Seagate FireCuda 520 1TB SSD Review

It took quite some time to see the first Seagate NVMe SSD for the consumer space in the shape of the FireCuda 510 which we reviewed late last year, but in no time at all, we've got another 500 series FireCuda, the FireCuda 520. With this drive, Seagate has joined a rather exclusive club (at the time of writing at least) of SSD manufacturers that have a PCIe Gen4 drive aimed at the consumer segment of the market.

The FireCuda 520 uses the current standard NAND and controller combination for a PCIe Gen 4 drive; Phison PS5016-E16 8-channel controller (in this case, branded as Seagate) and Kioxia BiCS4 96-Layer 3D TLC NAND. The FireCuda 520 range consists of just three capacities, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB. Interestingly it doesn't have the large passive heatsink that Gen4 drives generally come with, so you don't have the potential risk of causing damage when taking the cooler off to use the drive in a motherboard with M.2 cooling.

The official Sequential speed ratings for the 1TB drive are up to 5,000MB/s for reads and up to 4,400MB/s for writes. Using the ATTO benchmark we got a little more performance out of the drive when it came to reads, but a little less when it came to writes. Our tested drive produced a write figure of 3,890MB/s, a little short of the official maximum of 4,400MB/s.

Seagate quote 4K random read/write performance of the 1TB drive as up to 760,000 IOPS for both. Using our standard 4K random read/write tests with four-threads we couldn’t get close to that figure with reads or writes; reads came in at 384,190 IOPS and writes at 181,645 IOPS at a QD of 32. We then did a quick test again at a QD of 32 but using eight-threads, which resulted in reads of 555,330 IOPS and writes at 477,643 IOPS.

Seagate’s well-known drive utility, SeaTools, now comes in an SSD version. SeaTools SSD is a pretty comprehensive management tool that displays capacity, disk usage, temperature and remaining life of the drive. The Operations page allows the firmware to be updated, drive diagnostics to be carried out, switch between performance optimised and capacity optimised modes if this is supported by the drive and the page includes a link to Seagate’s disc cloning software – DiscWizard. There’s even a choice of skins for the utility allowing you to swap from the standard looking SeaTools skin to a flashier looking one aimed at gamers.

With its very good all-round performance and excellent endurance, Seagate’s FireCuda 520 is another addition to the slowly growing number of PCIe Gen 4 drives in the market. Seagate is also helping the drive by giving it competitive pricing as the 1TB version is at least a tenner cheaper than the other 1TB PCIe Gen 4 drives we've tested.

We found the 1TB Seagate FireCuda 520 on Overclockers UK for £229.99 (inc VAT) HERE.

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Pros

• Overall performance.
• Excellent endurance.
• 5-year warranty.

Cons

• Couldn’t match the official maximum 4K random figures under testing.
• Needs a X570/Ryzen 3000 combination to get the full benefit of the technology.

KitGuru says: It took Seagate quite some time to launch their first consumer NVMe SSD, the FireCuda 510, but they haven't been dragging their feet this time around with the new PCIe Gen 4 FireCuda 520.

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