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Seagate’s FireCuda 540 PCIe Gen5 M.2 SSDs Are Its Fastest Yet
Today, Seagate has officially released its newest line of FireCuda family SSDs. The FireCuda 540 PCIe Gen5 M.2 SSDs are claimed to be “50% faster than Gen4 M.2 NVMe drives and 17 times faster than SATA-based SSDs,” with data transfers of up to 10,000 MB/s possible thanks to a mix of advanced technologies. Seagate says the FireCuda 540 drives are available now, priced at $179.99 / £199.90 (1TB) and $299.99 / £329.90 (2TB).
Seagate FireCuda 540 PCIe Gen5 M.2 SSDs target “pro-level gaming and accelerated content creation,” the storage firm claims. The performance on offer here stems from the use of the fast new PCIe Gen5 interface, a Seagate-validated E26 controller, and new 3D TLC NAND.
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Seagate
FireCuda 530
FireCuda 540
Interface
PCIe Gen4
PCIe Gen5
Form factor
M.2 2280
M.2 2280
Max transfer
7,300 MB/s
10,000 MB/s
Durability
1,275 TBW, 1.8M MTBF
2,000 TWB, 1.8M MTBF
(Image credit: Seagate)
We don’t have any further technical data for the Seagate FireCuda 540, as the product page / data sheets are yet to be published. There is also a discrepancy between the press release and Amazon product pages, with one saying the top capacity available is 2 TB, while the other says that this new generation of drives is available in up to 4 TB. We reckon the truth might be that only 1 and 2TB versions will be available initially, with 4 TB models arriving in their wake.
Seagate’s claim that the new FireCuda 540 drives are up to 50% faster than previous-gen drives also isn’t quite accurate, as a 50% uplift from 7,300 MB/s (FireCuda 530) should be 10,950 MB/s – not 10,000 MB/s.
In addition to the Seagate-validated SSD controller on board, another interesting claim is that the FireCuda 540 series uses a DirectStorage optimized firmware for “an enhanced PC gaming experience.” We would be keen to verify and test such a benefit. However,note that there have been some recent announcements of PCIe Gen5 SSDs with significantlyfaster raw transfer speeds touted.
(Image credit: Seagate)
At the time of writing there were no live listings of the FireCuda 540 at the Seagate Amazon US store for internal SSDs, so we would expect them to arrive in a day or two. We did see the 1 and 2 TB versions listed on Amazon UK as out of stock, but the advertised prices were an inflated £240 and £368, respectively. Remember, they should be $179.99 / £199.90 (1TB) and $299.99 / £329.90 (2TB).
If you think you may want a new SSD soon, take a look at our frequently updated and comprehensive best SSDs of 2023 guide.
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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
Fyi you're listing the write endurance of the old 1tb model compared to the new 2tb model. Seagate has unfortunately regressed in their write endurance with the new model, yet again.
Comes with a brick made of aluminum some cooper heat pipes and headaches. Stay on gen 4
Who cares honestly, as long as it's not active cooling it's not really very inconvenient although tbf, with such a small performance improvement over gen 4 drives, it should not be consuming that much power.
Firecuda dropped endurance not increased it as it shows. Endurance was huge seller and going from
530 2TB @ 2.600 TBW to 2000TBW and 530 4TB from @ 5400TBW to 3.949TBW that is big no no at least for me.
