PCIe 4.0 SSD debuted in the market in 2019, after 2 years of development and popularization, the PCIe 4.0 SSD on the market is now more and more abundant, it is compared to PCIe 3.0 SSD, the read and write speed has been greatly improved. With the increase in choices, the price/performance ratio of PCIe 4.0 SSDs has also risen, and it has begun to become the preferred configuration for mid-to-high-end PC installations. And Seagate also launched a new generation of flagship solid-state this year - Seagate Coldplay 530 series SSD, which is the protagonist we want to test this time.
The official description is that the Seagate Coldplay 530 SSD uses the Group Master, E18, customized by Seagate, with an integrated PCIe4.0 transmission protocol, the maximum continuous read speed can reach 7300MB/s, twice that of PCIe 3.0, and the latest 3D TLC NAND particles can provide excellent speed and durability for PC games. Offering up to 4TB of capacity, the Seagate Coldplay 530 Series offers up to 1.8 million hours of average time between failures (MTBF) and up to 5100TB of total write data and excellent durability. There are 500GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB versions to choose from, we got the 2TB version, let's take a look at the actual performance of the Coldplay 530 SSD.
Packaging design
According to the evaluation convention, first look at the box appearance of the Seagate Coldplay 530 SSD, the outer packaging of the Seagate Coldplay 530 continues the orange and black style of this series, the back is also printed with the basic parameters of the SSD, after opening, in addition to the SSD body, there are product manuals and some paper stickers.
Let's take a look at the main body of Coldplay 530, the front of the product is covered with a layer of stickers, and the product series, name and transmission protocol are marked, and the product is integrated behind the product, including the product SN code, PN code, the standard capacity of the product and other important information. After tearing open the paper paste, you can see the specific distribution of the ColdPlay 530's main control chip, flash memory, etc.
The master controller is the Seagate-certified Group Phison PS5018-E18, manufactured using TSMC's 12nm process, supporting PCle 4.0 transmission protocol, 8-channel design. In terms of flash memory particles, you can see its number, which belongs to the 3D TLC particles in the group package, 176 layers stacked, a single channel can provide a speed of up to 1600 MT/s, a single capacity of 256GB, a total of 8 on both sides, composing a total capacity of 2TB. The DRAM cache is the original SK Hynix, which also has the corresponding number, and there are two in a row, a total of 2GB. From the perspective of structural design, they are all original components, theoretically speaking, there should be a good performance performance, and then enter the testing link.
Test platform and description
The test platform uses Intel Core i9-11900K processor, the motherboard is MSI's MAG Z590 TORPEDPO, installs dual-channel DDR4-3600 8GB*2 memory, the test disk will be installed on the M.2 interface of the directly connected CPU, and the system disk is hung on the M.2 port of the PCH, so that the test disk can play the best performance.
The test includes disk tests of CrystalDiskMark, PCMark 10, PCMark 8, PCMark 7, as well as TxBENCH's full disk write, IOMeter's discrete test, and the object Samsung's 980 Pro 1TB.
CrystalDiskMark
First, let's take a look at the peak performance test of CrystalDiskMark, at the queue depth 8, Seagate Coldplay 530 2TB continuous read and write speeds are 7006/6814 MB/s, QD32's 4K random read and write IOPS are 1022000/1269000, whether it is pure read or pure write, its performance is very good. It can be seen that the Pure Read and Write Performance of the Seagate ColdPlay 530 2TB in peak mode is better than that of the Samsung 980 Pro, and the continuous performance and random performance of mixed read and write are much better.
Let's take a look at the RealDiskMark real performance test of the Seagate Coldplay 530 2TB, because the peak performance of the SSD is measured at a high queue depth, in fact, the queue depth of daily operation is only about 1 to 4, and the Seagate Coldplay 530 2TB continuous read and write speed is 4294/6000 MB/s at the queue depth 1, which is better than the Samsung 980 Pro, especially in terms of continuous write speed, the advantages of the Seagate Coldplay 530 are quite obvious The difference is close to 2400MB/s, while the 70/30 hybrid read and write performance is weaker than the Samsung 980 Pro.
In terms of latency, the Seagate ColdPlay 530 2TB has a random read delay of 45.6us, a random write delay of 11.2us, and a 70/30 mixed random read and write delay of 36.26us, the random read delay performance is quite excellent, compared with the Samsung 980 Pro, it can be seen that the random read delay and mixed random read and write delay of the ColdPlay 530 are comparable to the Samsung 980 Pro, while the write delay is much lower than that of the Samsung 980 Pro.
PCMark 7 disk test
PCMark's disk test is played back with disk trajectories, which can better reflect the performance of the SSD in practice, and the Seagate Coldplay 530 score in this test is 26951, which is slightly higher than the Samsung 980 Pro's 26339 points, which is also at the excellent level.
PCMark 8 disk test
The average transfer rate of the Seagate Coldplay 530 2TB in the PCMark 8 disk test was 984.90MB/s, which is much higher than the Samsung 980 Pro.
PCMark 10 disk test
PCMark 10 storage test in addition to giving the transmission rate of each SSD will also give the average delay, the average transmission rate of the Seagate Coldplay 530 is 483.92MB/s, the average delay is 57us, the transmission rate and average latency are smaller than the Samsung 980 Pro, of which the transmission rate is about 32MB/s higher, and the latency is 1us lower, basically comparable.
TxBENCH full disk write test
This test is a full disk continuous write test of the tested disk without partitioning, which will fill the free space of the entire disk, and we can see a lot of information from this write speed curve.
Seagate Coldplay 530 2TB SLC Cache capacity of 210GB, this cache capacity can be said to be quite excellent, when there is a cache its write speed is 6373MB/s, the cache runs out for a long time after the write speed is between 3500 and 3800MB/s, the average is 3710MB/s, until the write volume comes to 1609GB, there is another unstable phenomenon, and then the write speed has been stable at 1400 to 1800MB/s. The average is 1548MB/s. In addition, the average write speed for this entire segment of the uncached area is 3066MB/s.
IOMeter testing
The following is the discrete distribution of IOPS recorded after a two-hour random write of 4K QD32 to the SSD disk using IOMeter:
The stability of the Seagate Coldplay 530 2TB is still very good, and the initial IOPS can be maintained between 280,000 and 320,000 for about 22 minutes, which is the speed of the Seagate Coldplay 530 SSD 2TB and blank flash memory. After the flash memory is full, the write IOPS drops to about 250,000, and lasts for 10 minutes, and finally drops to 100,000, and begins to slowly decline steadily, and after two hours have passed, the write IOPS can still be maintained between 45,000 and 70,000, and the performance stability performance is still very good.
3DMark game performance benchmark
3DMark is an important tool used by many players to test their own game consoles, in the past 3DMark test is to test the performance of graphics cards, and now 3DMark has added the latest "storage benchmark", which is a benchmark tool specifically designed to test the performance of SSDs, hybrid hard disks and HDD games. Like pcmark 10's storage tests, 3DMark's storage tests are based on real-world application disk trace playback, which can reflect the most realistic performance performance, and test items include: boot loading Battlefield 5 to the main game menu, boot loading Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 to the game main menu, and boot loading Overwatch to the game main menu. Let's take a look at how the Seagate Coldplay 530 2TB will perform in 3DMark's Storage Benchmark.
Judging from the test results, the score of Seagate Coldplay 530 2TB is very high, directly to 4099 points, the transmission bandwidth is 705.31MB/s, and the average storage time is 44us, which is completely at the top level of the industry.
Let's take a look at how the Seagate Coldplay 530 2TB of bandwidth performs across games:
Let's take a look at the average access time performance of the Seagate Coldplay 530 2TB across games:
It can be seen that in the 3DMark game performance benchmark test, in the face of major game works, Seagate Coldplay 530 2TB has shown excellent performance in terms of game loading, recording, installation, and saving, which belongs to the level of the top flagship SSD. It has to be said that the Seagate Coldplay 530, which fully supports the PCIe 4.0 protocol, can bring a better gaming experience.
summary
The whole result test down, Seagate Coldplay 530 SSD 2TB performance is quite powerful, 7300 MB / s read and 6900 MB / s write performance in today's SSD market is absolutely top level, not only that, the SSD also has a good cache capacity, latency performance, etc., the overall performance is better than the Samsung 980 Pro. In general, The Coldplay 530 has achieved the ultimate performance in terms of read and write speed, dynamic cache, and full load, and can meet those enthusiasts.
In terms of price, Seagate Coldplay 530 Series SSDs are available in four capacities, retailing for 999 yuan (500GB), 1699 yuan (1TB), 3699 yuan (2TB) and 6599 yuan (4TB). In addition, Seagate Coldplay 530 2TB also has a 2550TBW of ultra-high write volume, 1.8 million hours of MTBF (mean time between failures) and a 5-year warranty, and also provides a free original data rescue within three years, which can be said to be very sincere, so that users can feel at ease in data security.