Seagate has once again activated the part of my brain that makes me want to impulse buy anything Star Wars-related by releasing a limited edition SSD with swappable faceplates based on the lightsabers of Star Wars' most famous laser sword-swingers.
Here's the kicker, though. The lightsabers light up. Ugh, here's my credit card. Well done, Seagate.
Seagate uses its Firecuda 530 NVMe SSD for the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition drives. Despite being a few years old, the Firecuda 530s offer good all-around performance: It's a PCIe 4.0 drive with a read speed of 7,300 MB/s and a write speed of 6,900 MB/s.
Last year, Seagate sold Firecuda 530s resembling beskar ingots from The Mandalorian, which looked neat. However, this time around, the drives include a low-profile heatsink. Because, as you know, a lightsaber can get pretty hot.
What's especially neat about the Lightsaber Collection is that they will have three swappable faceplates on the heat sinks that feature the lightsaber hilts belonging to Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, and, of course, Luke Skywalker from the original movie trilogy. When you power on your PC, an RGB LED ignites the saber with its iconic colored glow, each one different from the others.
You may notice that Luke's blue lightsaber is actually the one from Empire Strikes Back that he loses during his duel with Darth Vader in Cloud City, along with his hand. He later builds a new one with a green blade, which you've seen in Return of the Jedi, The Last Jedi, and a couple of episodes of The Mandalorian.
Adding lightsabers to your PC won't be cheap. The 2TB SSD will cost you $290, while the 1TB model will run you $185. For context, you can pick up the same SSDs without all the Star Wars stuff on them for $209 and $120, which is still expensive for SSDs that have been around for a while now. Consider it a Jedi Tax, I guess.
Despite that hefty price, you'll need good luck tracking down these special edition SSDs, because they have sold out everywhere for now. Hopefully, Seagate will have them back in stock soon.
