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Yet another PC thread - HDDs & SATA opticals

ToastToast Registered User regular
edited February 2007 in Games and Technology
Ok, so... my current box was mid range three years ago, and now I need a new one pretty quickly, but I haven't looked at hardware in detail since I bought the last one. Whoops.

Current plan runs as follows:

Socket 775 Shuttle barebones kit
Core 2 Duo (cheapest)
2GB corsair value select (probably 533 or 667 - does it make that much of a difference which? I know what it means, but I don't know if C2Ds are bandwidth hungry)
Some kind of largeish SATA HDD
Optical drive
ATI/AMD graphics card

Last three are my main points of indecision. What kind of HDD are best these days? Is it worth getting an optical SATA drive? And what's the best route for graphics - a cheapish card (say X1600P) now and a DX10 upgrade in a year or so, or something better like an X1900P straight away? Trying to keep costs down and have an eye on future updates - I know DX10 needs Vista, and I know there aren't many games coming with DX10 support, but Eve's getting a DX10 client soon and I play that a lot, so...

Also, I'm still avoiding nVidia cards on principle. I know it's probably not the optimal choice in terms of value for money, but I'll live with that.

Toast on

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    steeefsteeef Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    For hard drives, it depends on what you're most concerned with. Seagate and Samsung both have drives with 5-year warranties, and I believe others do as well. If you're concerned about noise, Samsung's SpinPoint drives are among the most quiet. However, they're not the speediest. Tom's Hardware has a nice rundown of a good selection of different brands:
    http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/16/2007-hdd-rundown/

    For optical drives, do you want to write DVDs/CDs? I found two SATA DVD (non-writers) drives on NewEgg: Asus and Lite-On. I can't vouch for their quality, but the Asus one seems fine. I don't think SATA is that important on optical drives, as they're limited more by the read speed, which depends on how fast they can spin the media (currently 16x for DVDs, 48x for CDs, last time I checked).

    steeef on
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    wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    you can also find Plextor SATA opticals. the PX-716SA(which I have) is SATA, it's basically the Px-716A with a SATA interface instead of IDE. they perform about the same.

    Basically, if faced with 2 identical drives, one IDE, one SATA, I'd pick the SATA one, just for the fact the cable is smaller, and most mobo's only have 1 IDE controller now, which if you ever plan to use an IDE HDD, could limit you.

    wunderbar on
    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
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    taliosfalcontaliosfalcon Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    wunderbar wrote:
    you can also find Plextor SATA opticals. the PX-716SA(which I have) is SATA, it's basically the Px-716A with a SATA interface instead of IDE. they perform about the same.

    Basically, if faced with 2 identical drives, one IDE, one SATA, I'd pick the SATA one, just for the fact the cable is smaller, and most mobo's only have 1 IDE controller now, which if you ever plan to use an IDE HDD, could limit you.
    the SATA drives are usually quite a bit more expensive though...for no noticeable performance increase

    taliosfalcon on
    steam xbox - adeptpenguin
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    ToastToast Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    Excellent, cheers guys :)

    Toast on
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    GiganticusGiganticus Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    Yeah the only reason for the SATA connector is for cooling airflow nuts and for those who have no IDE slots on their mobo.

    WD also have 5 year warranties. They run fast too, but loud.

    And unless you care about overclocking, the value select RAM stuff is fine as long as it's branded.

    (You're British right? I'm also currently speccing a new system so I got this RAM: http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=4B18 which is as fast as the Core 2 Duo FSB allows. It's also cheaper elsewhere like scan.co.uk)

    Giganticus on
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    RookRook Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    I'd be fairly tempted to sit on an midline X1900 for a bit. I'm still umming and ahhing over whether I can have a shuttle as my next PC though, I might jump ship and go to uATX instead. The Dx10 cards from ATi are supposedly bigger power hogs than the 8800 series is.

    edit: on ram, the 677 is faster with aggressive timings, but the difference is miniscule. 533 is fine.

    Rook on
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    ToastToast Registered User regular
    edited February 2007
    For those who care, I'm posting on my new box right now. Cheers, guys :)

    Oh, and no idea how I managed to miss the last two posts, sloppy of me. Got a Seagate 250 because it has NCQ (which is probably a good thing), and the RAM is indeed Corsair Value Select (same as my last system). Went for the X1600 graphics just because it's cheap and much faster than my old card :)

    Toast on
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