Page 2 - A Closer Look, Test System
The Seagate FireCuda 510 1TB, like all of the latest performance SSDs, is in the M.2 2280 format. If you are not familiar with the M.2 physical standard, M.2 2280 means it the size of the drive is 22mm by 80mm, hence its numerical designation. A sticker in front spans most of the width and length of the drive for branding purposes. The orange theme accentuates its fire theme, where the corresponding FireCuda logo and text is prominently displayed across the front along with Seagate's logo. Its components are located on the blue printed circuit board behind the sticker, which we will take a closer look at in just a moment. The Seagate FireCuda 510 1TB works on the NVMe 1.3 logical device interface and plugs into compatible motherboards directly. Electrically, M.2 NVMe interfaces with PCIe 3.0. The FireCuda 510 uses four lanes for up to 4000MB/s bandwidth in each direction. The specified weight is 8.1g.
Flipping the Seagate FireCuda 510 1TB around and you will find another sticker that covers two flash and one memory integrated circuit chip. This label carries miscellaneous information such as its model name, capacity, serial number, and regulatory certifications. This SSD is made in Taiwan, just like many SSDs we have reviewed here at APH Networks.
Taking the stickers off, and you can see what the Seagate FireCuda 510 1TB is made from. There are three types of components that can be seen. At the heart of Seagate's FireCuda 510 1TB is a Seagate chip labeled STXYP016C031, which is actually a Phison PS5012-E12 controller. The Phison E12 controller is built on the TSMC 28nm lithography process and supports LDPC and StrongECC error correcting schemes. It is an NVMe solution on the M.2 socket to overcome traditional Serial ATA bandwidth bottlenecks. Two SK Hynix H5AN4G8NBJR 512MB DDR4 memory chips are present for a total of 1GB; it is used by the controller for system memory. The FireCuda 510's flash memory are four Toshiba 256GB 64-layer BICS 3D triple-level cell chips labeled TABBG55A1V. If these components seem familiar to you, they are roughly identical to the Patriot Viper VPN100 I recently reviewed. Meanwhile, the FireCuda 510's rated write endurance is a whopping 1300TB, which equates to about 712GB per day for five years. This is by far the best I have seen here at APH Networks. Its power consumption is rated at 5.3W active, 20mW idle, and 2mW low power. The actual usable space is 1TB, as advertised. You will see 931GB in Windows.
Specified at 3450MB/s read, 3200MB/s write, and up to 620,000 IOPS over NVMe 1.3 on PCIe 3.0 x4, these figures are impressive. It is over six times the speed of a regular SATA 6Gb/s drive and among the fastest group of SSDs benchmarked here at APH Networks. For comparison, the Patriot Viper VPN100 512GB is rated at 3300MB/s read, 2200MB/s write, and up to 700,000 IOPS. Meanwhile, the Western Digital Black SN750 NVMe SSD 1TB is rated at 3470MB/s read, 3000MB/s write, and up to 560,000 IOPS. To see how it translates to numbers in our benchmarks, we will pit the FireCuda 510 against the big boys of this game to see how this new flagship from Seagate steps up against some popular PCI Express based SSDs from manufacturers like ADATA, Crucial, Gigabyte, Kingston, Patriot, Toshiba OCZ, and Western Digital in the next nine pages or so.
Our test configuration is as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.6GHz
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-D15S
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H-BK
RAM: Patriot Viper 3 Low Profile PC3-17000 4x8GB
Graphics: Gigabyte G1 Gaming GeForce GTX 960 4GB
Chassis: Fractal Design Define R6 Blackout TG
Storage: OCZ Vector 180 240GB; Crucial BX500 960GB
Power: Seasonic PRIME Ultra Titanium 850W
Sound: Auzentech X-Fi HomeTheater HD
Optical Drive: LiteOn iHAS224-06 24X DVD Writer
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Compared Hardware:
- Seagate FireCuda 510 1TB
- ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 512GB
- Crucial P1 1TB
- Crucial P1 500GB
- Gigabyte AORUS RGB AIC NVMe SSD 512GB
- Gigabyte M.2 PCIe SSD 256GB
- Kingston HyperX Predator PCIe 480GB
- OCZ RD400A 512GB
- OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB
- Patriot Viper VPN100 512GB
- Patriot Hellfire M.2 240GB
- Toshiba RC100 240GB
- Western Digital Black NVMe SSD 1TB
- Western Digital Black SN750 NVMe SSD 1TB
- Western Digital Blue SN500 NVMe SSD 500GB
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 6.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 5.70
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark 7
10. Benchmark: PCMark 8
11. Conclusion
