Professional’s Score
Execs
- Glorious performer
- Barely cheaper than the PCIe 5.0 competitors
- Glorious TBW score and guarantee
Cons
- Barely sluggish at our 450GB write
- No 4TB choice
Our Verdict
Although it’s not the quickest PCIe 5.0 SSD we’ve seen with artificial benchmarks, Seagate’s FireCuda 540 blazed to a first-place end in our real-world 48GB transfers. That makes it a best choice.
You realize the PCIe 5.0 NVMe market is choosing up when venerable storage vendor Seagate enters the fray. The corporate’s new FireCuda 540 leverages the fifth-gen bus to show in excellent real-world efficiency.
It wasn’t fairly the measure of the Essential T700 in different checks, but it surely was shut and can also be a bit extra inexpensive.
Additional studying: See our roundup of the very best SSDs to study competing merchandise.
Design, Specs & Worth
The 540 is a 2280 (22mm vast, 80mm lengthy) M.2 kind using 4 lanes of PCIe 5.0 for transfers. The NAND is Micron’s B58R 232-layer TLC, and the controller is Phison’s PS5026-E26. It’s double-sided, however nonetheless skinny sufficient to improve most laptops.
The 540 is at present out there in 1TB/$189.99 and 2TB/$319.99 flavors, placing it on the excessive finish of the market, albeit a tad cheaper than Essential’s top-rated T700 in a 2TB capability. You should buy it from Amazon and Andorama.
Within the UK, it’s priced at £210.90 for 1TB and £364.90 for 2TB. You possibly can order it from Amazon UK, CCL and Box.
Truthful warning. Earlier than official pricing is introduced, some unscrupulous on-line distributors cost way over retail to make the most of the over-anxious. Maintain onto your horses and anticipate actual pricing from the seller to point out up before you purchase any laptop element.
Jon L. Jacobi
Seagate warranties the drive for 5 years and at 1TBW (terabytes written to the drive) for each terabyte of capability. That’s a really beneficiant TBW score, and the corporate additionally gives information rescue for 3 years ought to one thing monstrously evil befall the drive. Notice that SSDs at the moment are so dependable, we’ve nearly forgotten what failure is like.
Efficiency
The 540’s efficiency was top-of-the-line we’ve seen, however a blended bag with excessive highlights and a few “low” factors. The excellent news is that the drive set a file in our 48GB transfers, blasting its well past the earlier file holder—the PCIe 4.0, host reminiscence bus WD SN580. In the identical take a look at, it additionally simply bested each of the opposite PCIe 5.0 SSDs we’ve examined: the Gigabyte Aorus Gen5 10,000 and aforementioned Essential T700.
The WD SN580 is included in these charts due to its stellar 48GB switch efficiency, and the truth that it’s a few third the price of the others.
Although the Seagate FireCuda 540 was effectively behind the T700 in CrystalDisMark 8, it was aggressive with the Gigabyte.
Jon L. Jacobi
The “low” factors had been that FireCuda 540 misplaced to each its PCIe 5.0 opponents by a bit within the artificial benchmarks (CrystalDiskMark 8 and AS SSD 2.0) and lagged significantly behind them within the 450GB write. After all, these fifth-gen opponents had been each 2TB drives, whereas Seagate despatched us the 1TB model of the 540. Meaning much less secondary cache and slower instances in that take a look at.
Seagate gives a really beneficiant TBW score, and in addition gives information rescue for 3 years ought to one thing monstrously evil befall the drive.
The Seagate FireCuda 540 trounced the competitors in our 48GB transfers.
Jon L. Jacobi
The FireCuda additionally behaved a bit oddly in the course of the 450GB write. Usually, we see the highest pace sustained till the secondary cache runs out, then a drop to the NAND’s native write pace (often 250Mbps to 450Mbps). The 540 however began out at prime pace (over 3GBps), then a few quarter of the way in which in dropped to round 1.7GBps and stayed there till the write was accomplished.
The general time was acceptable within the grand scheme, however not on par for fifth-gen, with the aforementioned caveat regarding capability.
The Seagate FireCuda 540 didn’t fare notably effectively within the 450GB write. That’s a minimum of partially as a result of it’s a 1TB drive whereas the opposite two PCIe 5.0 drives had been 2TB with extra secondary cache.
Jon L. Jacobi
The one different side of the FireCuda 540’s efficiency price mentioning is that it was only a bit sluggish formatting. As you’ll doubtless solely do that as soon as (we reformat regularly throughout testing), that’s not one thing it’s best to ever fear about.
Ought to I purchase the Seagate FireCuda 540?
The FireCuda 540’s real-world efficiency with the 48GB transfers bodes effectively for the common consumer, and it’s a bit cheaper in its 2TB incarnation than the Essential T700. The excellent TBW score and information restoration make it an excellent match for the common consumer with a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot.
Nevertheless, I’d be remiss if I didn’t inform you that you would be able to get nearly the identical real-world efficiency for much, far much less. A few of the newest HMB PCIe 4.0 designs such because the WD Blue SN580 listed within the charts or the Sabrent Rocket This fall are additionally very quick at our 48GB transfers. Once more, the previous is lower than one-third the worth of the FireCuda 540.
How we take a look at
Inside drive checks at present make the most of Home windows 11, 64-bit working on an X790 (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of reminiscence whole). Each 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4 are built-in to the again panel and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. The 48GB switch checks make the most of an ImDisk RAM disk taking over 58GB of the 64GB of whole reminiscence. The 450GB file is transferred from a Samsung 990 Professional 2TB which additionally runs the OS.
Every take a look at is carried out on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Notice that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency will lower resulting from much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different components.
Caveat: The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we had been shipped and to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can and can fluctuate by capability resulting from extra or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes throughout and the quantity of NAND out there for secondary caching. Distributors additionally often swap parts. Should you ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we report, by all means, tell us.