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Best bang for my buck!

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Yamitoko

Member
Joined
May 2, 2012
Location
Cheyenne, Wyoming, USA
Hey guys, I'm coming up on a new PC build in a little under a week and I'll be ordering parts here soon. I'm doing bit of reading about HDDs right now and SSDs as they were a topic that I haven't really spent too much time exploring in the past with my limited knowledge and experience, I figure I would turn to the pros! So here is the situation, the computer is going to be used for moderate/heavy gaming and aside from that just regular use and browsing, not much data transfer or anything of that nature. My main question is whether or not these drives are going to be my best bang for my buck or if you guys have any other suggestions regarding it.


I'm going to be buying a 1-2TB HDD for the computer as well as a SSD around 120GB, now what I'm looking at now are these:

The interest in the below drive is because of the increased storage capacity for not much more money:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236404

I think this drive speaks for itself but I'm not sure I'm going to need/use the full potential of it:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236625

My main reservations with this SSD revolve around the lack of reviews and seemingly high percentage of bad ones although there are only 8 reviews written on the egg for the SSD:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820173071

Now, as far as experience with SSDs go, this is going to be my first SSD and I'm pretty familiar with what purpose they serve but that is right around my budget for an SSD at this time and a 120GB should be able to hold my OS and a couple of games depending but that would be the only use need out of the SSD.

Thank you in advance for any suggestions regarding my HD choices!
 
Hey guys, I'm coming up on a new PC build in a little under a week and I'll be ordering parts here soon. I'm doing bit of reading about HDDs right now and SSDs as they were a topic that I haven't really spent too much time exploring in the past with my limited knowledge and experience, I figure I would turn to the pros! So here is the situation, the computer is going to be used for moderate/heavy gaming and aside from that just regular use and browsing, not much data transfer or anything of that nature. My main question is whether or not these drives are going to be my best bang for my buck or if you guys have any other suggestions regarding it.


I'm going to be buying a 1-2TB HDD for the computer as well as a SSD around 120GB, now what I'm looking at now are these:

The interest in the below drive is because of the increased storage capacity for not much more money:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236404

I think this drive speaks for itself but I'm not sure I'm going to need/use the full potential of it:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236625

My main reservations with this SSD revolve around the lack of reviews and seemingly high percentage of bad ones although there are only 8 reviews written on the egg for the SSD:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820173071

Now, as far as experience with SSDs go, this is going to be my first SSD and I'm pretty familiar with what purpose they serve but that is right around my budget for an SSD at this time and a 120GB should be able to hold my OS and a couple of games depending but that would be the only use need out of the SSD.

Thank you in advance for any suggestions regarding my HD choices!

With that SSD, you get what you pay for. I'd be looking at one of the Samsung Evo's. If you can swing it look for something around 256gb of storage.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA3FA2EV1108
 
+1 to that.. SSD reliability can be hit or miss, even with the good stuff, but why take the chances
 
Hi there.

Regarding the hard disk choice, considering what you want to do I would suggest the Black drive instead of the Green one.

That's because WD Green is an energy-efficient drive, and it is meant for backups and secondary storage. Its features allow it to be a great choice for quiet backup builds or for archiving, but for heavy gaming it won't be the best choice because it's designed to save power and wear by spinning down when it can (e.g - once an hour) which won't be the best option when it comes to the loading times.

WD Black on the other hand is the performance drive in WD's consumer line and it's designed for heavy gaming, big workloads and intensive file usage. The HDD has good features such as a built-in dual-core CPU that makes the drive great for multitasking, and it will give you faster loading times compared to the Green one, which will be beneficial in open world games and such that have to load often and load in objects.

Hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions you may have.

Cheers! :)
 
Hi there.

Regarding the hard disk choice, considering what you want to do I would suggest the Black drive instead of the Green one.

That's because WD Green is an energy-efficient drive, and it is meant for backups and secondary storage. Its features allow it to be a great choice for quiet backup builds or for archiving, but for heavy gaming it won't be the best choice because it's designed to save power and wear by spinning down when it can (e.g - once an hour) which won't be the best option when it comes to the loading times.

WD Black on the other hand is the performance drive in WD's consumer line and it's designed for heavy gaming, big workloads and intensive file usage. The HDD has good features such as a built-in dual-core CPU that makes the drive great for multitasking, and it will give you faster loading times compared to the Green one, which will be beneficial in open world games and such that have to load often and load in objects.

Hope this helps and feel free to ask any questions you may have.

Cheers! :)

It absolutely does and I greatly appreciate the input. I will definitely go with the black series drive then.
 
I agree with basically everything said here so far.

120GB of storage for an SSD being used as an OS drive (with some games) likely won't be enough. I have been looking into SSD's and hard drives for a new build myself for several months now. At first I considered the 120-128GB SSD's, but with how often I fill up my main OS drive, I decided that wouldn't be enough.

Now for a short story. I started out with a 160GB WD Caviar, then two years down the line that filled up and I had to upgrade to a 320GB WD Caviar Blue. Now, two more years have gone by and the 320GB drive I upgraded to is now nearly full as well, even after I transferred over 100GB's of data to a secondary storage drive (WD 500GB Caviar Black) (I like Western Digital hard drives in case you hadn't guessed. :D). I only have four games installed on my OS drive at the moment, but they take up a lot of room, over 150GB the last time I checked.

I'm looking at 250GB minimum for an SSD OS drive, I may go 500GB though since I might install or play more games in the future. You can't go too far wrong with a Samsung 850 Evo SSD.

Agreed on the WD Caviar Black, 1TB or 2TB sound like they would be good for your uses if you don't need to store a whole lot of data and will give plenty of room for future storage if it is needed. And the Caviar Black typically has quicker access times and longer usable life than a Caviar Green in your type of usage scenario.
 
I absolutely appreciate the long, thought out post. I have ordered the 250GB 850 EVO and the Black series 1TB. My whole rig is ordered and waiting to be shipped, I'm excited, thank you again everyone for the help on the questions here.
 
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