kn) and hardware encryption (SED) via his TCG Opal 2.01.
The FireCuda 540 is rated at up to 10,000 / 10,000 MB/s for sequential read and write and 1.49M / 1.50M random read and write IOPS. These may be conservative values as the hardware can do much more. Seagate tested CrystalDiskMark on Q8T1 with 1MB block size for sequential specs and Q32T16 with 4KB for random specs, all on new (FOB) drives.
Software and accessories
Seagate has two storage applications available for download via their website: DiscWizard and SeaTools. The former is useful for imaging, cloning, and backups. The latter serves as her SSD toolbox with diagnostic tools. A combination of these should cover most needs.
The FireCuda 540’s SMART reading includes host writes for TBW, but according to the product manual, it also includes a reference value for erase counts to help determine actual wear and write amplification. Additionally, when the drive reaches a certain state (listed as having reached the last 5% of spare blocks), it transitions to read-only mode for safe retrieval of data.
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The FireCuda 540 arrives bare with no heatsink. Combined with whatever cooling solution you deem valuable, it’s designed to work with your system’s aesthetics. This is great because you don’t have to remove the pre-installed heatsink, plus you don’t add unnecessary costs by adding another heatsink that you may never use. Not ideal for most laptops as the drive needs cooling to work properly. A PlayStation 5 with a proper heatsink will work, but it’s not an ideal choice. A cheaper drive could offer the same experience.
The 540 has a standard layout with an SSD controller, a DRAM package and four NAND packages. This also applies to the 4TB model, which is not available. Seagate said flash requires a certain level of stability and flash production is still ramping up, so 4TB could be difficult to achieve. Seagate’s focus on ensuring reliable products through testing before they go to market also contributes to the delay.
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FireCuda uses the Phison E26 SSD controller, an enterprise-inspired design that has been tested many times before. Seagate uses custom firmware with this drive that includes protection against counterfeiting. When purchasing a FireCuda 540 like this, the hardware is guaranteed to be genuine. Counterfeiting, such as by using recycled flash, has become a significant problem in the SSD market. One of the drive requirements for achieving and sustaining the high speed required for the E26 is that the flash is of good quality. Seagate takes this seriously.
The Micron FBGA code for this flash is NY181, which indicates a 4Tb, 232-layer TLC (B58R) NAND package. Each of these has four 1Tb dies (QDP) for a total of 2TB in four packages. This flash can run at 1600-2400 MT/s and the E26 can handle the entire range. However, due to performance limitations, multiple tiers of drives are created.
Seagate says there are multiple reasons for this, but essentially it’s the difficulty of achieving the right balance between speed, write endurance, and reliability. Higher I/O speeds can put extra pressure on the controller and flash, generate more heat, and increase thermal cycling stress. The FireCuda 540’s flash utilizes an on-die thermal sensor with temperatures up to 90°C for optimal stability. This helps emphasize that these drives are designed to be globally cooled.
SK hynix’s LPDDR4 DRAM is also rated up to 90C, but that’s usually not an issue as the DRAM on the SSD isn’t as stressed even with high density workloads. LPDDR4 is a better choice in all cases as it is more efficient.
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