# Which HDD to get for gaming?



## sapped1 (Dec 27, 2014)

Hey guys,

I'm thinking of building a new PC specifically for gaming, and am wondering which HDD should I get cos this is one of the least looked at parts.

The components I'm getting are:
R9 290 GPU
i7 4790k CPU
Asrock Extreme4 Mobo
8GB DDR3 RAM 2400 C10

Here's the list I'm looking at:
http://au.pcpartpicker.com/parts/internal-hard-drive/#sort=d7&qq=1

There seems to be a crazy amount of good rating for Western Digital WD10EZEX and Seagate ST1000DM003, are these the best for gaming?

Also this is the store I'm using since I can get a special price there:
https://www.umart.com.au/umart1/pro/index.phtml?bid=9

So I'm curious which one should I get since there's so many HDD choices available. Also a alot of the games I play are very CPU intensive and some not even multi core optimized, like mount & blade, total war, arma etc.
So which one is the best for this case?

Appreciate any help in this matter!


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## pigulici (Dec 27, 2014)

If you have the money, buy 1TB Samsung 850 SSD...


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## GreiverBlade (Dec 27, 2014)

i have a SSD (OCZ VertexIII and nope no failure no nothing running strong since end 2011 or beginning 2012 i cant remember xD still 100% life remaining reported from divers soft) and 2 1tb HDD 7.2k rpm(plain Toshiba DT01ACA100) i notice no huge difference between installation on SSD or the HDD i use for games usually

i also tried a sata 2 10k RPM velociraptor .... so in the end a basic Sata 3 1tb 7.2k rpm (lowest price also) still do fine (my previous HDD was a sata 2 7.2k rpm 500gb from samsung that one ... yes it was a bit slow,) so let say as long as you don't choose a green or a sata 2 HDD ... you are fine (almost the same rig as yours if we except the HyperThreading and the +267mhz on the ram)



pigulici said:


> If you have the money, buy 1TB Samsung 850 SSD...



if you have the money for that : save it and buy 2 crucial MX100 512gb in raid or even a MX550 1tb and use the surplus for something else (i can't get why Samsung is so much recommended ok good quality but the behavior of the company is ... ahhh well that's just me ... nevermind)


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## newtekie1 (Dec 27, 2014)

I'd recommend against the WD Blue.

I'd go with the Seagate and a small 60GB SSD for cache.

There isn't much noticeable performance difference between different hard drives.


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## hat (Dec 27, 2014)

I'll just say that I cannot recommend an SSD for gaming. I can only recommend an SSD of a moderate size (64GB being more than enough for me, but I have a 128GB) for the OS drive and programs.

I do have an SSD for games, because I had a little extra money to burn after a very long work week with a ton of overtime a good while ago. When I put it in and put my games on it, I noticed no worthwhile difference. At this time I had an i7 920 at 4GHz, and I experienced stuttering in STALKER (as the game loaded smaller areas that together make up the large maps as I moved around). I was hoping an SSD with its quick access time and improved random read speed would cure this and make it smooth, but no. Other games may have seen a few seconds faster load time but I just can't justify the money spent on an SSD to store games on.

If it were me building a system again I'd get a 64GB SSD for my OS and a WDC Black SATA III of appropriate size for games, or maybe get one big enough to store games and the storage space I need for other crap.


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## sapped1 (Dec 28, 2014)

Ahh thanks! By the way I forgot to mention this last time, I will buy a SSD next year on my overseas trip, where I can get it for much cheaper.

So I'm wondering, if I install all those CPU intensive games onto the SSD, does the performance speed of HDD still matter or not?

What I meant is, if I install the games onto SSD, does better quality HDD gives better frames or less loading time even if the game is not installed on there?

Or is the HDD completely not taken into consideration in this case?

Sorry I'm still pretty new to PC components. Trying to decide between the Western Digital Black and Western Digital Blue, don't know if it's worth spending the extra money.


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## 1nf3rn0x (Dec 28, 2014)

sapped1 said:


> Ahh thanks! By the way I forgot to mention this last time, I will buy a SSD next year on my overseas trip, where I can get it for much cheaper.
> 
> So I'm wondering, if I install all those CPU intensive games onto the SSD, does the performance speed of HDD still matter or not?
> 
> ...



A HDD will not affect ingame performance at all unless you are recording, which in that case a faster hard drive may get you 5-10fps extra. Other than that all you would see is faster loading time. I'd recommend buying a sata 3 seagate barracuda which would be fine.


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## TRWOV (Dec 28, 2014)

Barracuda or WD Black


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## Jetster (Dec 28, 2014)

There is not enough benefit to justify the WD Black. The WD10EZEX is fine. Unless you really want the 5 year warranty. If you can get it on sale then fine. Otherwise there is nothing shabby about blue or Seagate. Any new 1 tb drive will be fine. They are all real close in the failure rates now. Below 5% all brands. Stay away from refurbished or used

And nothing can touch a really big SSD for all your games and OS

You dont need 2400 ram and please get a good PSU


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## Frag_Maniac (Dec 28, 2014)

WD Black 1TB


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## GLD (Dec 28, 2014)

I went with a Seagate 1T SSHD (hybrid drive) and am really happy with it. It is noticeably quicker all around to me. It's not leaps and bounds faster, but it is faster then a regular HDD. Seagate also makes a 2T and a 4T SSHD. I have another 1T drive in my rig for storage. It only gets powered up when I need to access it, thanks to the sweet Orico hdd selector switch.


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## Toothless (Dec 28, 2014)

Not sure why they can't use a HDD for gaming, and a different HDD for recorded video to feed into. Two 500GB drives would work unless you're like me and install more games than a certain ISP likes to allow.


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## BiggieShady (Dec 28, 2014)

Toothless said:


> unless you're like me and install more games than a certain ISP likes to allow.



Internet service providers allowing their customers to install a game on customer's hard drive? Are you sure there aren't some kind of hallucinogenic fumes coming out of your oven?


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## zo0lykas (Dec 28, 2014)

Hi

I highly recommend you SSD Samsung evo, sure if you have money, if no we can stop  on SSHD Seagate good price for the size and speed.
in youtube you can found lots of video SSHD vs SSD and you can look hybrid not losing much for the price and size 

Regards - Tomas


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## RejZoR (Dec 28, 2014)

Take WD Caviar Black and pair it with a caching solution like Sandisk ReadyCache. Works like a charm in my case. Or you can go with SSHD drives that already have SSD integrate for caching. Until SSD's get at least 2TB in size for a reasonable price, this is really the only solution for high performance, high capacity.

I'm a gamer and i'm teling you this from experience. 800GB of Steam/Origin/GOG/Retail games and whatever I play, the loading times are always ridiculously short. No need to shuffle relevant data to SSD, software does that on its own for me.

Alternative is buying a fast HDD, a cheap SSD and buy eBoostr software. It's cheap and very flexible and you can make your own massive SSD caching system on the cheap with larger cache capacity than just 32GB that i got with ReadyCache.


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## jboydgolfer (Dec 28, 2014)

First,  ,_*read the posts that people take the time to write*_ Since they are doing it to help You out.
Second, Your question was answered many times over, just take the time to read _*ALL*_ of each post and You'll see it in there.
Finally, HDD's will make as much difference on FPS,and loading(in games), as using triple ply toilet paper makes on Your cars gas mileage.
So, in closing _*BUY THE CHEAPEST sata 3 6GB/S HDD YOU CAN FIND!*_

Sorry to be direct, I just saw a lot of people saying VERY similar things there,over n over again.


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## claylomax (Dec 28, 2014)

hat said:


> When I put it in and put my games on it, I noticed no worthwhile difference



Exactly my thoughts; after a long time considering an SSD and waiting for prices to fall, I got one and didn't notice much improvement, even for the OS. What I love though is that they're totally silent.


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## Jetster (Dec 28, 2014)

There is a big deference with SSDs. Boot time as low as 20 seconds and large maps like BF4 load in 30 seconds instead of 2 min. No frame rate increase though


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## hat (Dec 28, 2014)

SSDs are obviously the best. Lowest power draw, highest performance (even for games? yes, but not noticible in any way), most reliable... but cost prohibitive. For the price of a 1TB SSD, you can get a 6TB HDD. That's a ton of storage.

I noticed a big difference putting my OS on the SSD, but not games. I'm still not even using half of my 2TB.


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## FordGT90Concept (Dec 28, 2014)

7200 RPM with as much capacity as you can afford.  Most of my games are on a 3 TB (over 2/3 full) Barracuda and I can't complain.


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## sapped1 (Dec 28, 2014)

Alright thank you guys so much, looks like I'll set it to the WD blue one


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## Toothless (Dec 28, 2014)

BiggieShady said:


> Internet service providers allowing their customers to install a game on customer's hard drive? Are you sure there aren't some kind of hallucinogenic fumes coming out of your oven?


Download limits per month. Like Comcast had/has their 300GB per month cap.


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## BiggieShady (Dec 28, 2014)

Toothless said:


> Download limits per month. Like Comcast had/has their 300GB per month cap.



Ah those limits ... don't they just lower your maximum download speed if you cross the limit ... I think they should do that at least for flat rate accounts


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## Toothless (Dec 29, 2014)

BiggieShady said:


> Ah those limits ... don't they just lower your maximum download speed if you cross the limit ... I think they should do that at least for flat rate accounts


They charge you if you go over 300GB and more per 50GB over.


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## newtekie1 (Dec 29, 2014)

BiggieShady said:


> Ah those limits ... don't they just lower your maximum download speed if you cross the limit ... I think they should do that at least for flat rate accounts



Comcast varies depending on where you live and what internet tier you have.

In most markets their Economy Plus customers really get the shaft.  They almost always sign people up with a 5GB a month cap.  Usually saying if you sign up for our "Flexible-Data Option" you'll receive a $5 bill credit each month.  Sounds great, most people take it without asking another question.  When they do ask what the "Flexible-Data Option" is the salesperson usually replies very vaguely saying if you don't use too much data you'll get $5 a month off.  Most people don't go any further and just think "Oh, OK. I don't use the internet too much so that should be good!"  But what it really does is lowers the data cap on their plan from 300GB to 5GB.  So you'd think, "ok, but if you go over 5GB you just don't get the $5 and you still have a 300GB cap then, right?"  Nope, if you go over the 5GB then you don't get the $5 AND they charge you $1 per GB over 5GB... Yeah, tell me that makes sense.

I had a friends that signed up with this, they did everything over the phone and were never told the details of the "Flexible-Data Option" when signing up.  It was buried in the fine print of the paper work they receive when the service was installed, but I don't believe that should have been enough.  It was never on a contract they signed, or a paper they were ever shown.  It was just in the folded up paperwork they give you in that envelope.  They were coming from 1Mbps DSL to Comcast.  The Economy package was supposed to be 3Mbps, but they got almost 10Mbps most of the time.  Their son went ape-shit downloading things, watching youtube, they signed up for netflix and were watching stuff almost constantly, etc. The first bill came, and it was supposed to be $29.95 - $5 for Flexible-Data = $24.99  ... It was over $200.  They had used 150GB of data the first month and with taxes(yes, you are taxed on the $1/GB) it was over $200!

I know I got a little off topic, and a little ranty, but I just want to warn people about Comcast's tactics.  If they ever start offering this Flexible-Data Option on their other tiers be careful!


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## GLD (Dec 29, 2014)

sapped1 said:


> Alright thank you guys so much, looks like I'll set it to the WD blue one



I will put in 2 more cents. I have nothing bad to say about WD Blue drives, I have a few.

After experiencing my Seagate SSHD hybrid drive I can not recommend a regular sata HDD over a SSHD. The SSHD is the better choice if the budget allows.


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## SuperSoph_WD (Dec 29, 2014)

Hey, @sapped1!

TPU's community gave really great and detailed information and recommendations about gaming storage solutions.
The 1 TB version of both WD Black and WD Blue overlap in specs but they are designed for different purposes and thus deliver different performance, which I think you'd be able to notice if you have them both side by side.
Yet, a lot of gamers are pretty pleased with WD Blue's performance in their rigs, especially if it's combined with an OS SSD.
I guess all I can do now is share links to both drives' specs and leave you with the decision:

WD Blue: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=P4poYe
WD Black: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=p7HlQO

Good luck & Merry Christmas! 
SuperSoph_WD


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## GreiverBlade (Dec 29, 2014)

by the way i got a lot of WD drives never got any problems but some friends did ... so just to be safe i switched to Toshiba from WD and Samsung (well i did had problem with the Velociraptor ... now it is 2 time out of 3 not detected in the bios  )
i know ... quite illogical since i have a OCZ drive and with the so called failure rate of these ... i should also switch just to  be safe ...  (well OCZ is now Toshiba ... soooo ... ah whatever  )

let say WD blue or any 7200rpm from Toshiba or Seagate (the 7200.14 from SG is quite good as far as i have hear about)


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## claylomax (Dec 29, 2014)

newtekie1 said:


> They had used 150GB of data the first month



$200 for 150GB! Some new games are more than 40GB;
I pay £180 a year and have unlimited downloads.


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## peche (Dec 29, 2014)

hat said:


> I'll just say that I cannot recommend an SSD for gaming. I can only recommend an SSD of a moderate size (64GB being more than enough for me, but I have a 128GB) for the OS drive and programs.
> .



+1 Crucial M4 64GB SSD, OS Win7 and some other "Work" sotfware... still having free space..
Games: 320GB Seagate Barracuda 7200Rpm Sata III HDD (too old to remember full specs...!)
Personal data, music, movies pictures and shit: Seagate Barracuda  2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s


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## BiggieShady (Dec 31, 2014)

newtekie1 said:


> Yeah, tell me that makes sense.



Let me also go off topic with Comcast just to say that I can't tell you that makes sense because it's crazy and crazy rarely makes sense. What can I say other than I hope people have alternatives.

To be on topic, let me also say that mechanical drive with ssd as cache is best of both worlds and great for games especially with large libraries while only couple of games run often.


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## silentbogo (Dec 31, 2014)

I had some bad experience with WD drives over the years: 
[*] 750GB drive underwent RMA within 2 mo. of purchase in my old rig
[*] a pair of WD Blue drives failed within a month of each other (served 6 months in RAID-0)
[*] 500GB WD Black started to have failed sectors in less than a year of less than moderate operation in my brother's rig.

I'd rather go with Seagate or Samsung. Barracuda is an unnecessary expense - you won't get any noticeable performance boost from 10K rpm.

In my current rig has a 240GB SanDisk Extreme II SSD as the main (and the only) storage. So far I am very happy with it: it spent ~6 months inside my ASUS R500 laptop and now moved to my desktop. SSDs will not improve your gaming FPS in any way, but load times are definitely much faster. In games like Metro 2033 it takes only 2-3 seconds to load the new location and in some instances it is almost momentary.


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## 64K (Dec 31, 2014)

In my experience Comcast does fine until you need some kind of customer service and then you're most likely in for a hassle. They've probably only been as good as they are in my area because for the last few years they have had competition from EPB.

OP take a look at how many games you like to keep in your games library. If you had asked me two years ago when I built this rig and put a 1 TB HDD in it thinking that would be plenty I would have said the same to you but I ran out of space because games are getting huge and had to buy a 2 TB. If you don't keep a big library of games on your HDD then 1 TB is fine but it's up to the individual. My recommendation is a WD Black based on my experience with them.


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## peche (Dec 31, 2014)

agreed …Seagate Drives rock…. they are little cheap here in Costa Rica, and also perform pretty good, otherwise WD drives are a little expensive here and I have no good memories about them…

Regards,


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## CrAsHnBuRnXp (Dec 31, 2014)

hat said:


> I'll just say that I cannot recommend an SSD for gaming. I can only recommend an SSD of a moderate size (64GB being more than enough for me, but I have a 128GB) for the OS drive and programs.
> 
> I do have an SSD for games, because I had a little extra money to burn after a very long work week with a ton of overtime a good while ago. When I put it in and put my games on it, I noticed no worthwhile difference. At this time I had an i7 920 at 4GHz, and I experienced stuttering in STALKER (as the game loaded smaller areas that together make up the large maps as I moved around). I was hoping an SSD with its quick access time and improved random read speed would cure this and make it smooth, but no. Other games may have seen a few seconds faster load time but I just can't justify the money spent on an SSD to store games on.
> 
> If it were me building a system again I'd get a 64GB SSD for my OS and a WDC Black SATA III of appropriate size for games, or maybe get one big enough to store games and the storage space I need for other crap.


How can you have no discernible difference between games loading on an ssd vs a hdd? its 10fold.


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## hat (Dec 31, 2014)

I just didn't notice much of a difference... at least in the games I was playing heavily at that time. Borderlands 2 and Stalker are what I looked at mostly. Coming from a 500GB WDC Black to a OCZ Agility 4.


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## CrAsHnBuRnXp (Dec 31, 2014)

newtekie1 said:


> Comcast varies depending on where you live and what internet tier you have.
> 
> In most markets their Economy Plus customers really get the shaft.  They almost always sign people up with a 5GB a month cap.  Usually saying if you sign up for our "Flexible-Data Option" you'll receive a $5 bill credit each month.  Sounds great, most people take it without asking another question.  When they do ask what the "Flexible-Data Option" is the salesperson usually replies very vaguely saying if you don't use too much data you'll get $5 a month off.  Most people don't go any further and just think "Oh, OK. I don't use the internet too much so that should be good!"  But what it really does is lowers the data cap on their plan from 300GB to 5GB.  So you'd think, "ok, but if you go over 5GB you just don't get the $5 and you still have a 300GB cap then, right?"  Nope, if you go over the 5GB then you don't get the $5 AND they charge you $1 per GB over 5GB... Yeah, tell me that makes sense.
> 
> ...


Im going to have to talk to my folks about their comcast bill because now this has me curious. Im constantly redownloading games off steam, uploading shit to youtube, watching youtube vids, etc and I honestly have no idea if we have an internet cap or not. I have 150meg internet and i never notice if the net is slow unless my latency happens to just skyrocket for no reason (which knock on wood hasnt happend in like a year and speaking with comcast they never mentioned anything about a data cap and capping my net speed)


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