Performance-wise, Seagate quotes the FireCuda 530 with sequential read speeds of up to 7300 MB/s. The longevity and reliability of this drive are also an impressive aspect, advertised to have a 1.8 Million MTBF (mean time between failures) and up to 5100 TBW. A huge improvement to previous generation FireCuda. a 500GB volume for the database and log files. From a system resource perspective, we configured each VM with 16 vCPUs, 64GB of DRAM and leveraged the LSI Logic SAS SCSI controller. While our Sysbench workloads tested previously saturated the platform in both storage I/O and capacity, the SQL test is looking for latency performance.

Latest Tech. Built with a Seagate-validated E18 controller and the latest 3D TLC NAND, FireCuda 530 provides the

Ember to Inferno

The PCIe 3 tests utilized Windows 10 64-bit running on a Core i7-5820K/Asus X99 Deluxe system with four 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 also contains a Gigabyte GC-Alpine Thunderbolt 3 card, and Softperfect Ramdisk 3.4.6 for the 48GB read and write tests. Still, this speed, when paired with all the benefits that the new flash has to offer, will provide for plenty of uplift in comparison to Phison E18-based SSDs paired with Micron’s 96L floating gate TLC interfacing at the same speed. Not only does this flash feature four planes, but also multiple physical enhancements to its design over the company’s previous memory. Micron’s replacement gate flash uses metal-based control gates, features an increased etch diameter, and reduced cell-to-cell capacitive coupling issues to provide for its fast performance and high-end endurance.

While the FireCuda’s sustained write performance is monstrous, it recovers slowly. While some SSDs recover their SLC cache within our idle round testing spanning up to 30 minutes, the FireCuda 530 did not. Power Consumption and Temperature Looking at SQL Server average latency, the Seagate FireCuda 530 had an average latency of 2ms, which places it at an impressive tie for 2nd. Only beaten by the Samsung 970 EVO Plus. The Seagate FireCuda 530 PCIe Gen4 M.2 SSD is the latest in Seagate’s FireCuda lineup specifically designed for PC Gaming. Unlike previous drives, the FireCuda 530 uses PCIe Gen4 and 3D TLC NAND, it also comes in capacities ranging from 500GB to 4TB. Although it is more expensive than most consumer drives, its performance may justify the price for some serious gamers.

In 4K random read, the Seagate FireCuda 530 starts the testing with a high scoring IOPS of 577,825 and latency of 219.7µs.