Hard drive and PSU help

aproctor

aproctor

aproctor

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Joined
26 Apr 2008
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Hi Guys,

I am looking to buy another HDD for around £70 and was pretty much settled on a 1TB caviar black, am i wasting my money can a better HDD be purchased for the money? I'm not to fussed about more storage but cannot warrant SSD at this stage.

I am also looking for a PSU around £50, the Corsair CX500/600 looks fairly good for the money as does the OCZ line up around this price point.

Can anyone offer any suggestions? I am not very clued up on PSUs aside from the fact a dedicated 12v rail is a plus.

The budgets may seem skewed but the former is a gift for me and the latter is someone else's money.
 
Been a few threads on here from people with OCZ PSUs that have died

I'd go with Corsair if I'm honest (not biased at all (HX520W here :))

Or the Antec one andi posted looks good too :)
 
Thanks for the advice guys.

I remember Custom PC saying something about the quality of the OCZ offerings so i thik i will leave it (given i had 2 thermaltake PSUs go pop).

Have Antec improved over the last few years as i was not impressed 4 or 5 years ago.

As for the HDD, i am not too keen on Samsung and would rather go with a brand with a history of reliability, not the new kid on the block (i know they are not new, but hopefully you see where i am coming from).

Do Seagate offer anything as quick as the caviar black and are the greens much slower?

Thanks
 
aproctor said:
Frozo

Thanks for that, may i ask why you have recommended them to me? :)
Click to expand...

The BeQuiet PSU I was recommended a while back but I always prefer Corsair as they are a good brand and usually high quality.

And for the HDD it seemed one of the highest performers for 1TB (I could be wrong) but I know that WD are a good brand and make good quality HDD's
 
Antec PSUs these days are top notch, frankly I think their PSUs are on more of an upward trend than Corsair (once they release their HCP range at least).
They use Delta and Seasonic as their OEMs, and these two know what they are doing.

The recommendation for the Antec HCG 520 is the best one in this thread so far. It is based on the Seasonic S12II Bronze design, so if you find a review for the Seasonic S12II Bronze 520W then you can see why you should get that. In fact here are two reviews:
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/954
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=185

Considering that the Caviar Blue is WD's 'mainstream' drive, it is unlikely to be faster than a Caviar Black. However I read a roundup of harddrives on Xbitlabs, and I believe it showed that a Caviar Blue trade blows with a similar capacity Caviar Black. So maybe there isn't much difference between them across the whole range, and they might just be jacking up the prices of their Caviar Black 'performance' line to differentiate it from the Blues.

I think the one advantage WD have is a variety of useful free programs, which you can install only if you have a WD drive installed somewhere in your system, such as Acronis True Image (WD edition). Maybe other vendors have their own useful free programs, but I'm not aware of them. I would only be interested in one of their green drives, as the Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB outperforms the Caviar Black, while being quieter and cooler.
 
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