| Seagate FireCuda 540: 2TB for $269 The speedy Seagate FireCuda 540 is a PCIe Gen 5 SSD with quick sequential transfers, which targets discerning players and content material creators. |
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So what’s new with the FireCuda 540? Effectively, a transfer to Phison’s latest-and-greatest SSD controller, for starters. That is the E26, in case you do not observe storage controllers obsessively like a few of us. Naturally, that brings PCIe 5.0 assist to the FireCuda line, however this drive additionally strikes from Micron’s 176-layer TLC flash reminiscence to the newer 232-layer flash. The rise in density implies that this high-end PCIe SSD just isn’t out there in sizes smaller than 1TB, however it nonetheless tops out at 4TB.
Let’s take a look on the specs earlier than we admire the drive itself…
Seagate FireCuda 540 SSD Specs And Options
Discover The Seagate FireCuda 540 PCIe 5 SSD @ Amazon
There’s loads to absorb right here. We’re reviewing the 2TB mannequin of the drive, which affords roughly 10,000 MB/second—that is 10 gigabytes per second—of sequential efficiency. Whereas not class-leading, that is nonetheless fairly darn quick. The random numbers are nothing to sneeze at both, though please notice Seagate’s use of a somewhat-unrealistic benchmark utilizing eight CPU threads and a 32-deep I/O queue. In fact, mainly each storage firm does this, so we will hardly fault Seagate.
The drive itself is a reasonably unremarkable-looking gumstick SSD. Nonetheless, you will notice that there isn’t any heatsink on this drive. That is not as a result of it does not want one—it is a Phison E26-based platform, in any case—however fairly, as a result of Seagate does not wish to waste cash on one thing you are most likely not going to make use of anyway. The corporate figures that almost all customers are going to stay the drive below a motherboard’s cooling plate and even an lively cooler, so the drive comes naked except for stickers on each side.
The packaging for the field is fairly cool, with a trendy red-and-black coloration scheme and a sticker indicating the salient factors of the SSD: its capability, its sequential pace, and the truth that it comes with a knowledge restoration guarantee. We’re unsure if the dragon creature on the field is the fabled FireCuda, however the “Cuda” half comes from “Barracuda,” which is a fish, so possibly we should always simply cease desirous about it.
Like many different SSDs in its class, the FireCuda 540 implements an SLC-like cache to reinforce write efficiency. As you’ll be able to see above, with the 2TB drive, that cache will function at full pace till 500GB of knowledge is sequentially written to the drive, at which level write efficiency dips significantly, however nonetheless stays over 3GB/s throughout your entire capability of the drive.
Seagate FireCuda 540 SSD Benchmarks
Below every check situation, the SSDs showcased right here have been put in as secondary volumes in our testbed, with a separate drive used for the OS and benchmark installations. Our testbed’s motherboard was up to date with the most recent BIOS out there on the time of publication and Home windows 11 was absolutely up to date. Home windows Firewall, automated updates, and display screen savers have been all disabled earlier than testing, and Focus Help was enabled to stop any interruptions.
In all check runs, we rebooted the system, ensured all temp and prefetch information was purged, and waited a number of minutes for drive exercise to settle and for the system to succeed in an idle state earlier than invoking a check. All the drives right here have additionally been up to date to their newest firmware as of press time. The place relevant, we might additionally usually use any proprietary NVMe drivers out there from a given producer. When not out there, the drives used the Microsoft driver included with Home windows 11.
HotHardware’s Take a look at System:
| Processor: Intel Core i9-13900K Motherboard: Video Card: Reminiscence: Storage: |
OS: Home windows 11 Professional x64 Chipset Drivers: Benchmarks: |
IOMeter Benchmarks
IOMeter is a well-respected business normal benchmark. Nonetheless, regardless of our outcomes with IOMeter scaling as anticipated, it’s debatable as as to whether or not sure entry patterns really present a sound instance of real-world efficiency. The entry patterns we examined might not mirror your specific workloads, for instance. That stated, we do assume IOMeter is a dependable gauge for relative throughput, latency, and bandwidth with a given storage resolution. As well as, there are particular highly-strenuous workloads you’ll be able to place on a drive with IOMeter you can’t with most different storage benchmark instruments.
Within the following tables, we’re displaying two units of entry patterns; a customized Workstation sample, with an 8K switch measurement, consisting of 80% reads (20% writes) and 80% random (20% sequential) entry and a 4K entry sample with a 4K switch measurement, comprised of 67% reads (33% writes) and 100% random entry. Queue depths from 1 to 16 have been examined…
We ought to be clear proper in the beginning of our benchmarks right here that every one of those SSDs are extraordinarily quick. These are the cream of the crop so far as client solid-state drives go, and being on the backside of this listing is hardly one thing to be ashamed of. With that stated, the FireCuda 540 lands about in the course of the stack on the lowest queue depths in these two checks with are largely random entry benchmarks. It fights for place with ADATA’s new Legend 970 SSD, which we’re within the strategy of reviewing now as effectively.
Once more, all of those SSDs are extraordinarily fast—the slowest drive right here is doing over 75,000 IOPS in a 4K-aligned random entry check with only one thread, and the opposite drives aren’t far forward in that check. Nonetheless, when you improve the entry measurement to 8K and begin ramping up the queue depth, the quicker drives begin to draw back a bit.
These numbers symbolize the common bandwidth for the drives we examined with each entry patterns, throughout each queue depth. In case that is not clear sufficient, it is the identical information as within the earlier two charts, simply condensed into common bandwidth of the outcomes throughout all 4 checks — not IOps.
Apart from the Kingston Fury Renegade, which struggles just a little, all of those drives are broadly equal in efficiency with 4K random transfers. Leaping as much as 8K accesses provides the Samsung SSD 990 Professional and the XPG Gammix S70 a big lead. Notably, each of these drives are PCIe 4.0 fashions, helpfully illustrating that the interface actually is not the bottleneck in the commonest shopper use circumstances.
Assuming nothing has gone grievously flawed, the latency checks ought to appear to be a mirror of the bandwidth checks, which is to say that they need to be reversed. That is the case right here, which implies that there are not any actual surprises—the drives that supply the most effective random efficiency additionally supply the bottom response time and entry latency, which implies every thing is working as anticipated.
SiSoft SANDRA 2022
Subsequent, we used SiSoft SANDRA, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant for some fast checks. Right here, we used the File System Take a look at and supply the outcomes from our comparability SSDs. Learn and write efficiency metrics, together with the general drive rating, are detailed beneath.
Sandra’s storage benchmark is rather more a check of sequential efficiency, and as you’d anticipate, our PCIe 5.0 drives go away the older PCIe 4.0 drives within the mud. These checks aren’t tremendous related to most customers, however for those who’re doing a whole lot of file copying, or manipulating very massive information steadily, then this is likely to be crucial checks to you. The FireCuda 540 affords glorious efficiency on this check, on par with the Adata drive—naturally, as each SSDs use the identical controller and PCIe 5.0 interface.
ATTO Disk Benchmark
ATTO is one other “fast and soiled” kind of disk benchmark that measures switch speeds throughout a selected quantity size. It measures uncooked switch charges for each reads and writes and graphs them out in an simply interpreted chart. We selected .5KB by way of 64MB switch sizes and a queue depth of 6 over a complete max quantity size of 256MB. ATTO’s workloads are sequential in nature and measure uncooked bandwidth, fairly than I/O response time, entry latency, and so on.
The write outcome could be very spectacular right here, outpacing every thing besides the top-class Essential T700. On the learn check, the FireCuda 540 is as soon as once more neck and neck with the Essential T700 till the important 256KB check, though ADATA’s Legend 970 is working proper alongside as effectively.
These ATTO throughput checks are measured in IOPS, so preserve that in thoughts as you have a look at the charts. General, the drives largely preserve the groupings we anticipate, with the three PCIe 5.0 drives working forward of the pack. The Legend 970 and this FireCuda 540 largely match tempo with one another, whereas the T700 usually leads, though the FireCuda 540 does have a curious spike on the 256K switch measurement in reads.
AS SSD Compression Benchmark
Subsequent up we ran the Compression Benchmark built-into AS SSD, an SSD particular benchmark being developed by Alex Clever Software program. This check is fascinating as a result of it makes use of a mixture of compressible and non-compressible information and outputs each Learn and Write throughput of the drive. We solely graphed a small fraction of the information (1% compressible, 50% compressible, and 100% compressible), however the pattern is consultant of the benchmark’s full outcomes.
The compressibility of the information being transferred throughout the drives we examined has nearly no impression on efficiency, however it’s good to verify that we have come a good distance from the times of SandForce controllers dropping two-thirds of their efficiency on non-compressible information.The one odd outlier is the small acquire on the Adata Legend 970 on the write check. So far as the FireCuda 540 goes, its outcomes really went down ever so barely as information turned extra compressible. Many of the variation seen right here with these drives is because of their habits with this particular benchmark’s workload.
