It’s great when a company with a terrific product goes and does something fun and maybe a little bit silly, be it ASUS with its love for sticking more screens on a laptop or Secret Lab with its chair colour variety. This time around though we’re dealing with a much smaller (but very powerful) gadget – Seagate’s FireCuda M.2 SSD, with its recently released Star Wars special edition.
Officially called the “Lightsaber Collection Special Edition FireCuda” (we’ll be referring to it as the FireCuda Star Wars edition for simplicity), this powerful SSD takes Seagate’s established FireCuda range of hard drives (which are fast, reliable, and a top pick for PC gamers with deep pockets) and stuffs it with RGB and a creative Star Wars tie-in, with this special edition based on the most recent FireCuda model, the 530. Unlike previous Seagate tie-ins, which mainly plaster a photo of a character from a popular bit of media onto the side of the device, the FireCuda Star Wars edition transforms the M.2 drive to blend RGB lighting with a creative lightsaber faceplate.
I’ve spent some time with the drive, so let’s talk about it.
The force is with me
I love RGB in gaming computers, so it’s no wonder that the FireCuda Star Wars edition impresses me so. Packed with full range RGB customisation (with millions of colours to choose from) and three different faceplates with each unit (representative of lightsabers belonging to Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, and Obi-Wan Kenobi), the user is given a lot of choice when it comes to their specific computer.
For what the drive is trying to do, it does it incredibly well. It’s a cool-as-heck movie tie-in gadget, one that Star Wars-loving PC gamers would definitely appreciate, especially if they’ve just gone through a Jedi Survivor kick like me. I spent a lot of my time flicking between different RGB colours, which translated to different lightsaber colours. The RGB customisation is compatible with a wide variety of apps, so don’t worry about not being able to change the colour.
For the length of my time with the M.2, I’ve used the Obi-Wan Kenobi faceplate, as I didn’t see any benefit in cycling between the plates for the purpose of this review, especially given how difficult it was to install. For the next few paragraphs, I’m going to describe my installation process, to give you some insight on if this extra little bit of RGB is worth it for your build. To get an idea of if this is too technical for you, check out the below video.
For the most part, this is an M.2 with a larger body than usual, to compensate for an integrated heat sink (to make sure the M.2 doesn’t overheat – it’s a good idea to use heatsinks, especially if your M.2 doesn’t come with one). With that in mind, to install the M.2, it’s a good idea to not fit it with the faceplate until the drive is screwed into your computer, just so the screwdriver gets better access. It’s also a good idea to make sure that the LED cable is plugged into the drive before you screw the M.2 into your computer, as it’s quite a finicky ordeal to do this after it’s fixed to your motherboard. Before doing this, be sure that your motherboard has a spare 3-pin LED port, so that the LEDS of the M.2 will actually work. You don’t need the RGB lighting to work for the M.2 to function as a hard drive, but you won’t get the cool lighting (which is the whole point).
You’ll need to lie your PC down so that you can access the NVME slot from above so that potentially misaligning the tiny M.2 screw is less likely (you’ll also need a long screwdriver). Additionally, just be aware that sliding the faceplate on may be a bit of a challenge, as you might have components that get in the way. For my build, this was certainly the case, as the corner of my four RAM modules got right in the way of sliding the plate on.
With the above in mind, installation took about half an hour. Once the drive was properly partitioned (this took two minutes), it was ready to go.
Making the Kessel Run
Let’s not beat around the bush – the FireCuda is fast. With a maximum transfer speed of 7,300 MB per second, you’d be hard-pressed calling this thing slow in any capacity.
Regardless, we’ve tested another M.2 before (the Western Digital Black SN770), so in the interest of fairness, let’s run it against the exact same tests. Here’s how the FireCuda Star Wars edition fairs in terms of game load time.
- Stellaris (from boot to main menu): 16 seconds
- Watch_Dogs 2 (from main menu to gameplay): 22 seconds
- Resident Evil 2 (from main menu to gameplay): 22 seconds
- Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla (from main menu to gameplay): 35 seconds
- Forza Horizon 5 (from main menu to gameplay): 28 seconds
Across the board, the speeds were fairly identical to that of the SN770, although there were a few games where the FireCuda came out as slightly faster, such as Stellaris and Resident Evil 2. Differences were minuscule overall.
In two newer games, here’s how three hard drives performed:
Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
- 20 seconds (FireCuda Star Wars edition)
- 22 seconds (Western Digital Black SN770)
- 25 seconds (Western Digital Blue WDS100 SSD)
Resident Evil 4
- Nine seconds (FireCuda Star Wars edition)
- Eight seconds (Western Digital Black SN770 M.2)
- Eight seconds (Western Digital Blue WDS100 SSD)
Overall, you’re not in the slow lane with this M.2 drive. You’re going to be impressed no matter the application.
Hyperspace
The FireCuda Star Wars edition could add a lot of flare to your gaming PC, but you pay a high price for it. Not that this is unexpected, as M.2 drives aren’t cheap, especially with large storage capacities, but it’s worth weighing up whether or not your gaming PC really needs this extra splash of RGB. If you just need the speed though, it’s worth considering other options.
Regardless, I recommend the FireCuda Star Wars edition as a PC component and think it’d be a perfect pick for big Star Wars fans.
Where to buy the Seagate FireCuda Star Wars edition
This M.2 drive is available in 1TB and 2TB models.
1TB:
Scorptec ($269) | Centrecom ($269) | Mwave ($269)
2TB: