As an international brand known for its competitive range of storage solutions, Seagate has established a very notable reputation in the industry that when the company announces a new product, it’s synonymous with reminding users that, yes, you need an upgrade.
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| Seagate FireCuda 510 M.2 NVMe SSD: Fiery Performance |
Announced at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January and brought to the Philippine market last June, two of Seagate’s latest offering are the BarraCuda 510 and the FireCuda 510 M.2 NVMe SSD, with the former designed for casual users looking to level up their PCs, and the latter made apt for gaming purposes. These new products also signal the return of Seagate in the SSD battle. In this review, we’ll focus on the Seagate FireCuda 510 M.2 NVME.
UNBOXING and INSTALLATION:
How To Install Seagate Firecuda 510 SSD
To test the FireCuda 510 SSD, we installed it in our Xiaomi Mi Notebook Pro, and you can watch that process in the above video.
See Also: Seagate Launches New Storage Solutions in the Philippines
PERFORMANCE:
While introduced to the tech world at the same time, the Seagate FireCuda 510 M.2 NVME is many times better than the BarraCuda 510, at least on what’s written on their respective specs sheets — in terms of firmware and performance, and yes, even in the durability department.
The FireCuda 510 comes in a 64-layer 3D TLC NAND M.2 2280 (22mm wide and 80mm long) PCIe x4 form factor. As advertised, the FireCuda 510 can reach random read and write speeds of 620K and 600K IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second respectively and can tally a sequential read and write figures of 3,450 MB/s and 3,200 MB/s. Putting its 2TB variant to test, the FireCuda 510 didn’t disappoint in terms of benchmark results, that is under the CrystalDiskMark and ATTO Disk benchmarking tools.
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| ATTO Disk Benchmark Result |
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| CrystalDiskMark Benchmark Result |
As mentioned, the FireCuda 510 is designed for top-tier gaming. Its performance denotes that with the FireCuda 510 powering up your PC or your laptop, it’s safe to say that you’re free from gaming lags and lapses. For casual users, the FireCuda 510 takes the job of bringing the fast transition from one software to another and helps in instant access to data and smooth file transfers. Again, the FireCuda 510 also has high IOPS, which is essential for a seamless streaming experience.
A key component of high-performing SSDs is its TBW performance, and in the case of the FireCuda 510 M.2 NVMe SSD, the said device can reach up to 2,600 TBW, which simply means that in its lifetime, the FireCuda 510 can store more or less 2,600 TB before it fails. Plus, the FireCuda 510 has 1.8M hours of MTBF or Mean Time Before Failure, which means that the FireCuda 510 is highly likely to encounter failure after every 1.8 million hours which is equated to one failure every 205 years. Pretty decent, right?
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| SeaTools SSD |
Just like any other Seagate product, the FireCuda 510 M2. NVMe SSD comes with the SeaTools software which is handy and essential because it allows users to tweak and calibrate various settings and assess drive health, as well as an implement firmware upgrade. Through this software, users can also reach a global team of highly-trained data recovery experts to address unexpected data loss with the Rescue Data Recovery Services Plan option. The SeaTools software for the FireCuda 510 has two themes to choose from: the red FireCuda theme and the green BarraCuda theme. Seagate has also granted a five-year warranty for the FireCuda 510 so users won’t need to worry in the unlikely event that the FireCuda 510 encounters problems within the first five years of usage.
The Seagate FireCuda 510 M.2 PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe SSD is available in several storage options, 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB. The last two are the ones available in the Philippines, the 1TB is priced at Php11,990 (USD235) while the 2TB has an asking price of Php19,990 (USD393). That's only around 10 pesos (less than US$0.20) per GB, which is a really good value for money.
FINAL WORDS:
The Seagate FireCuda 510 SSD indeed offers great value without sacrificing performance, it is more than enough for everyday use and much more for just storing huge files. It is a great option for both gamers, content creators, and anyone that seeks smooth and speedy performance.