Today, Seagate has announced its fastest Gen4 M.2 SSD drive, the FireCuda 530. This superfast drive was announced during Seagate’s SG21 event, where the company
According to Seagate, the FireCuda 530 performs up to 2x faster than Gen3 SSDs, and 12x faster than SATA SSDs. Not to mention that the SSD’s sequential read speeds can reach up to 7300 MB/s. That’s higher than several other Gen4 M.2 SSDs that are currently available on the market – including Samsung’s 980 Pro Gen4 Gaming M.2 SSD. Seagate’s claims that this is the company’s “fastest and most powerful gaming SSD” look to be true, assuming testing backs up these claims.
Seagate also included an updated SSD NAND controller, the E18, to the FireCuda. I believe this is the second SSD to make sure of the E18 SSD NAND controller, the first being Inland.
There also appear two different versions of the drive; one with a heatsink and another with. It does appear that having the heatsink changes the pricing. However, depending on your motherboard, you may not be able to utilize the heatsink variant. So be sure to check your board or manual before you purchase one.
The Seagate FireCuda 530 Gen4 NVMe will be made available in several sizes, starting at 500GB, all the way up to 4TB. As you can imagine, the higher the storage capacity, the more expensive the drive will cost. The 500GB is priced at $139.99, 1TB at $239.99, 2TB at $489.99, and the 4TB variant setting you back to the tune of $1000! All the Seagate FireCuda 530 M.2 SSDs are currently available on Amazon but appear to be sold out.
As for if you’ll be able to use this in the PlayStation, that will have to wait until PlayStation certifies this for usage. Though I’m sure that’s not going to stop anyone from trying before PlayStation makes the official announcement.
We’ll be attempting to get our hands on one to let you know how well the FireCuda 530 performs.
