Seagate on Wednesday announced its new line of FireCuda 120 SATA SSDs, which the company claims will breathes new life into your gaming PC. While the statement may hold some truth, the FireCuda 120 can only take storage performance as far as the SATA III interface permits it.
The FireCuda 120 comes in a conventional 2.5-inch form factor, measuring 7mm in height. Seagate has confirmed that the FireCuda 120 utilizes a combination of Phison's S12 SSD controller with 96-layer BiCS4 3D TLC (triple-level cell) NAND flash memory.
Seagate puts a heavy emphasis on the fact that the FireCuda 120 SSDs cater to gaming systems that need a lot of storage (to store games, of course). As a result, the manufacturer offers the FireCuda 120 in densities of 500GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB.
Seagate FireCuda 120 Specifications
| Model | Part Number | Sequential Read (MBps) | Sequential Write (MBps) | Random Read (IOPS) | Random Writes (IOPS) | Endurance (TBW) | Warranty | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FireCuda 120 4TB | ZA500GM1A001 | 560 | 540 | 100,000 | 90,000 | 5,600 | 5 years | $650.99 |
| FireCuda 120 2TB | ZA1000GM1A001 | 560 | 540 | 100,000 | 90,000 | 2,800 | 5 years | $388.49 |
| FireCuda 120 1TB | ZA2000GM1A001 | 560 | 540 | 100,000 | 90,000 | 1,400 | 5 years | $199.49 |
| FireCuda 120 500GB | ZA4000GM1A001 | 560 | 540 | 100,000 | 90,000 | 700 | 5 years | $104.99 |
The FireCuda 120's sequential and random performance are consistent across all four capacities. Sequential reads and writes scale up to 560 MBps and 540 MBps, respectively, while random reads and writes max out at 100,000 IOPS and 90,000 IOPS, respectively.
Endurance is the FireCuda 120's strongest point, and the SSDs can really take a beating. For example, Seagate markets the 500GB model with an endurance of 700 TBW (terabytes written). For context, the 500GB variant of the Samsung 860 EVO, which we consider to be the best SSD in the consumer SATA category, is rated for 300 TBW. The FireCuda 120 is offering twice the durability of the Samsung 860 EVO drives at the same capacity.
Alas, nothing in life is free. The 500GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB models sell for $104.99, $199.49, $348.49 and $650.99, respectively. This aggressive pricing puts the FireCuda 120 in the M.2 territory, where NVMe drives are delivering higher performance and equal capacity at the same or lower price points.
It remains to be seen how the FireCuda 120 performs under pressure, but as far as endurance goes, the FireCuda 120 is second to none. As expected, Seagate backs the FireCuda 120 with a limited five-year warranty.