Seagate Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda Review

1. Introduction2. Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO Disk Benchmark6. AS SSD7. 128KB Sequential Performance8. 4K Random Read v QD Performance9. 4K Random Write v QD Performance10. 4K 70/30 Mixed Performance11. 4K Random Performance QD1-QD812. Throughput13. PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark14. 3DMark Storage Benchmark 15. Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark16. Temperatures17. Real Life File Testing18. Closing Thoughts19. View All Pages

Seagate has a number of officially licensed special edition SSD drives both in SATA and NVMe formats that are tied into Star Wars and The Mandalorian franchises. The latest drive to join the range is the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda. Based on Seagate's 2nd generation Gen4 drive, the FireCuda 530, the drive features an RGB supporting heatsink designed by EKWB that has three interchangeable heatsink face plates with the lightsaber designs of Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader built on them.

The face plates and the heatsink have been well designed, and because of that changing over the face plates is a stress-free experience. The heatsink needs a motherboard with a 5V addressable header for LED control and it is compatible with most motherboard RGB lighting programs. The LEDs are very bright and run the length of the heatsink. The only minor fly in the ointment is the positioning of the 3-wire 5V cable in the back of the heatsink which can get in the way of the M.2 fixing screw,

Unlike the standard four-capacity FireCuda range there are only two models available, 2TB and 1TB. The drive follows a well-trodden route using a combination of a Phison PS5016-E16 controller and BiCS4 96-Layer 3D TLC NAND.

The 2TB Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda is rated as up to 7,300MB/s for and up to 6,900MB/s for Sequential read and writes respectively. Using the ATTO benchmark we couldn't quite hit these maximums, with tested read and writes figures of 6,880MB/s and 6,470MB/s respectively. However, using the CrystalDiskMark8 benchmark we could confirm the official Sequential read performance with a best test result of 7,400MB/s but once again we fell a little short on the write performance with a test result of 6,892MB/s.

When it comes to 4K random performance, we couldn't get close to the official maximums of 1,000,000 IOPS for read and writes, the best we saw during testing was 772,250 IOPS for reads and 648,842 IOPS for writes, both coming via testing with the 0 fill option in CrystalDiskMark 8's Peak Performance Profile.

The 2TB Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda gets a TBW rating of 2,550TB. Seagate not only back the drive with a five-year warranty, but they also support it with three years of their Rescue Data Recovery Services.

We found the 2TB Seagate Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda on Amazon UK for around £220 (inc VAT) HERE.

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Pros

• Overall Performance.
• Heatsink design.
• Endurance.
• 5-year warranty.
• 3 years of Seagate Rescue Data Recovery Services.

Cons

• Couldn't get close to the official 4K figures under testing.

KitGuru says: Seagate's FireCuda 530 is a fast-performing and popular Gen 4 drive but the Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda adds a whole new level of desire for Star Wars aficionados.

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