Seagate FireCuda 510 1TB NVMe SSD Review

By Nathan Kirsch

Final Thoughts & Conclusions

The Seagate FireCuda 510 1TB drive delivered solid performance and seems to be a good mainstream SSD. This drive came out in 2019 and uses the PCIe 3.0 interface, so it isn’t going to win in every benchmark as there are now many native PCIe 4.0 controllers on the market.

We were able to reach the drive top rated read speed of 3,450 MB/s and write speed of 3,200 MB/s write speed in CrystalDiskMark. There were no performance anomalies detected in our testing and this drive should be good for all PC users.

That said, the FireCuda 510 Series uses the Phison E12 controller and is a double-sided M.2 NVMe SSD. There is a newer Phison E12S controller that has come to market that allows for single-sided solutions due to a die shrink of the controller. Phison E12 is built on the 28nm process and the Phison E12S is using the newer 12nm process. Seagate is not using the newer version to our knowledge and we were just sent this drive in 2021.

Seagate FireCuda Gaming 510 Series 1TB NVMe SSD

When it comes to pricing the Seagate FireCuda 510 1TB model that we reviewed here today can be picked up for $159.99 shipped over at at Amazon. That price point is pretty high at over $0.16 per GB. You can find drives on the market using the Phison E16 controller that supports PCIe Gen 4.0 for less than this.

What about other competition Phison E12 based drives? The addlink X70 1TB uses the same controller, Flash and RGB lighting for $154.99 shipped at Amazon. Sabrent sells a Rocket 1TB with the newer Phison E12S controller for $129.98 shipped. So, you are paying a $30 price premium for the older controller design over competitor drives that feature the newer controller.

Seagate FireCuda 510 Series Pricing

Seagate FireCuda 510 series SSDs comes backed by a 5-year warranty and the 1,300 TBW endurance rating on the tested 1TB drive is pretty good.

The Seagate FireCuda 510 Series is solid and performs well, but it carries a big price premium. Would you rather have the latest controller revision for $30 less or possibly a faster PCIe Gen 4.0 drive for the same price? We’ll leave that choice to you! Neither of these drives existed back in 2019 when the FireCuda 510 series came out.

Legit Bottom Line: The Seagate FireCuda 510 Series delivers good mainstream performance, but is priced significantly higher than competing drives based on the same underlying hardware.