Seagate is coming up with two new products that are specially marketed towards gamers. One of them is the FireCuda 520 SSD, with the other one being the FireCuda Gaming Dock. The FireCuda 520 SSD is an exceptionally fast drive that leverages the power of the PCI Express 4.0 bus, which results in a fast read and write speed. The read rate of the FireCuda 520 SSD has been observed to top out at 5,000MB/s, which is above par for most current PCIe 4.0 SSDs. Seagate's new SSD also delivers up to 4,400MB/s write speeds.
The Seagate FireCuda 520 SSD is available in three capacities - 500GB ($124.99), 1TB ($249.99), and 2TB ($429.99) on Amazon. These SSDs are backed by five-year warranties.
Although Seagate is targeting the FireCuda 520 SSD at gamers, it does not mean that it is the best SSD for gaming. Considering the cost per performance ratio, some SATA 6Gbps SSDs work absolutely fine with most gaming PCs.
On paper, however, the FireCuda 520 SSD is extremely fast in comparison to most SSDs on the market right now. In order to unleash the full potential of the FireCuda 520 SSD, you will need a PCIe 4.0 compatible motherboard, and so far such a motherboard is only offered by AMD (X570). The drive can still be installed on a PCIe 3.0 slot, but the drive’s top-speed is going to be limited.
Another offering from Seagate is the FireCuda gaming dock, which essentially is an external storage with a built-in 4TB hard drive and a PCIe 3.0 slot for high-speed expansion. The dock can be connected to the PC via Thunderbolt 3. Apart from this, the FireCuda gaming dock also includes several other ports including a Thunderbolt 3 accessory port, a 1.4 DisplayPort, Gbe Lan port, four USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports, a USB 3.1 Gen 2 charging port, and two 3.5mm audio jacks. The FireCuda gaming dock is priced at $349.99 and will be available later this month.
