Seagate FireCuda Gaming 510 NVMe Review
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Seagate is the latest player into the high-speed NVMe game. By high speed, I mean a full Gen 3 x4 capable drive. Granted, the definition of high speed will change over the next weeks/months once PCIe Gen 4 and PCIe Gen 4 drives hit the markets and the hands of consumers. Seagate has been making storage devices for years and it seems it was slower to adapt to non-magnetic media adoption.
The Seagate FireCuda 510 is a fast drive. It is just as fast as other drives equipped with similar controllers and memory capacity. I don’t want to sound like I’m minimizing that statement, currently, we’re as fast as we can go with storage on PCIe Gen3. One of my concerns with any new product is if it will actually do what the manufacturers say it will. Accounting for some overhead for protocols, etc., the FireCuda 510 does. I appreciate the fact that Seagate didn’t try to re-invent the wheel and chose leading controller manufacture for the controller on its drive. The Phison PS5012-E12 is a fully capable controller. I’ve seen it on a few drives and it works well. Coupled with the latest memory from Toshiba, you’ve got a drive that will last you a good long while. I also appreciate that there are only two SKUs in this lineup. This makes selection easy and Seagate doesn’t have to chop the performance up in order to minimize competition with other drives in this segment. Here, there is no choice between speed or capacity. You get to choose between capacity. The stated performance specifications between the two drives are minimal at best. Sure there’s a bit of faster/slower here and there between the two but there’s not really a major performance difference, again in the stated specifications. I can only speak to the performance of the 1TB model.
Price is where it gets a bit sticky for Seagate. Other manufacturers have 1TB drives (or close to) with similar performance numbers that are NOW cheaper. Most of the drives that are capable of these speeds and capacities launched their 1 TB drives at around $250.00 USD. Keep in mind, they have been on the market for a while. This is exactly where the FireCuda 510 1 TB drive is priced. At the time of this review, it is priced at $249.99 and the 2 TB is priced at around $450. I expect that as time goes, Seagate will drop the prices but at launch and with competitor drives with very similar performance and endurance and better performance, the entry cost for Seagate is a bit steep. Overall the drive performed on par with what I expected and is a mighty fine drive.
