With Micron's 176-layer TLC flash, the Seagate FireCuda 530 offers sustained write speeds up to twice as fast as other PCIe 4.0 SSDs that came before it. With a Phison E18 controller, the FireCuda 530 will also load games and apps more quickly, but the differences will be measured in seconds, not minutes.
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Seagate's latest NVMe SSD is the FireCuda 530, the company's 2nd generation PCIe Gen4 drive – following on from the FireCuda 520. This time around, Seagate is using a faster controller and the latest 176-layer NAND technology.
The Seagate FireCuda 530 is a very well-made SSD and as most products will be measured by their performance, Seagate goes out of their way to really make quality a little more stand-out with the heatsink version.
Seagate’s latest FireCuda 530 offers an even more jaw-dropping speed at 7,300MB/s read and 6,900MB/s write speed. It is the fastest drive I’ve ever stumbled upon and is probably the fastest NVMe SSD on the market now.
If you’re looking to expand the storage in your gaming PC or PlayStation 5, the Seagate FireCuda 530 Heatsink SSD is a great choice. While the 4TB version is expensive, the 1TB and 2TB are more reasonably priced and will provide ample additional fast storage. As mentioned in the previous section, I’d personally skip the 500GB version due to its lower max write specifications.
When it comes to peak storage performance, there’s probably little if anything quicker than the Seagate Firecuda 530 2TB. Of course, you can say that of most of the growing army of SSDs powered by the impressive Phison E18 controller chip, which can now count this Seagate drive among its ranks.
Seagate knew it was on to a winner when pairing the Phison E18 controller with excellent 176-layer 3D TLC NAND from Micron. Putting it together for FireCuda 530 ensures performance is crisp in every environment, particularly so for sustained steady-state workloads, while pricing is on-point for the various capacities.
Seagate’s 4TB FireCuda 530 is similar to the 2TB variant and dominates the Samsung 980 Pro and WD_Black SN850 in most of our tests, especially during sustained write workloads. As a result, Seagate’s FireCuda 530 takes the crown as the fastest M.2 SSD available.
A drive that exceeds all other NVMe drives in almost every metric is the dream storage device for most gaming and workstation systems. And it could also be the ultimate upgrade for PS5 owners if they can afford one.
The Seagate FireCuda 530 NVMe SSD broke all our performance records over both PCIe 3 and PCIe 4. It's pricey, but worth it for those with the need for speed.
Overall with Seagate taking the approach of using the high-performing Phison E18 controller at the heart of the FireCuda 530, it makes it a very competitive offering, coming in near the top in our benchmarks.