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Seagate's latest Gen4 SSD comes with quite a mouthful of a name. The Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda is officially licensed by Lucasfilm and features three interchangeable heatsink face plates with the lightsaber designs of Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader built on them. Priced around £220 in the UK, is the Force with this new SSD, or will it fall to the Dark Side?
Sitting under the EKWB-designed heatsink is a Seagate FireCuda 530, the company's 2nd generation PCIe Gen4 drive. Just two capacities make up the product line, 1TB and the 2TB (the drive we are reviewing here) which means that two capacities are missing from the original FireCuda 530 line; the 500GB entry model and the 4TB flagship drive. The drive uses a combination of Phison’s PS5018-E18 NVMe 8-channel controller and Micron's B47R 176-layer 3D TLC NAND.
Seagate quote Sequential read performance figures for the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda as up to 7,300MB/s for both drives. The 2TB drive gets a write rating of 6,900MB/s while the 1TB is a little slower at 6,000MB/s.
Random performance (4KB QD32, 8 threads) is stated as up to 1,000,000 IOPS for both reads and writes for the 2TB drive while the 1TB drive gets the same write rating with reads up to 800,000 IOPS.
Power consumption wise the 2TB drive is rated at 7.8W average active power, 25mW idle, and under 5mW in low power mode.
The 2TB drive being reviewed has an official TBW endurance rating of 2,550TB with Seagate backing the drive with a 5-year warranty. You also get three years of Seagate's Rescue Data Recovery Services.
Physical Specifications:
- Usable Capacities: 2TB.
- NAND Components: Micron B47R 176-layer 3D TLC NAND.
- NAND Controller: Phison PS5018-E18.
- Cache: DDR4-2666.
- Interface: PCIe Gen4 x4, NVMe 1.4.
- Form Factor: M.2, 2280.
- Dimensions: 80.15 x 25.0 x 19.0mm.
- Drive Weight: 47g.
Firmware Version: SU6SM003.
Seagate's Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda comes in a compact box with a small image of the drive and alternate faceplates on the front. Above the image to the right is the Star Wars logo and to the right there is a sticker which displays the capacity of the drive, its maximum Sequential speed (7,300MB/s) and the fact that the drive comes with Seagate's Data Rescue Service package. At the bottom right of the box is a logo showing the drive's RGB support. The rear of the box is covered by multilingual marketing notes.
Inside the box, the drive and the three faceplates are safely housed in high-density foam.
The Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda is built on a dual-sided 2280 M.2 format and the whole package measures 80.15 x 25.0 x 19.0mm.
The heatsink is designed by the masters of the cooling art, EKWB (EK Water Blocks). It features an anodised-aluminium body and a textured micropore surface to help transfer the heat away from the drive. The swappable face plates are held in place by the clever use of a spring-loaded ball. The ball also allows the face place to move from side to side so it doesn't hinder either pushing the drive into the M.2 slot on the motherboard or fixing the holding screw in place. The top of the heatsink features a 10-light LED strip which can be controlled by most of the RGB software around.
Four small screws hold the two-part heat sink together. The drive is a very snug fit so we didn't try to prise it out. The FireCuda 530 drive is built on a dual-sided 2280 M.2 format. One side of the PCB holds a Phison PS5018-E18 controller, four packages of 176-layer replacement gate B47R 3D TLC NAND and an SK hynix DDR4 (H5AN8G6NDJ, DDR4-2666) cache chip. The other side of the PCB has four more NAND packages and another DDR4 cache IC.
Bundled with the drive is an external RGB sync cable, a warranty booklet, a quick start guide and a couple of sets of stickers.
Above you can see the three different heatsinks, with their LED lightsabers turned on.
Seagate's drive management software utility is SeaTools. At first glance, it looks very basic but the detail is in the sub-sections for each of the four main tabs; Health, Advanced, Erase and Utility.
There are several drive tests both long and short, and data fix options (Health), update firmware (Advanced), and several disk erase options (Erase). Under the Utility section, you will find options for creating bootable media, Disc Wizard software and log creation and management.
For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real-world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system.
This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits.
Main system:
AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, 16GB DDR4-2400, Sapphire R9 390 Nitro and an MSI MPG X570 Gaming Edge Wifi motherboard
Other drives – 2TB + Class
Corsair MP600 GS 2TB
Corsair MP600 PRO 2TB
Corsair MP600 PRO XT 2TB
Gigabyte AORUS 7000e 2TB
HP FX900 Pro 2TB
Kingston Fury Renegade Heatsink 2TB
Kingston KC3000 2TB
Kioxia Exceria Pro 2TB
Lexar Professional NM800PRO Heatsink 2TB
MSI Spatium M480 2TB
Patriot Viper VP4300 2TB
Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2TB
Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 4TB
Samsung SSD990 PRO 2TB
Solidigm P41 Plus 2TB
Seagate FireCuda 530 2TB
WD Black SN850X Heatsink 2TB
Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark 4.
CrystalMark 8.0.0.
AS SSD 2.0.
IOMeter.
UL Solutions PC Mark 10.
UL Solutions 3DMark Storage Benchmark.
Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark.
All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active.
CrystalDiskMark is a useful benchmark to measure the theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using v8.0.
In CrystalDiskMark's QD1 1 Thread test, the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda is slightly slower than the standard FireCuda 530 for both reads and writes.
With CrystalDiskMark 8 could also confirm the official Sequential maximum performance read figure for the drive of 7,300MB/s with a test result of 7,379MB/s. The best-tested write figure of 6,886MB/s also confirms the official best of 6,900MB/s.
Using the Peak Performance Profile of CrystalDiskMark 8 we could once again confirm the official Sequential read/write ratings for the drive with best test results of 7,401MB/s for reads and 6,895MB/s for writes.
The official maximum 4K random read/write figures for the 2TB Seagate Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda are up to 1,000,000 IOPS for both. Using the Peak Performance Profile (which gives an IOPS result in the benchmark screen) the best-read figure we saw from the drive using the default test was 762,829.83 IOPS with writes at 640,765.62 IOPS. Using the compressed data test, we got a bit more out of the drive with a 772,250.49 IOPS figure for reads and 648,842.04 IOPS for writes.
Using the Real World profile, the drive produced Sequential read/write figures of 4,270MB/s and 5,844MB/s respectively. Both these figures are off the pace of the standard Seagate FireCuda 530.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturer's RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
We are using version 4.1 for our NVMe disk tests.
Seagate rates the Sequential performance of the 2TB version of the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda as up to 7,300MB/s for reads and up to 6,900MB/s for writes. Using the ATTO benchmark we couldn't quite hit the maximums for the drive with tested read and writes figures of 6,880MB/s and 6,470MB/s respectively.
AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read-and-write tests, as well as random read-and-write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. It uses
incompressible data samples which many drives struggle with, so results can be viewed as the worst case scenarios.
AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.
Using the ASSSD benchmark, the Seagate Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda produced a read score almost identical to the FireCuda 530 that the drive is based on. When it came to writes, the new drive is just under 60MB/s faster which is probably due to the later firmware that the Special Edition drive uses.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the Sequential read and write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below.
Transfer Request Size: 128KB, Thread(s): 1, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
128KB Sequential Read / Write.
The best Sequential read figure we saw in this test of 7,220.57MB/s is a little short of the official maximum of 7,300MB/s. The best write test figure of 6,878.49MB/s is closer to the official best of 6,900MB/s.
128KB Sequential Read Performance v QD compared.
At QD1, the Seagate Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda sits near the bottom of the results chart, just behind the standard version of the Seagate FireCuda 530. As the queue depth deepens both drives climb slowly up the results chart.
128KB Sequential Write Performance v QD compared.
At queue depths 1 and 2, the Seagate Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda sits below the standard FireCuda 530 which is the basis for the Special Edition drive. However, as the queue depth deepens further the drives swap places with the Special Edition drive becoming the fastest.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the 4K random read performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below.
Transfer Request Size: 4KB, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
Seagate rates the 4K random read performance of the 2TB Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda as up to 1,000,000 IOPS. With our 4-threaded testing, we couldn't get close to this maximum figure. The best we saw was 413,723 IOPS at QD16, the performance does drop a little at the end of the test, with the drive producing a figure of 413,684 IOPS at QD32.
4K random read performance v QD compared.
At QD1 the Seagate Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda sits behind the standard 2TB FireCuda 530, but as the queue depth deepens the drives swap places and remain that way throughout the testing procedure.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the 4K random write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below.
Transfer Request Size: 4KB, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
The fastest 4K random write performance we saw from our four threaded testing was 365,572 IOPS which came at the QD16 mark. The drive's performance then dropped back to finish the test run at 362,238 IOPS (QD32). Both of these figures are nowhere near the official 1,000,000 IOPS maximum.
4K random write performance v QD compared.
At QD1 the standard FireCuda 530 has the advantage over the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda. However, from that point onwards it's the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda that holds the advantage.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8’s custom settings to test the 4K 70/30 mixed read/write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths using a single thread and four threads.
In the 4K 70/30 read/write mixed test the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda peaked at the QD16 mark when using both single and four threads. Using four threads the drive peaked at 387,082 IOPS before dropping back to finish the test run at 385,851 IOPS. Using a single thread the peak figure was 141,360 IOPS, dropping back to finish at 141,293 IOPS.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8 to test the random performance of the drive at lower queue depths (QD1 – QD8 where most of the everyday workloads occur) using 1 to 4 threads.
Random Reads
At QD1 the performance of the 2TB Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda ranges from 20,135 IOPS (82MB/s) using a single thread up to 79,965 IOPS (323.8MB/s) using four threads. The drive's performance increases smoothly as the queue depth deepens for each of the remaining thread counts.
Random Writes
Using a single thread the random write performance slowly increases from QD1 to QD2 before beginning to plateau out. Using two and four threads the drive accelerates sharply from QD2 to QD4 before they too start levelling off. Using three threads there isn't any levelling off of performance.
In our read-throughput test, the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda peaked at 5,623.58MB/s at the 8MB block mark. This peak figure is some way off the official maximum of 7,300MB/s.
In our throughput test, the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda which uses a FireCuda 530 is very oddly 212MB/s slower than the original FireCuda 530. It might be that the later firmware the Special Edition drive uses is having some effect on this test.
In the write throughput test, the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda peaked at 6,609.92MB/s at the end of the test run, someway short of the official maximum of 6,900MB/s.
In complete contrast to the read performance, the write throughput test sees the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda produce a test result that is 253MB/s faster than the standard FireCuda 530.
The PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to fully test the performance of the fastest modern drives. The benchmark is designed to measure the performance of fast system drives using the SATA bus at the low end and devices connected via PCI Express at the high end.
The goal of the benchmark is to show meaningful real-world performance differences between fast storage technologies such as SATA, NVMe, and Intel’s Optane. The Full System Drive Benchmark uses 23 traces, running 3 passes with each trace. It typically takes an hour to run.
Traces used:
Booting Windows 10.
Adobe Acrobat – starting the application until usable.
Adobe Illustrator – starting the application until usable Adobe Premiere Pro – starting the application until usable.
Adobe Photoshop – starting the application until usable.
Battlefield V – starting the game until the main menu.
Call of Duty Black Ops 4 – starting the game until the main menu.
Overwatch – starting the game until main menu.
Using Adobe After Effects.
Using Microsoft Excel.
Using Adobe Illustrator.
Using Adobe InDesign.
Using Microsoft PowerPoint.
Using Adobe Photoshop (heavy use).
Using Adobe Photoshop (light use).
cp1 Copying 4 ISO image files, 20 GB in total, from a secondary drive to the target drive (write test).
cp2 Making a copy of the ISO files (read-write test).
cp3 Copying the ISO to a secondary drive (read test).
cps1Copying 339 JPEG files, 2.37 GB in total, to the target drive (write test).
cps2 Making a copy of the JPEG files (read-write test).
cps3 Copying the JPEG files to another drive (read test).
As you might expect for a fast performing Gen 4 drive Seagate's Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda handled the PCMark10 Full System Drive benchmark without any real problems. It was pretty consistent in the Adobe startup tests, averaging 234MB/s for the six tests. The 1,031MB/s result for the Adobe Photoshop (heavy use) trace was very good as was the 451MB/s for the Adobe After Effects usage trace. It also scored well in the three iso read/write (cp1, cp2 and cp3) test traces.
The overall bandwidth figure of 472.56MB/s for the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda is very slightly slower than the standard FireCuda 530.
The 3DMark Storage Benchmark uses traces recorded from popular games and gaming-related activities to measure real-world gaming performance.
Traces used –
Battlefield V
Loading Battlefield™ V from launch to the main menu.
Call of Duty Black Ops 4
Loading Call of Duty®: Black Ops 4 from launch to the main menu.
Overwatch
Loading Overwatch® from launch to the main menu.
Game Move
Copying the Steam folder for Counter-Strike®: Global Offensive from an external SSD to the system drive.
Game Recording
Recording a 1080p gameplay video at 60 FPS with OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) while playing Overwatch®.
Installing Game
Installing The Outer Worlds® from the Epic Games Launcher.
Game Saving
Saving progress in The Outer Worlds game.
In 3DMark’s Storage Test, the 2TB Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda sits in a mid-table position in our results chart, just behind the standard version of the FireCuda 530.
Despite the differences in individual test trace scores, the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda and the standard FireCuda 530 have more or less the same overall bandwidth scores, as you might expect.
The Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark uses actual maps and playable characters to assign a score to your PC and rate its performance including scene loading times.
The benchmark gives an overall load time as well as loading times by scene.
Overall the Seagate Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda is slightly slower than the standard FireCuda 530 that it uses at its core. It trails the standard drive in all the scene load times except for Scene 1 where it's faster.
We took note of the drive’s temperature during some of our benchmarking runs.
We took note of the drive’s temperature during some of our benchmarking runs. The EKWB-designed heatsink works well. The hottest the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda got under testing was while running the CrystalDiskMark 8 Sequential QD1-32 T1 write test where the temperature peaked at 42° C. The same test run with a non-heatsink equipped standard FireCuda 530 saw a peak temperature of 55° C.
To test real-life performance of a drive we use a mix of folder/file types and by using the FastCopy utility (which gives a time as well as MB/s result) we record the performance of the drive reading from & writing to a 2TB Kioxia Exceria Plus.
Transfer Details
- Windows 10 backup – 118GB.
- Data file – 100GB.
- BluRay Movie – 42GB.
- Windows 11 iso – 5.4GB.
- File folder – 50GB – 28,523 files.
- Steam folder – 222GB
- (8 games: Alien Isolation, Battlefield 4, BioShock Infinite, Crysis 3, Grand Theft Auto V, Shadow Of Mordor, Skyrim, The Witcher3 Wild Hunt).
- Movie demos 8K – 21GB – (11 demos).
- Raw Movie Clips 4K – 16GB – (9 MP4V files).
- Movie folder – 12GB – 15 files – (8 @ .MKV, 4 @ .MOV, 3 @ MP4).
- Photo Folder – 10GB – 304 files – (171 @ .RAW, 105 @ JPG, 21 @ .CR2, 5 @ .DNG).
- Audio Folder – 10GB – 1,483 files – (1479 @ MP3, 4 @ .FLAC files).
- Single large image – 5GB – 1.5bn pixel photo.
- 3D Printer File Folder – 4.25GB – (166 files – 105 @ .STL, 38 @ .FBX, 11 @ .blend, 5 @ .lwo, 4 @ .OBJ, 3@ .3ds).
- AutoCAD File Folder – 1.5GB (80 files – 60 @ .DWG and 20 @.DXF).
When it came to our real-life file transfer tests, the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda averaged 2,355.07MB/s when writing to the drive. The fastest being the Windows 10 backup transfer at 3,095MB/s and the slowest, the 50GB File Folder transfer at 531MB/s. Reading the data back the drive averaged 2,117MB/s. This time the fastest transfer was the 2,844MB/s for the 8K Movie Scene folder and the slowest was once again, the 50GB File Folder.
Seagate has a number of officially licensed special edition SSD drives both in SATA and NVMe formats that are tied into Star Wars and The Mandalorian franchises. The latest drive to join the range is the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda. Based on Seagate's 2nd generation Gen4 drive, the FireCuda 530, the drive features an RGB supporting heatsink designed by EKWB that has three interchangeable heatsink face plates with the lightsaber designs of Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader built on them.
The face plates and the heatsink have been well designed, and because of that changing over the face plates is a stress-free experience. The heatsink needs a motherboard with a 5V addressable header for LED control and it is compatible with most motherboard RGB lighting programs. The LEDs are very bright and run the length of the heatsink. The only minor fly in the ointment is the positioning of the 3-wire 5V cable in the back of the heatsink which can get in the way of the M.2 fixing screw,
Unlike the standard four-capacity FireCuda range there are only two models available, 2TB and 1TB. The drive follows a well-trodden route using a combination of a Phison PS5016-E16 controller and BiCS4 96-Layer 3D TLC NAND.
The 2TB Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda is rated as up to 7,300MB/s for and up to 6,900MB/s for Sequential read and writes respectively. Using the ATTO benchmark we couldn't quite hit these maximums, with tested read and writes figures of 6,880MB/s and 6,470MB/s respectively. However, using the CrystalDiskMark8 benchmark we could confirm the official Sequential read performance with a best test result of 7,400MB/s but once again we fell a little short on the write performance with a test result of 6,892MB/s.
When it comes to 4K random performance, we couldn't get close to the official maximums of 1,000,000 IOPS for read and writes, the best we saw during testing was 772,250 IOPS for reads and 648,842 IOPS for writes, both coming via testing with the 0 fill option in CrystalDiskMark 8's Peak Performance Profile.
The 2TB Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda gets a TBW rating of 2,550TB. Seagate not only back the drive with a five-year warranty, but they also support it with three years of their Rescue Data Recovery Services.
We found the 2TB Seagate Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda on Amazon UK for around £220 (inc VAT) HERE.
Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.
Pros
- Overall Performance.
- Heatsink design.
- Endurance.
- 5-year warranty.
- 3 years of Seagate Rescue Data Recovery Services.
Cons
- Couldn't get close to the official 4K figures under testing.
KitGuru says: Seagate's FireCuda 530 is a fast-performing and popular Gen 4 drive but the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda adds a whole new level of desire for Star Wars aficionados.
