Seagate is getting into PCIe Gen5 SSD race with its FireCuda 540 drives that promise to offer performance that is on par with some of the best SSDs out there and which by far surpasses that of PCIe Gen4 drives. In addition to up 1.5M IOPS and up to 10 GB/s sequential read and write speeds, the FireCuda 540 devices also promise to offer endurance and reliability that we come to expect from Seagate.
Seagate's FireCuda 540 2TB SSD is rated for an up to 10,000 MB/s sequential read/write speeds as well as up to 1.5 million random IOPS, according to early listings at Amazon UK and B&H in the U.S. (discovered by @momomo_us). The drive is rated for an up to 2,000 terabytes to be written (TBW) over its warranty period of five years, which is a bit higher than 1,400 TBW endurance featured by competing PCIe Gen5 SSDs. In addition to higher endurance rating, the drive comes bundled with a three-year subscription to Seagate's Rescue data recovery service.
Seagate hasn't disclosed which controller it uses for its FireCuda 540 2TB SSD, but given the fact that the company collaborates very closely with Phison and the fact that the only client SSD platform that is ready for prime time is Phison's PS5026-E26, it is safe to say that this is the controller that powers the drive. Meanwhile, Seagate decided not to equip its new SSDs sophisticated cooling system, unlike its rivals, so the drive comes with a graphene heat spreader.
As for 3D NAND memory, Seagate's FireCuda 540 seems to use time-proven 3D TLC NAND with a 1,600 MT/s interface, which is why it is confined to 10,000 MB/s sequential read/write speeds. Meanwhile, with up to 1,500,000 random read/write IOPS, it should provide the same overall user experience as the drives rated for 12,500 MB/s sequential read/write speeds in most of the cases.
Seagate's 2TB FireCuda 540 drive is set to cost $319.99 in the USA, which is in line with other 2TB PCIe Gen5 SSDs offering similar performance that are on the market.
Seagate is known primarily for its hard drives, but it also produces some of the finest SSDs out there. Both FireCuda 520 and FireCuda 530 won praises from Tom's Hardware. There was an issue with these drives though: they came to market with a rather significant delay compared to rivals as Seagate wanted to max out everything it could get from respective Phison controllers. By contrast, the FireCuda 540 is about to be release about three months after the first PCIe Gen5 drives hit the market, which is definitely an improvement when it comes to timing.
Based on specifications that we know about the FireCuda 540 2TB, we can said that the company has managed to max out random read/write performance out of a Phison PS5026-E26-based drive even without using the fastest memory available and keeps offering a higher endurance rating when compared to at least some of the competing drives. It will be particularly interesting to see these drives in our lab.
