The world’s most sturdy PCIe 5.0 SSD

Whereas many corporations are chasing top-end efficiency or nice cooling to make the perfect PCIe 5.0 SSD, Seagate is after one thing else: endurance. Its FireCuda 540 SSD is not the quickest amongst PCIe 5.0 drives, however at 1000TBW per terabyte, it is positively probably the most sturdy by far. If you’d like an SSD that may final you years with out even failing slightly, the FireCuda 540 is the SSD for you.

About this evaluation: Seagate despatched us the FireCuda 540 2TB for the needs of this evaluation. Seagate didn’t see the contents of this evaluation earlier than publishing.

Supply: Seagate

Seagate FireCuda 540 PCIe Gen5

Probably the most sturdy M.2 SSD

PCIe 5.0 efficiency and glorious longevity

$300 $320 Save $20

Seagate’s FireCuda 540 SSD is a first-generation PCIe 5.0 M.2 drive that boasts reads and writes of as much as 10,000MB/s. Nonetheless, it requires a heatsink, and because the FireCuda 540 does not include one, you may have to make sure your system has a built-in one you should use.

Storage capability

1TB, 2TB

{Hardware} Interface

PCIe Gen 5 x4

Switch fee

10,000/10,000MB/s Learn/Write (2TB mannequin)

TBW

2.000 (2TB mannequin)

Professionals

• Delivers significantly better max efficiency than PCIe 4.0 SSDs
• 1TB and 2TB fashions
• The very best endurance you’ll find on an SSD

Cons

• No heatsink mannequin (but)
• Not the quickest PCIe 5.0 SSD

Seagate FireCuda 540 pricing and availability

On the time of writing, you’ll find the FireCuda 540 2TB for $300 and the 1TB for $180, although availability does not look good as on Amazon, you possibly can solely get the FireCuda 540 from third events. One factor to notice is that Seagate says the 1TB mannequin is slightly slower than the 2TB mannequin, although, on this evaluation, I solely examined the 2TB mannequin, so I am unable to say for certain if you happen to actually do want to fret about decrease efficiency.

Moreover, you will not be capable of discover the FireCuda 540 with a heatsink included, a minimum of not but. Seagate informed me that it does not really feel like this can be a downside since nearly all motherboards with PCIe 5.0 assist have heatsinks of their very own, and I agree with that line of considering. Nonetheless, it will be good to have that choice anyway, and hopefully, Seagate will ultimately introduce a variant of the FireCuda 540 that comes with a customized heatsink. Like most PCIe 5.0 SSDs, because it requires a heatsink, it will not be preferrred if you wish to put it in a laptop computer.

How the Seagate FireCuda 540 was examined

For this evaluation, I examined the FireCuda 540 in a check bench utilizing Asus’s B650E-I Strix, a Ryzen 9 7900X, and 32GB of G.Ability’s Flare X5 DDR5 reminiscence rated at 6,000MHz and CL36. As a result of the FireCuda 540 does not include a heatsink, I examined it below the included heatsink that got here with the motherboard, which is not notably giant however is adequate even for high-end SSDs.

Within the benchmarks I ran (CrystalDiskMark and ATTO Disk Benchmark), I examined the FireCuda 540 and different SSDs in two other ways: with 100% free house and with 10% free house, as some SSDs lose efficiency after they get crammed up with knowledge. I additionally did not run benchmarks back-to-back however as a substitute waited about 10 to fifteen minutes between runs so as to be sure that I wasn’t burning by way of cache and operating into poor efficiency because of this. It’s regular for energy customers to deplete an SSD’s cache in real-world work, nonetheless.

The 2 SSDs I’ve chosen to match the FireCuda 540 towards are MSI’s Spatium M570, a PCIe 5.0 drive that’s priced equally to the FireCuda 540, and Corsair’s MP600 Professional NH, the quickest PCIe 4.0 SSD you should buy as we speak. These drives had been examined below the identical circumstances with the identical methodologies.

Efficiency

In CrystalDiskMark, I examined the 4 “default” and two “NVMe” benchmarks, that are half sequential and half random and use a wide range of completely different block sizes and queue depths.

Scores are organized by learn/write and are measured in MB/s.

With no knowledge saved on these drives, the FireCuda 540 and Spatium M570 are fairly neck and neck, however a reasonably important hole emerges if you fill every drive to 90%. The Spatium M570 loses fairly a little bit of write efficiency in three of the six checks, and whereas studying is normally extra vital than writing, anyone doing plenty of file transfers will inevitably discover how a lot quicker the FireCuda 540 is. Random efficiency, nonetheless is usually the identical between the FireCuda 540 and the Spatium M570, which signifies each drives will carry out about the identical outdoors of huge file transfers.

In fact, in comparison with a top-end drive just like the MP600 Professional NH, the FireCuda 540 (in addition to the Spatium M570) is way quicker in sequential workloads. The MP600 Professional NH really maintains a fairly sizable lead within the random Q32T1 check, however it’s not so important that it actually adjustments something for the FireCuda 540.

ATTO Disk Benchmark runs a sequence of sequential reads and writes at regularly growing block sizes, and I examined it in its default configuration. It offers fairly a number of knowledge factors, from 512 bytes to 64MB, however I lower it off at 8MB, and I am additionally solely exhibiting half of the information factors between 512 bytes and 8MB only for the sake of brevity.

Scores are organized by learn/write and are measured in MB/s.

There’s actually not that a lot distinction between these three SSDs till we get to the 32KB mark, which is when the FireCuda 540 and Spatium M570 begin to pull forward of PCIe 4.0 drives just like the MP600 Professional NH. Total, the FireCuda and Spatium M570 had been fairly comparable, to the purpose that each SSDs confirmed comparable inconsistency when crammed to 90% capability. Nonetheless, neither drive was cripplingly inconsistent, and every solely confirmed efficiency drops a number of instances all through the benchmark.

PCIe 5.0 SSDs get actually sizzling, and the FireCuda 540 isn’t any exception, because it reached a peak of 86 C throughout my testing. That is greater than the 81 C noticed on the Spatium M570, although this comparability is not fully honest because the FireCuda 540 was utilizing a smaller heatsink. In that mild, 86 C is not a foul consequence, although hopefully, future PCIe 5.0 drives clear up this warmth downside.

Must you purchase the Seagate FireCuda 540?

You can purchase the Seagate FireCuda 540 if:

• You desire a quick PCIe 5.0 SSD
• The SSD with the best endurance accessible as we speak

You should not purchase the Seagate FireCuda 540 if:

• You need a good quicker PCIe 5.0 SSD
• Excessive sturdiness is not that vital to you

Whereas I wasn’t amazed by the FireCuda 450’s efficiency (Essential’s T700 is seemingly the higher SSD in that regard), the extremely excessive endurance Seagate affords is spectacular. At 2000TBW for the 2TB mannequin, you would need to write 1TB of information to the FireCuda 540 for 5 and a half years earlier than the drive would hit its restrict. Different PCIe 5.0 SSDs supply simply 700TBW per terabyte in comparison with the 1000TBW per terabyte on the FireCuda 540, placing the FireCuda 540 in a league of its personal, even when this a lot endurance is overkill.

Though you want a motherboard with PCIe 5.0 to get pleasure from its excessive efficiency, you possibly can nonetheless get pleasure from its endurance if you happen to put it in a desktop that is restricted to PCIe 4.0. In that sense, the FireCuda 540 is not only a good PCIe 5.0 SSD however probably the greatest SSDs for anybody who values endurance and sturdiness above all else. Maybe focusing on endurance makes the FireCuda 540 extra area of interest than its rivals, however it’s undeniably a winner nonetheless.

Supply: Seagate

Seagate FireCuda 540 PCIe Gen5

Most sturdy M.2 SSD

$300 $320 Save $20

Seagate’s FireCuda 540 SSD is a first-generation PCIe 5.0 M.2 drive that boasts reads and writes of as much as 10,000MB/s. Nonetheless, it requires a heatsink, and because the FireCuda 540 does not include one, you may have to make sure your system has a built-in one you should use.