Seagate has launched a new range of SATA SSDs aimed at gamers. It says that the new FireCuda 120 devices are "designed for gamers who require speed, durability, and generous capacity." However, it isn't clear if there is anything at all to distinguish these SSDs from a host of other 2.5-inch SATA choices available without the gaming packaging / branding.
Looking over the Seagate FireCuda 120 SATA SSD specs that are available, I've compiled the key qualities on offer in a bullet point list below:
- Sequential read/ write speeds: up to 560/540MB/s
- Capacities: from 500GB to 4TB
- Durability: 1.8M hour MTBF and up to 5600 TBW
- Warranty: five years
The above is all we have at the time of writing as the product pages don't seem to have been uploaded at the time of writing. Heading over to the Seagate PC Gaming storage home page does show a surprisingly large range of products. If you were really looking to expand the storage in your PC with an eye on boosting performance, you might be better off with the FireCuda 510 (PCIe Gen3 ×4, NVMe 1.3), or FireCuda 520 (PCIe Gen4 ×4, NVMe 1.3, sequential read/write up to 5,000/4,400 MB/s), as long as you have the hardware to support these choices.
Back to today's FireCuda 120 SATA SSD launch, and the new devices will indeed be useful for storing your growing PC gaming library and providing much faster access than an HDD. However, the recommended prices for these gaming branded SSDs seem pretty steep compared to rival 2.5-inch SATA storage choices from the likes of Samsung, WD, SanDisk and Crucial.
Seagate says that its 500GB (£94.90), 1TB (£164.90), 2TB (£324.90), and 4TB (£629.90) FireCuda 120 SSDs are available now.