Seagate FireCuda 510 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD Review

Seagate might mostly be known for its impressive HDD options, but that’s not all the company has to offer. They’ve made a big impact on the market in recent years with both performance and capacity of those, but it isn’t their only focus. The company also has a good deal of experience with NAND based products and while Seagate might not be the first company you think about when it comes to SSDs, that might have to change. Today I’m taking a closer look at the FireCuda 510 M.2 NVMe SSD aimed at gamers.

Seagate FireCuda 510

The Seagate FireCuda 510 is a standard M.2 2280 double-sided drive. It utilises a PCIe Gen3 x4, NVMe 1.3 interface and it is available in two capacities: 1TB and 2TB. No tiny-sized capacities here and that’s not a bad thing. Especially when we look at how far down NVMe SSD prices have gotten lately. It’s truly a great time to be a storage enthusiast.

Being a drive optimised and marketed for gamers, it focuses on what’s important for the group such as fast read and writes which will help load your games faster and make sure that you have as little buffering in your games as possible. The FireCuda 510 is built with a dynamic SLC cache as so many other drives. But, it is larger than most which in return makes sure that your tasks are finished before the speed-boost runs out.

The actual hardware consists of a Phison E12 controller which is paired with Toshiba 64-layer 3D TLC NAND and a small DRAM cache.

Performance and Endurance

I’m sure you are here for some figures, at least partially. So let us get to that part. The FireCuda 510 SSD has plenty of performance for even the most demanding tasks. It is rated at a sequential read speed of 3450 MB/s and write speed of 3200 MB/s. Those are some great figures, no doubt. The random performance is rated at 620K IOPS reading and 600K writing. That’s even more impressive.

While performance is great, endurance is at least as important. After all, you’ll want your new drive to live for a long time. Seagate backs the FireCuda 510 with a 5-year warranty and it has a TBW rating of 1,300TB for this 1TB model. The 2TB model doubles up on the TBW rating, naturally. As far as the MTBF goes, we get a 1.8 million hours rating on this drive.

Companion Software

While a software companion isn’t necessary for an SSD, or any drive for that matter, it’s a nice bonus. Especially when it’s packed with the right features. Seagate has their SeaTools SSD enhanced gaming tool with drive management and health monitoring so gamers can tune the drive to their performance needs.

Seagate Rescue Data Recovery Service

A Rescue Data Recovery Services plan is available for purchase when you register your FireCuda drive1. You’ll have access to a global team of world-class data recovery experts in case of unexpected data loss. It should be noted, this isn’t available in all countries.

A 2-year plan will set you back $29.99 which isn’t a lot considering what your data might be worth to in the event of a disaster. Seagate’s In-Lab Data Recovery also has an impressive track record for recovering data, even after disasters from fires to floods. Granted, they aren’t magicians, but they’re darn good at what they do.

What Seagate Had to Say

“FireCuda 510 SSD was developed and built specifically with the needs of professional-level gamers in mind. How far could you go with a gaming SSD built for industry-leading speed, superior gaming, sustained abuse, and the lowest latency?”

FireCuda 510 Specifications

These are the official specifications as provided by Seagate. For more in-depth information, you can visit the official product page by clicking here.