Seagate’s FireCuda 530R provides sustained speed in a form factor that makes it suitable for those upgrading their PC storage – or their PS5 capacity.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Includes heat sink | Doesn’t include M2 mounting screw |
| Read and write speeds nearly live up to claims | Might be overkill for some SSD needs |
Score: 3.5/5
In this review
Seagate FireCuda 530R Specifications
Seagate FireCuda 530R Design
Seagate FireCuda 530R Performance
Seagate FireCuda 530R Conclusion
Ethical disclaimer: The Seagate FireCuda 530R used in this review was supplied to me by Seagate’s Australian representatives. As always, this gets them a review – nothing more, no editiorial oversight or influence on my testing or conclusions. I very much prefer to be upfront about this kind of matter, because ethics matter, and I’d rather not bury that kind of detail at the end of a review – or not mention it at all. Now, on with the review.
Design
The whole point of an SSD is that it’s built to a predictable size and form factor so that it can interface with just about everything, so there’s not too much to say about the Seagate FireCuda 530R in this respect. It’s built with a heatsink pre-installed, which does give it more vertical size if you were planning to throw it into a very size-constrained system, though Seagate does offer heatsink-free versions of most of its SSDs as well if that’s your need.
The benefit of the integrated heatsink here is that it also makes the Seagate FireCuda 530R suitable for installation into a PlayStation 5 if you fancy upgrading (or just replacing) its integrated storage.
Otherwise, this is just a standard SSD, available in either 1TB, 2TB or 4TB varieties, though the 4TB version is not officially available locally in Australia.
It does rather amuse me that the 4TB version is, as per Seagate’s specifications, a 9.2g drive where the 2TB weighs 8.8g and the 1TB stacks in at 7.3g. Reading into that, a TB of SSD data presumably weighs anywhere between 0.2g or 1.5g.
With a long history like mine in covering the tech market – bearing in mind that when I started out, floppy drives were still the absolute norm for consumer-grade storage – that’s all kinds of wild, even if it’s not terribly relevant to most users. It amused me, and sometimes that’s enough.
The one catch here, and it’s not an uncommon one for a lot of boxed SSDs it seems, because I hit the exact same issue with the Samsung 990 EVO Plus is that the Seagate FireCuda 530R doesn’t ship with an M.2 mounting screw in the box.
If you don’t have one handy – or as happened to me last time, it accidentally slides away into a dark crevice never to be seen again when removed, you’ll need to budget for one to install the Seagate FireCuda 530R.
Performance
Installation of the Seagate FireCuda 530R is a simple enough process; find a suitable M.2 slot on your PC, slot drive in, screw down with an M.2 screw and you’re basically done. The heatsink, as noted above, does raise its profile just a little, but in my case I was testing it in a full-sized desktop PC, so there wasn’t particularly an issue there.
Installation of any M.2 SSD isn't an onerous affair (as long as you've opened up a PC desktop case at least once in your life)
The Seagate FireCuda 530R ships in three size variants, with maximum claimed sequential read speeds of 7,400MB/s and sequential write speeds of between 6,800/6,900/7,000MB/s for the 4TB/2TB/1TB models respectively. The model supplied to me by Seagate in Australia was the 2TB model.
Notably those speeds are just a whisker above what Samsung claimed for the previously tested Samsung 990 EVO Plus, so I was keen to see how the two would compare. I don’t have a lot of SSD figures to compare with, but here’s how the two drives compared using Crystal Disk Mark:
The Seagate FireCuda 530R doesn’t quite live up to its speed claims for data reading, but that’s not exactly surprising, because there’s always some overheads involved in data processing on a drive while it’s being tested; it’s still well within what I’d call an acceptable range there.
It’s far more notable that it actually exceeded its specified write speeds in this test, and at a level that did outpace the Samsung SSD while doing so. Admittedly, this was only by 1MB/s over its stated maximums, but who doesn't like a little extra free writing speed?
One potential factor there of course is that the Samsung drive as tested lacked any kind of heatsink, and it’s feasible that the Seagate was happy enough to draw in a little more power (and heat) because it could handle that without cooking itself; this isn’t quite a like-for-like comparison in that sense.
Still, if you’re after speed, the Seagate FireCuda 530R does offer it up – for a price.
The inclusion of a heatsink on this model also makes it PS5 compatible, so naturally I had to test that out too.
If you've ever wondered, this is what a half-naked PS5 looks like with a FireCuda 530R SSD installed.
Honestly the hardest part of that install process if you've never done it before is sliding off the top of the PS5, because it's 100% built and shaped to make you think you're going to snap it in half. Actual SSD installation is a snap... no, wait, poor choice of words there.
One aspect of this usage to bear in mind is that the PS5 will format the drive entirely when you first install it, so you can't use it to shuffle files to a PS5, and any content on the drive will be lost as a result. Again, however, it works, with the PS5 that I installed it in suggesting speeds of around 6800MB/s based on its own internal benchmark when installed.
Seagate FireCuda 530R: Alex’s Verdict
Adding Googly eyes isn't a great idea -- the heatsink will likely melt them over time -- but they sure do make the FireCuda 530R look cute... and stressed.
The Seagate FireCuda 530R is a good quality drive that delivers fast SSD performance if that’s what you need. The inclusion of an integrated heatsink does give it scope for working in a system that’s going to be under sustained load for longer periods of time, or for working in a PS5 where it’s a must-have SSD inclusion.
The catch here is that this also makes this a slightly more expensive drive to buy outright, and that might not make it your most economical SSD choice. If you’re just after basic SSD storage and the speed of the drive isn’t as much of a concern then you could save a few dollars and buy a simpler SSD, or a heatsink-free model.
If you're after writing speed to your internal storage however, the Seagate FireCuda 530R runs very nicely indeed.
Seagate FireCuda 530R : Pricing and availability
The FireCuda 530R retails in Australia for $219 for the 2TB model and $399 for the 4TB variant.
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