Seagate FireCuda 520N 1TB SSD Review

The market segment for Gen 4 M.2 2230 SSDs is slowly gathering momentum and one of the latest to get a product to market is Seagate with the FireCuda 520N which sits in the company's Gaming portfolio. At launch, the FireCuda 520N comes in just two capacities, 1TB (the drive Seagate sent us for review) and a 2TB model.

Seagate's FireCuda 520N is built around a Phison PS5021-E21T controller which looks after a single 1TB package of Micron B47R FortisFlash 176-layer 3D TLC NAND. Phison's PS5021-E21T is a compact, (it only measures 7.5mm x 12mm) 4-channel DRAM-less design controller built on a 12nm process. The Gen4 x4 PS5021-E21 uses single CPU architecture (built-in triple-cored 32-bit ARM Cortex-R5.) with the four Flash channels supporting 3D TLC or QLC NAND at speeds up to 1600MT/s. It uses Phison's 4th generation LDPC ECC engine and provides End-To-End Data Path Protection, AES256, TCG OPAL2.0/Pyrite, RSA4096 and SHA512 security technologies.

Seagate rates the Sequential read performance of the FireCuda 520N as up to 5,000MB/s for the 2TB drive and up to 4,800MB/s for the 1TB model. When it comes to Sequential writes the 1TB drive at up to 4,700MB/s is quite a bit faster than the 2TB model which is rated at up to 3,200MB/s.  Switching to the 4K random performance ratings the 1TB (QD32 T8) is rated up to 800,000 IOPS for reads and 900,000 IOPS for writes. The 2TB drive is slower at up to 480,000 IOPS and 750,000 IOPS for reads and writes respectively.

We could confirm the official Sequential figures with the default CrystalDiskMark 8 tests with best test figures of 4,842.16MB/s for reads and 4,901.95MB/s for writes. Switching from the default test data to the compressible data (0 fill) tests saw the read result rocket up to 7,325MB/s while writes dropped to 3,217MB/s.

Using the Peak Performance profile of CrystalDisk mark produced random results of 741,530 IOPS for reads and 580,731 IOPS for writes which are well short of the official figures of 800,000 IOPS and 900,000 IOPS for reads and writes respectively. Switching over the compressible data (0 fill) tests saw a 675,516 IOPS rise in the read performance while the writes rose 35,892.34 IOPS.

In terms of endurance, the 1TB drive is rated at 600TBW and not only does Seagate back the drive with a 5-year warranty you also get three years of their Rescue Data Recovery Services which is a very useful safeguard to have.

We found the 1TB Seagate FireCuda 520N on Scan Computers for £109.99 (inc VAT) HERE.

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Pros

• Solid Sequential performance.
• Endurance.
• 5-year warranty.
• 3-years of Seagate's Rescue Data Recovery Services included.

Cons

• Couldn’t match the official maximum 4K random figures in some of our testing.
• DRAM-less design.
• Price could do with a tweak.

KitGuru says: Seagate's FireCuda 520N is a solid enough performer but the price could do with a bit of fettling with to make it more competitive.

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