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.
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Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.
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USAFRet $200 for 1TB?Reply
Unless you're using this in a datacenter with a LOT of write cycles, that's a hard pass. -
King_V Yeah, I'm figuring with those endurance levels, this is particular to datacenter needs, or similar.Reply -
gg83 Just another overpriced ssd that has basically a negative price to performance ratio. Samsung has perform better and cheaper prices right? Is almost double endurance worth it in the real world?Reply -
cryoburner Reply
Too bad Seagate is instead pitching these to people building gaming systems. : PKing_V said:Yeah, I'm figuring with those endurance levels, this is particular to datacenter needs, or similar.
Load Fast, Play Hard
5600 TBW write endurance for running games off of? Perhaps that's useful for someone completely reinstalling their entire multi-terabyte game library every single day for years? : D
Designed for speed, endurance, and capacity, FireCuda 120 can take everything PC games throw at it.
With up to 4TB of space, maxed out SATA 6Gb/s speeds, and the durability of up to 5600TB TBW, this SSD plugs in and loads up quickly. Give your battlestation a boost, the FireCuda 120 is ready to play.
I guess it's for people who just think bigger numbers must be better, while not noticing that performance-wise, the drives are only on-par with other SATA SSDs costing almost half as much. I like how they emphasize that "maxed out SATA 6Gb/s speeds", when other SSDs have been maxing out the SATA interface for years, and NVMe drives offer multiple times the theoretical performance compared to SATA.
You can currently get a Crucial MX500 1TB with the same level of performance as these drives for $115, or the 2TB version for $230. With these Firecuda 120 drives, you are paying nearly as much for half the capacity and no tangible performance benefits for gaming. You can even get some lower-end NVMe drives like the Intel 660p for as little as $120 for a TB, and those will outperform any SATA drive as far as game load times are concerned. Even higher-end NVMe drives like a 970 Evo don't cost this much. At this kind of pricing, this drive makes zero sense for gaming systems. -
USAFRet Reply
I see that here every day.cryoburner said:I guess it's for people who just think bigger numbers must be better,
"It only has 600TBW lifespan!!! It sux!!"
(said by someone who will never see 100TBW over the next decade) -
mdd1963 Reply
Yes, $200 for a 1 TB SSD is ludicrous, what with 2 TB Crucial MX500 SSDs only at $229 or so....(the 1 TB MX500 is only ~$105)USAFRet said:$200 for 1TB?
Unless you're using this in a datacenter with a LOT of write cycles, that's a hard pass. -
USAFRet Reply
I'm sure there are use cases for this drive.mdd1963 said:Yes, $200 for a 1 TB SSD is ludicrous, what with 2 TB Crucial MX500 SSDs only at $229 or so....(the 1 TB MX500 is only ~$105)
"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). "
But that is not it. -
USAFRet Reply
Wrong thread?mdd1963 said:A good comparison of 1660 Super, 1660, RX580, and several others...