Seagate FireCuda 530 2 TB M.2 SSD Review

A Closer Look

The Seagate FireCuda 530 looks pretty much as you would expect. It’s an M.2 drive, and it comes in the now very common 2280 form factor, meaning it is 80mm long. That being said, it still amazes me the performance and capacity available in such a form factor!

There’s a sticker on each side of the drive, but it’s all fairly standard stuff. This version of the drive doesn’t come with a heatsink in the box. However, since I’ll be using the heatsink on my testbench motherboard, this is the perfect version for me, or anyone else using the cooling provided by their motherboard.

It’s all classic gaming colours here, black on black, with the occasional hint of red. Either way, it’s a smart-looking drive.

Due to this being a 2TB drive, a few extra NAND chips are required, so you can see it has them on both sides of the PCB.

Remove the top sticker, and you’ll reveal… Another sticker!

Under that, you’ll find the Penta-Core powered Phison’s PS5018-E18 12nm controller, one of the best in the world for consumer drives and a popular choice for Gen4 drives.

The E18 is DRAM-based, so backing that up, you’ll find a pair of SK Hynix 8GB 1600 MHZ DDR4 chips, which should help ensure this drive can deliver its truly break-neck speeds.

Of course, the drive is packed with some lovely 3D TLC NAND chips too, the amount of which will obviously vary from the 1TB, 2TB and 4TB variants of the drive.

Overall, this is an incredible looking drive, and it’s plug and play ready with modern Gen4 motherboards and the PlayStation 5.