Seagate Firecuda 530 vs Samsung 980 PRO SSD Comparison

PCIe 4 NVMe SSD Comparison – Samsung 980 Pro vs Seagate Firecuda 530

One industry that continues to exceed all expectations is solid-state drives (SSD). The accepted norms of storage in terms of capacity, speed and durability have wildly eclipsed those early days of SATA and now the combined might of near-total bandwidth utilisation and sophisticated onboard controllers has resulted in an SSDs capable of 20 times the performance of the first generation flash drives (370MB/s x10) and close to 50 times the speed of regular hard drives (150MB/s x50). It sounds insane but now there are SSD that can provide well over 7000MB/s read that are not only well established and available to consumer buyers, but also surprisingly affordable. Into this slowly growing tier of NVMe M2 PCIe Gen 4 SSD storage, two of the biggest players are Samsung and Seagate with their 980 Pro and Firecuda 530 drives. Released almost an entire year apart, these two drives are still among the most often requested media right now in summer 2021 for gamers, video editors and high-performance storage uses. Although similar in preliminary architecture, as both utilise a significantly higher saturation of the PCIe gen4 potential 8,000MB/s bandwidth available, each brand has geared their drives respective development in a different direction and the result is two drives that may seem similar at first but wildly deviate in what they can do at even a cursory examination. So today I want to compare the Seagate Firecuda 530 against the Samsung 980 Pro to help you decide which one deserves your data. 

Samsung introduced the 980 Pro into the market in summer 2020, during the height of the global pandemic, the US trade war and the start of the semi-conductor shortage – so that was ALOT of early friction to overcome. Despite all of this, the drive has gone from strength to strength and is largely the drive of choice in the early client development of PCIe4 m.2 on motherboards thanks to being one of the first on the market and that custom controller allowing them to break the 7,000MB/s barrier in M.2 form factor before practically everyone else. The Seagate uses the late 2020 formally revealed Phison E18-PS5018 controller (also used by a few other SSD manufacturers), whereas Samsung has its own massive in-house R&D manufacture available and has ait’s own unique custom Elpis controller. We talk in a moment about how this impacts their respective performance, but fair play to Samsung for continuing to keep their SSD development 100% in house with this one. Both drives arrive with 5 years of warranty (though their DWPD/TBW do differ noticeably) which is quite standard, but it is worth highlighting that the Seagate Firecuda 530 also arrives with 3years of data recovery services included. Know as the Seagate Rescue Service, it allows you to access professional data recovery services in the event of accidental deletion, reversing corruption and recovery services at no additional cost (there are T& course). It’s a small extra on the face of it, but for anyone that has lost key data (in the case of this drive utility, I am talking 4K raw video, savegames, editing projects, etc), this is a very noticeable extra to have thrown in!

Samsung 980 Pro vs Seagate Firecuda 530 – Price & Capacity

For most casual users, the price per GB/TB and the variety of available capacities are always going to form a decent chunk of the decision-making process! Both the Firecuda 530 and Samsung 980 Pro are available in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB versions, however, the Samsung also arrives in a modest 250GB model (which may well be useful to NAS users for caching or video editors looking for a smaller, faster drive for current projects (moving them to a slower archive as they go). The Seagate Firecuda has very much gone the other way on this and provides a hefty 4 terabyte (double-sided – cells on either side of the M.2 PCB) that, although rather expensive, is still going to be very attractive to buyers who only want to make this kind of purchase ONCE and want it to suitable for long term storage convenience (Professional Gamers/Pro Streamers with larger constant libraries they need to access relatively on the fly and PS5 console owners looking to take advantage of that storage expansion slot). When it comes to the price tag, Samsung 980 PRO has a tremendous advantage with being released almost a year ago (September 2020) and that has given them a great deal of time to saturate the market with their drive and introduce a greater degree of flexible pricing now in 2021. That said, the prices are not quite as far apart as I would have thought – with around $20-30/£10-20 at each storage capacity tier. See below:

The Samsung 980 PRO is easily going to be the lower-priced of the two, even if you ignore the RRP of each brand, the 980 PRO will be on sale at one retailer or another just as the Seagate Firecuda 530 gets out of the gate! We will talk a little more about Value later on, but if the pricetag is paramount to you (perhaps you are on a tighter budget or are buying multiple NVMe SSD units) then Samsung win this one easily. However in capacity, these two PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs are harder to compare, given they differ ever so slightly. I do like that the Samsung 980 PRO arrives in the smaller 250GB capacity model, as some hybrid storage users or those looking for their OS/Steam Library for 1-2 AAA games, will like this smaller unit at around $89/£70 (though the performance is lesser – important). However, the Firecuda 530 arriving in 4TB is an unignorable power flex from Seagate, being only 1 of 2 PCIe 4.0m.2 NVMe 7,000MB/s+ available in the market (the other being the Sabrent Rocket Plus SB-RKT4P-4TB for $999). Yes, it is a hefty price tag at $949 at launch, but it still works out as $237 per TB, has by FAR the fastest performance of any of the other drives and means you only need to make this purchase ONCE. So, overall, I think the Seagate Firecuda 530 takes the win for its approach to capacity.

Samsung 980 Pro vs Seagate Firecuda 530 – Reported Read & Write Speed

NOW we are talking! Moving away from price, let’s talk about what these two top tier NVMe PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs can give you in terms of traditional Read and Write performance. Ever since we first started seeing PCIe4 SSDs arrive, it has been a case of how much of the potential 8,000MB/s they could saturate with sophisticated controllers, SDRAM and NAND. The first-gen looked good at 5,000MB/s, but was soon eclipsed when Samsung 980 PRO entered the market last summer/autumn with their 7,000MB/s Read drive. Indeed, although the 250GB and 500GB drives dip slightly to 6,400/6,900MB/s respectively, the 1TB and 2TB models can reach that 7,000MB/s mark, which is great news for gamers that prioritize reading those core game files for streaming/casual gaming. However, their write speeds (a key concern for video editors and advanced content creators in general) largely cap at 5,000MB/s for the most part – still VERY impressive and Samsung have not been secretive about this, but it is still a noticeable difference. The Seagate Firecuda 530 series, thanks to a newer revision of NVMe (NVMe 1.4 over NVMe 1.3c) as well as the 176 layer 3D NAND (improving performance and relative durability, covering later). Samsung don’t disclose the layer count but claim it to be 40% more than their previous generation at 92 layers, so it is assumed to be 128L 3D NAND. The 500GB model from Seagate drops the ball a bit in terms of write speed, at a comparatively lowly 3,000MB/s (which does make the 500GB model much less appealing) but from there, the 1TB, 2TB and 4TB models all massively surpass the majority of other SSD in the market right now, reaching 6,000MB/s – 6,900MB/s in sequential Write and smashing an impressive 7,300MB/s in sequential Read – genuinely staggering and for manufactures to be getting so close to the theoretical 8,000MB/s max of PCie 4×4 M.2 so early cannot be ignored! See below:

As the chart above indicates, Seagate Firecuda 530 almost completely wins the performance comparison for traditional Read/Write activity. Given its later release, slightly higher price tag and increase NAND quality/layers, this is what you would expect and unless Samsung release a new revision of the PRO SSD series in 2021/2022, the Firecuda 530 wins this round in spades.

Samsung 980 Pro vs Seagate Firecuda 530 – Reported IOPS

The performance of the Samsung 980 Pro and Seagate Friecuda 530 in terms of IOPS are actually surprisingly similar. Indeed, only the 500GB model ZP500GM3A013 and MZ-V8P500BW give us much difference of note. Both drive manufacturers report that they hit the 1,000,000 input/output operations per second threshold. So that means that these drives pass through data incredibly well. I mention the 500GB model, as the Samsung 980 Pro largely dwarfs the Firecuda 530 at this tier, with twice the random read IOPS and 40% or so more on random write IOPS. I would be interested to see if this is because of NAND placement (as the larger 2TB Firecuda 530 matches the Samsung 980 PRO, but is double-sided)  or total GB per physical cell and more/less over-provisioning in place – but for now we can definitely see that buyers looking for premium IOPS on a 500GB scratch/current-projects drive will see better results on the Samsung 980 PRO (also remember that the 500GB 980 Pro also had superior traditional Write too).  Below is breakdown on the reported IOPS on each drive:

IOPS are always going to be a tricky measurement of an SSD. Individually (i.e the M.2 NVMe in a single drive-use environment like a console or OS), the IOPS will translate to a much more responsive system. However this is still a question of near-milliseconds and the minute you introduce multiple PCIE4 M.2 SSDs RAID’d into a single system, then the multiplication of these IOPS and bottleneck of the rest of the system will level the playing field massively. The Samsung 980 Pro easily provides the best IOPS and excellent price-vs-R/W throughput on the 500GB level and makes it the clear choice at that capacity. However, in practically all over tiers they are level for the most part and unless you are running these drives in massive sessions individually (ie a streamer or eSport professional running daily 4-6hr sessions), then either of the Samsung 980 Pro or Seagate Firecuda 530 will be a suitable choice at 1TB and higher in terms of responsiveness.

Samsung 980 Pro vs Seagate Firecuda 530 – Endurance & Durability

The importance of IOPS and Throughput are all well and good, but how long the SSD can maintain those speeds and operation in general as the years go by is an increasing concern in 2021/2022. The Firecuda 530 and 980 PRO are rated quite differently in terms of Endurance and Durability, so I wanted to take a moment to focus a little more on this – you can thank you years from now! The importance of SSD durability is actually pretty massive. Now that the devices we use all feature incredibly powerful processors, often cloud/network hybrid AI processes and graphical handling that will be instantly bottlenecked by traditional hard drives, SSDs are no longer just the ‘boot’ drive for our OS and are now the day to day working drive. This combined with SSD being used as caching and larger SSD capacities allowing suitable substitution for HDDs entirely means that the CONSTANT concern about SSDs lifespan and the durability of those NAND cells is now quite paramount. SSDs wear out – it’s as simple as that. The more you write, the more wear those individual NAND cells suffer – degrading performance over the years and inevitably leading to drive failure. Likewise, the smaller the drive, the greater likelihood that you will be writing, then rewriting, then rewriting, time and time again. The Seagate Firecuda 530 and Samsung 980 PRO are no exception and alongside massive research and development in better controllers and interfaces to improve performance, the way NAND is improved has led to SSDs lasting lover than ever before. However, SSDs and NAND are not built equally and there is actually quite a large difference in durability between the Samsung 980 PRO and the Seagate Firecuda 530. The Storage industry typically measures the predicted durability and endurance of an SSD as TBW, DWPD and MTBF. They are:

TBW = Terabytes Written, rated as the total number of terabytes that this SSD can have written to it in its warranty covered lifespan. So if the TBW was 300TB and the warranty is 5 years of coverage, that would mean that the drive can receive on average (with deleting/overwriting data each repeatedly) 60 Terabytes per year (or 5TB a month). After this point, the manufacturer highlights that durability, endurance and performance will decline. Often highlighted as an alternative to warranty length when gauging the predicted lifespan of a SSD.

DWPD = Drive Writes Per Day / Data Writes Per Day, this is a decimalized figure that represents what proportion of the capacity of an SSD (where 1.0 = 100% capacity) can be filled, erased and/or rewritten on a daily basis. This is provided using the warranty period and TBW figure. So, for example, if a 500GB drive has a 0.3DWPD rating, that is approx 150GB of data per day

MTBF = Mean Time Between Failure, which is the interval between one failure of an SSD and the next. MTBF is expressed in hours and most industrial SSDs are rated in the Millions of Hours. MTBF and MTTF (Mean Time to Failure) have largely become overlooked in recent years in favour of TBW and DWPD in SSDs, but are still stated on most Data Sheets.

So, now you know what those large Terbyte stats, hours and decimal point details are on the average SSD datasheet. So where do the Seagate Firecuda 530 and Samsung 980 PRO stand on this, as the extra 10-12 months that the Firecuda spent ‘in the oven’ has seemingly produced rather large improvements in it’s predicted lifespan:

Whether it is that Phison E18 controller having better-balanced wear management, the  176 layer 3D NAND or just generally more refinement of the handling as PCIe4 m.2 is explored, there is no ignoring that 0.7 drive writes per day of the Firecuda 530 being more than double that of the Samsung 980 Pro. This is not the first time Seagate have prioritized DWPD and TBW in their SSD media (their first entries into 24×7 NAS SSD featuring 1.0DWPD, practically unheard of at that tier) and given that Samsung have some of the most sophisticated and well-engineered in-house R&D operations in the world (only really challenged by WD), it is very surprising this is drive only has a 30% drive fill per day rating. I won’t focus too much on the MTBF (although clearly there are differences) as it is far less relevant as a spec these days, but in summary and in terms of durability, endurance and predicted lifespan – the Seagate Firecuda 530 wins by a country mile here.

Samsung 980 Pro vs Seagate Firecuda 530 – Conclusion

The Seagate Firecuda 530 is the more recently released drive of the two and it shows. Samsung heavily occupied the PCIe4 M.2 SSD market when this tier of Prosumer media (at the client-manufacturer level) arrived last year. But, as incredible as it sounds, the Samsung 980 Pro is in danger of looking a little slow as the rest of the market produces their own faster and more enduring alternatives in the Firecuda 530, the MSI SPATIUM M480 and Sabrent Rocket Plus. The Samsung 980 Pro still an incredible feat of development and construction, but much like my comparison of the Firecuda 530 and WD Black SN850, entering the market before full widespread adoption of your kind of product is better established can sometimes lead to competitors being given more time to overtake. Adoption of PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD is still by no means ‘standardised’ and even now, numerous mobo manufacturers taht support the technology either do so using bandwidth sharing on the board OR choose to dedicate those potential PCIe 4.0 lanes to a traditional PCIe upgrade slot over M.2.The Samsung 980 Pro is an EXCELLENT SSD and provides the best price for this kind of performance at every capacity tier (not just compared with the Firecuda 530, but against pretty much ALL of the other PCIe4 M.2s on the market right now) which is thanks in a big way to it’s earlier release than most. However, it is impossible to ignore that the Seagate Firecuda 530 has used that extra time in development very wisely and has produced a higher-performing drive for the most part, with a much more enduring lifespan and ultimately better VALUE overall. I recommend buying the Firecuda 530 right now or wait until Samsung revisit their PRO series to see how where they can push things even further!

Brand/Series	Seagate Firecuda 530	Samsung 980 Pro
Best Performance	✓
Best Endurance/Durability	✓
Best Price for TB		✓
Best Extras	✓
Best Value	✓
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