According to Seagate, the IronWolf 510 is the world’s first PCIe M.2 SSD built from the ground up to be used for caching duties in NAS devices. Priced around £370 for the 1.92TB model, we put this drive through its paces today.

Available in four capacities (at the time of writing this review); 240GB, 480GB, 960GB and the flagship 1.92TB we are reviewing here, the IronWolf 510 is built around an eight-channel Phison PS5012-E12DC controller and Kioxia BiCS3 64-layer 3D TLC NAND.

The quoted official Sequential read figures for the range are up to 3,150MB/s for the 1.92TB and 960GB models, 2650MB/s for the 480GB drive and up to 2,450MB/s for the 240GB drive. Write performance is quoted as up to 850MB/s for the 1.92TB drive, while the 960GB drive is faster at up to 1,000MB/s. The 480GB drive is rated as up to 600MB/s and the entry model 240GB drive gets a 290MB/s figure.

Random 4K performance for the four drive range is quoted as up to 290,000 IOPS read and up to 27,000 IOPS write (QD32 8 threads) for the 1.92TB model. The 960GB drive is rated faster at up to 345,000 IOPS for reads and up to 29,000 IOPS for writes. The 480GB drive is rated as up to 199,000 IOPS and 21,000 IOPS for read and write respectively while the 240GB drive makes do with up to 100,000 IOPS reads and 13,000 IOPS writes.

Seagate has built some very serious endurance into the IronWolf 510. It has a DWPD (Drive Write Per Day) figure of one for the length of the 5-year warranty that backs the drive and a TBW figure of 3,500TB together with an MTBF of 1.8M hours.

Physical Specifications:

• Usable Capacities: 1.92TB.
• NAND Components: Kioxia BiCS3 64-layer 3D TLC NAND.
• NAND Controller: Phison PS5012-E12DC.
• Cache: 2GB DDR4.
• Interface: PCIe Gen3 x4,  NVMe 1.3.
• Form Factor: M.2 2280.
• Dimensions: 22.15 x 80.15 x 3.58mm.
• Drive Weight: 8.3g.

Firmware Version: STIS1029.

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