The world of PCIe 4.0 expands even further with the announcement of Seagate’s new FireCuda 530 series drives that will be releasing in the coming weeks. Part of the company’s gaming line, the new FireCuda drives will take advantage of the speeds that PCIe 4.0 has to offer, delivering up to 7,300 MBps.
These new drives will be available in capacities of 500MB ($169), 1TB ($274), 2TB ($569), and 4TB ($1,049). They will also include models that have a heatsink in the box at a little added cost–else you can always buy a heatsink separately online if you prefer to use another style/brand. The heatsink version of each model is only around $20 more.
Read speeds range from 7,000 to 7,300 MBps, while write speeds range from 3,000 to 6,900 MBps, all depending on which model you go with (the larger the capacity, the faster the speeds that come with it). All of which come with an impressive 5-year warranty. You can find full specs on each model within the series by downloading the spec sheet here. We also supplied some of the important information down below toward the end.
Of course, you’ll need a motherboard that supports PCIe 4.0 (aka PCIe Gen4) to get anywhere near these max speeds. Else it will throttle down to the limits of PCIe 3.0 for everything else.
There isn’t an official release date just yet for the drives (release listed as summer 2021). However, the product pages are already available at certain retailers like Amazon (as you can see from the links we made available above in the breakdown of capacity options/models).
The drives will be launching next month (August). Full specs can be found below.
Update (07/29): To make things even more exciting for this series, they have been confirmed as fully compatible with the PlayStation 5 (PS5) console. Seagate has been closely testing these new drives with the console to make sure their compatibility is spot on. They meet all of the requirements from Sony and will be ready for purchase by the time a new update to the console begins rolling out that will allow you to be able to install an NVMe as part of a storage expansion. Currently, that software update is in its beta stage of development.
| Specifications | 4TB | 2TB | 1TB | 500GB |
| Standard Model | ZP4000GM30013 | ZP2000GM30013 | ZP1000GM30013 | ZP500GM30013 |
| Interface | PCIe® Gen4 ×4 NVMe 1.4 | PCIe Gen4 ×4 NVMe 1.4 | PCIe Gen4 ×4 NVMe 1.4 | PCIe Gen4 ×4 NVMe 1.4 |
| NAND Flash Memory | 3D TLC | 3D TLC | 3D TLC | 3D TLC |
| Form Factor | M.2 2280-D2 | M.2 2280-D2 | M.2 2280-S2 | M.2 2280-S2 |
| Performance | ||||
| Sequential Read (Max, MB/s), 128KB | 7300 | 7300 | 7300 | 7000 |
| Sequential Write (Max, MB/s), 128KB | 6900 | 6900 | 6000 | 3000 |
| Random Read (Max, IOPS), 4KB QD32 T8 | 1,000,000 | 1,000,000 | 800,000 | 400,000 |
| Random Write (Max, IOPS), 4KB QD32 T8 | 1,000,000 | 1,000,000 | 1,000,000 | 700,000 |
| Endurance/Reliability | ||||
| Total Bytes Written (TB) | 5100 | 2550 | 1275 | 640 |
| Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF, hours) | 1,800,000 | 1,800,000 | 1,800,000 | 1,800,000 |
| Rescue Data Recovery Services (years) | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Warranty, Limited (years) | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Power Management | ||||
| Active Power, Average (W) | 8.4 | 8.0 | 6.5 | 5.8 |
| Idle Power PS3, Average (mW) | 25 | 24 | 16 | 14 |
| Low Power L1.2 mode (mW) | <5 | <5 | <5 | <5 |
| Environmental | ||||
| Temperature, Operating Internal (°C) | 0°C – 70°C | 0°C – 70°C | 0°C – 70°C | 0°C – 70°C |
| Temperature, Nonoperating (°C) | -40°C – 85°C | -40°C – 85°C | -40°C – 85°C | -40°C – 85°C |
| Shock, Nonoperating: 0.5ms (Gs) | 1500 | 1500 | 1500 | 1500 |
| Special Features | ||||
| TRIM | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| S.M.A.R.T. | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Halogen Free | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| RoHS Compliance | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
