Are Firecuda 530 TBW ratings legit?

[mouks]

I want to get another NVMe for my PC and I noticed that the Seagate Firecuda 530 have significantly higher TBW ratings than other drives using the same controller and 3D TLC NAND like the Kingston KC3000 as an example. So is it just marketing hype or are they really more durable?

 

[Dr. Dro]

It's what's warrantied, and certainly on the conservative side. You'll be fine.

 

[mouks]

It's what's warrantied, and certainly on the conservative side. You'll be fine.

But then am I essentially paying for an extended warranty if I buy the Seagate or is the hardware / quality control actually better?

There's only a $20 difference on the 2TB version so I'm leaning towards the Firecuda as it will be used as a cache and proxy drive for Davinci Resolve, so TBW is an important factor

 

[Dr. Dro]

But then am I essentially paying for an extended warranty if I buy the Seagate or is the hardware / quality control actually better?

There's only a $20 difference on the 2TB version so I'm leaning towards the Firecuda as it will be used as a cache and proxy drive for Davinci Resolve, so TBW is an important factor

The hardware itself is better. $20 extra is a no brainer for a high grade drive such as this IMO. It has a DRAM cache too.

Seagate Firecuda 530 2 TB Specs

2 TB, TLC, PCIe 4.0 x4, M.2 2280

www.techpowerup.com

 

[LittleBro]

Firecuda 530 is same as KC3000 and Fury Renegade. All three use PS5018-E18-41 controller and Micron B47R FortisFlash NAND. KC3000/Fury Renegade has much greater SLC cache than FireCuda 530. Firmware is different. AFAIK KC3000 (Fury Renegade) is slightly faster (also in small-sized blocks) due to firmware modifications. Power consumption and temperatures is in favor of FireCuda 530. Endurance of FireCuda 530 (2500 TBW) is laughable given the fact that it has same electronics as KC3000 (1600) or Fury Renegade. Take it with a grain of salt. I'd really like to see that magic that Seagate applies to that drive to make it's endurance almost 1000 TBW greater than KC3000's. Also, it's strange that TPU has not reviewed FireCuda 530 yet ...

Compare pictures, the layout of electronics:

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/kingston-kc3000/images/pcb1.jpg

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/kingston-kc3000/images/pcb2.jpg

Seagate FireCuda 530 2 TB M.2 SSD Review - Page 3

Seagate is one of the best-known names in the world for storage, and when it comes to their FireCuda series, they’re a premium choice for PC storage enthusiasts. It’s no secret that PCIe Gen4 drives…

www.eteknix.com

Seagate even renamed Phison controller to Seagate.

Anyway, KC3000 or Fury Renegade or FireCuda 530 does NOT have graphene cooler, it's a piece of joke thin aluminium-like metal cover. You'll need to take it down and install proper cooler to avoid throttling. By the way, I have 2 KC3000's (with Micron's B47R) and they are working fine.

 

[Sarajiel]

But then am I essentially paying for an extended warranty if I buy the Seagate or is the hardware / quality control actually better?

There's only a $20 difference on the 2TB version so I'm leaning towards the Firecuda as it will be used as a cache and proxy drive for Davinci Resolve, so TBW is an important factor

If endurance is your main concern, buy the 4TB Fury Renegade. The price difference of the Seagate drive is basically just the cost for the included drive recovery insurance policy and other "premium" features that aren't really hardware related, like a more fancy software than Kingston's.

From my personal experience, I'd go with the Kingston drive that's cheaper right now, the performance of these drives are virtually the same in daily use. Upgrading your memory, if you still have room left, will probably be more noticeable in Resolve than comparing these SSDs against each other.

Just out of curiosity, what kind of material are you finishing in DaVinci Resolve that you worry about your drive's endurance, and how long did previous drives last?

 

[mouks]

Firecuda 530 is same as KC3000 and Fury Renegade. All three use PS5018-E18-41 controller and Micron B47R FortisFlash NAND. KC3000/Fury Renegade has much greater SLC cache than FireCuda 530. Firmware is different. AFAIK KC3000 (Fury Renegade) is slightly faster (also in small-sized blocks) due to firmware modifications. Power consumption and temperatures is in favor of FireCuda 530. Endurance of FireCuda 530 (2500 TBW) is laughable given the fact that it has same electronics as KC3000 (1600) or Fury Renegade. Take it with a grain of salt. I'd really like to see that magic that Seagate applies to that drive to make it's endurance almost 1000 TBW greater than KC3000's. Also, it's strange that TPU has not reviewed FireCuda 530 yet ...

Compare pictures, the layout of electronics:

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/kingston-kc3000/images/pcb1.jpg

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/kingston-kc3000/images/pcb2.jpg

Seagate FireCuda 530 2 TB M.2 SSD Review - Page 3

Seagate is one of the best-known names in the world for storage, and when it comes to their FireCuda series, they’re a premium choice for PC storage enthusiasts. It’s no secret that PCIe Gen4 drives…

www.eteknix.com

Seagate even renamed Phison controller to Seagate.

Anyway, KC3000 or Fury Renegade or FireCuda 530 does NOT have graphene cooler, it's a piece of joke thin aluminium-like metal cover. You'll need to take it down and install proper cooler to avoid throttling. By the way, I have 2 KC3000's (with Micron's B47R) and they are working fine.

Thanks, very insightful. Then I will go with a Kingston Fury as it's the same price as the KC3000. I didn't think about the cache size (I'm a noob regarding SSDs) but it's actually important for what this drive will have to do. I'll use the Mainboard heatsink so temps should be fine

If endurance is your main concern, buy the 4TB Fury Renegade. The price difference of the Seagate drive is basically just the cost for the included drive recovery insurance policy and other "premium" features that aren't really hardware related, like a more fancy software than Kingston's.

From my personal experience, I'd go with the Kingston drive that's cheaper right now, the performance of these drives are virtually the same in daily use. Upgrading your memory, if you still have room left, will probably be more noticeable in Resolve than comparing these SSDs against each other.

Just out of curiosity, what kind of material are you finishing in DaVinci Resolve that you worry about your drive's endurance, and how long did previous drives last?

Thanks, you're right about the capacity, I'd be better off going for 4TB and it's the sweet spot in terms of $/TB for Kingston drives.

I think it's worth adding some context to properly answer your questions. I built my 1st workstation while I was studying filmmaking back in 2012. It was a good config for that period but it was painful to work on anything over FullHD resolution. I was editing from HDDs which never failed me ( the OS SATA SSD did though). A few years later, I did put that aside as it wasn't a viable activity for me despite having a second job. I wasn't finding enough decently paid gigs to keep up with all the investment needed and earn a living.

Fast forward to 2024, I have some new projects and good equipment can be found for a fraction of what it used to cost, so I'm getting back into it. I found an "old" RED Epic-MX kit for peanuts considering what it is. So I will mostly work on R3D files up to 5K. I bought a used gaming PC as it was a very good deal but I have to change a few things including the motherboard (I posted about this in the building advice subforum a while back). My new board (+cpu) should be in the mail tomorrow so I'll be setting up the rig in the upcoming days.

Regarding the RAM, I have 2x32GB of DDR5-6000 CL30, I'll see how it goes.

 

[Sarajiel]

I bought a used gaming PC as it was a very good deal but I have to change a few things including the motherboard (I posted about this in the building advice subforum a while back). My new board (+cpu) should be in the mail tomorrow so I'll be setting up the rig in the upcoming days.

Regarding the RAM, I have 2x32GB of DDR5-6000 CL30, I'll see how it goes.

I think, I remember your thread about your new system and probably added some rambling thoughts over there as well.

64GB should be good as stating point, especially if you are using a proxy workflow and don't work the YouTube influencer way that requires Threadrippers and 4090s to edit out their "uhm"s and "ah"s.

That said, after you sorted out your storage, upgrading your memory might be a good idea once 64GB DIMMs become available. Also try experimenting with "optimized media" and "proxies" in DaVinci Resolve. While both do essentially the same thing, optimized media might generate less written data to your cache drive than re-rendering or re-muxing (do other people also call it that?) large DNxHR containers. Personally, I'd keep an eye on the total host reads and writes in HWiNFO in the first couple of days and weeks. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if you were massively over-estimating your drive writes. Originally, it sounded a bit to me that you were running hundreds of GBs of footage every day through your system for digital dailies.
On a side note, remember using a copy tool like Teracopy or something similar that copies your footage by actually verifying it. One of my previous employers even decided to develop their own copy tool for film footage, because Total Commander was too clunky for most of my co-workers. Over the years, I'm sure we lost more valuable data from people's mistakes of handling data than from actual hardware failures.

Regarding SSD endurance, not sure if you are a German speaker, but some of the older German computer magazines did a lot of articles about SSD endurance with long term testing in the early days of MLC and TLC SSDs. I think you can still find the old articles from heise.de and computerbase.de that reached crazy high amounts of NAND writes. There are also a few old articles in English from Tom's Hardware and AnandTech, but the German magazines back then seemed really, really obsessed with testing write endurance.

 

[chrcoluk]

TBW is often conservative for market segmentation reasons, true endurance rating is erase cycles which isnt main stream information anymore. The TBW is basically a warranty spec, what usage level they will support as normal use of the drive.

 

[Hankieroseman]

I want to get another NVMe for my PC and I noticed that the Seagate Firecuda 530 have significantly higher TBW ratings than other drives using the same controller and 3D TLC NAND like the Kingston KC3000 as an example. So is it just marketing hype or are they really more durable?

My 520's are still working. Bought in 2020. Upgraded to 530's and a 2TB 540 that is about a year old now. I'm looking at Crucial T705 now. Check out their speeds.

 

[ir_cow]

FireCuda was a workstation / Enterprise solution at first. Idk if it still has cache flush, but I would expect the DTW to be correct, if not under. Heck, I have a SKY Hynix 1TB branded Nvme that is nearly 100TB written. Still over 90% endurance.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Regarding SSD endurance, not sure if you are a German speaker, but some of the older German computer magazines did a lot of articles about SSD endurance with long term testing in the early days of MLC and TLC SSDs. I think you can still find the old articles from heise.de and computerbase.de that reached crazy high amounts of NAND writes. There are also a few old articles in English from Tom's Hardware and AnandTech, but the German magazines back then seemed really, really obsessed with testing write endurance.

Long term endurance? (Over real-world conditions, anyway). Allow me, I purchased this SSD in 2011 and it has been through a ton of my builds since. It's currently on my retrogaming Mac mini.

~24 TB written, this is equivalent to ~151 full drive writes. 97% endurance remaining. This is an SSD (re-)released at the peak of doomers and naysayers insisting on their slow as molasses HDDs because "SSDs were unreliable and they die" craze in tech forums - it seems that their hypothesis at the time did not prevail. As a bonus, here's a vintage review of it by Anand of AnandTech himself (that's how old this thing is)

The Intel SSD 320 Review: 25nm G3 is Finally Here

www.anandtech.com

 

[ir_cow]

SSDs don't give a warning when they die. I have a stack. HDD on the other hand make sounds and smart errors

 

[Dr. Dro]

SSDs don't give a warning when they die. I have a stack. HDD on the other hand make sounds and smart errors

Depends on whether it's the NAND or the controller that went bad, but back then there were actual forum fights about how SSDs couldn't be trusted because you'd run out of writes, it's possible this little thing will outlast me

 

[ir_cow]

My back luck has always been the controller shows up one day and gone the next. Still get power and nice and warm, so most likely a logic issue and not power related.