best hard drive for pc gaming 2017

waseem

waseem

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 14, 2008
Messages
421
Hello guys,
I want to ask for the best hard drive for pc gaming 2017
I'm using an i7 920 oc to 4.2ghz stable @24/7 with asus p6t-se with gtx970, the loading times on the game is so high and some guys told me to change the old 500gb sata 2 hdd, so I want to upgrade it to 1tb with high end performance such WD BLUE but what is the best choise to buy from amazon
Regards
 
If price to capacity is a non-issue, SSD is better for raw performance.

But the actual benefit of putting the said games on SSD varies by game. I know of games with loading speed that benefit greatly from SSD to literally having no difference, and some of the latter games have > 10s loading times.

This assumes that your OS is running of a SSD to begin with, if you are not, buy an SSD and move your OS onto it.
 
Based on his sig his os is on a 120gb SSD. So should be okay.

But as others suggested, get an SSD for games.. That said I believe your system only supports SATA 2 anyway, so any modern SSD will be bottlenecked by your interface in terms of read/writes, but access times should still not be affected and loading times should still be far better than a HDD in most circumstances. Sorry but a 1TB Blue WD is not 'high end performance'. It's a simple storage drive. Blacks are their 'performance' line but pale compared to an SSD for speed in all accounts..
 
SSD's are pretty damn affordable these days; I see no reason not to get one unless you're after large amounts of storage that just arn't cost effective within your budget in the form of SSD's.
 
Dont look back brah!

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The best hard drive option performance wise is the Western Digital Black 1TB drive. Budget wise, a WD Blue 1TB would be fine, really anything that is 7200rpm speed. As others have stated, if you really want games to load faster you should go to a dedicated ssd for games. Though given your older mobo, I wouldn't go high end ssd because you only have sata2 ports.
 
+1 for SSD. Use a secondary hard drive for non-critical stuff like photos, movies, etc.

If you must use a HDD for your OS/applications drive, certainty do not use a Blue as that is a budget drive. Get the Black for WD, or better yet go with Toshiba.

Even with technology like Optane memory, I still prefer using a secondary drive for my data files. That way reinstalling OS is really easy.
 
SSD all the way baby. Even my "budget" Samsung 850 evo blow's any ole spinner out of the water.

Aside from Windows loading a lot faster (I keep my install pretty clean though), i noticed my frequented games such as World of Tanks, Skyrim (w/ mods), and Red Orchestra 2 responded very well to being put on an SSD.
 
Ranulfo said:
The best hard drive option performance wise is the Western Digital Black 1TB drive. Budget wise, a WD Blue 1TB would be fine, really anything that is 7200rpm speed. As others have stated, if you really want games to load faster you should go to a dedicated ssd for games. Though given your older mobo, I wouldn't go high end ssd because you only have sata2 ports.
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Seagate Firecuda SSHD , while I do not have experience with this model, may be capable of taking the performance crown from the WD Black , for a platter drive..
 
Hey there, Waseem. This is the Official Seagate Forums Team. As many users in this thread have already mentioned, one option you are going to want to consider here is a solid-state drive. You haven't mentioned your budget for the upgrade, so we don't know what your situation or plan is there, but if you're trying to stay more on the budget-control side of things, yet still want to improve the gaming performance, an option that may be a good fit here is a SSHD, or Solid-State Hybrid Drive, which combines aspects of both traditional spinning HDDs (large, more affordable storage capacity) and SSDs (performance).

These have an SSD cache, usually somewhere in the area of 8GB (but this can vary), which can significantly improve things such as loading times, particularly in open-world type games when loading new areas of maps. These drives tend to offer a sort of price compromise between cheaper traditional spinning HDDs and expensive SSDs. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions!
 
I am having this same issue at the moment. Has anyone ever used the Firecuda SSHD for gaming along with a regular spin drive?
 
DrwnG76 said:
I am having this same issue at the moment. Has anyone ever used the Firecuda SSHD for gaming along with a regular spin drive?
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I've heard good things about this...firecuda has 5 year warranty too and the 2.5" can be found on sale for like $89....
 
If desktop machine, get the 3.5''. Very few reasons to go with a laptop drive if you have the room for a full size faster drive.
 
DrwnG76 said:
I am having this same issue at the moment. Has anyone ever used the Firecuda SSHD for gaming along with a regular spin drive?
Click to expand...

Here are a couple charts we'd like to share on the matter:

The first one compares startup times across several popular games across a traditional spinning 7200 RPM HDD, FireCuda, and an M.2 SSD (128GB). The white is for SSD, the orange for FireCuda, and the grey for the 7200 spinning HDD.

Startup Times

The next one compares the first 3 days of gaming storage utilization across several popular titles, and SYSmark ratings from various drive types and combinations. First of the grays is 7200 RPM 1TB spinning HDD, second (lightest gray) is FireCuda, third (darkest gray) is an SSD + 7200 RPM HDD combo, purple is SSD + FireCuda combo, and lastly, blue is SSD.


First 3 Days Gaming Storage Utilization

DrwnG76 said:
either or. Which would you prefer?
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2.5" is a laptop drive. 3.5" is a desktop drive. The main reasons to choose the 2.5" drive over the 3.5" is if you have power-saving concerns (as laptop drives tend to put using less power as a priority), and of course, if you happen to have seen a better deal on one. They're pretty similar when it comes to specs in most areas other than power management. Here is a spec sheet for the 2.5" and one for the 3.5" if you'd like to take a look for yourself.
 
Ranulfo said:
The best hard drive option performance wise is the Western Digital Black 1TB drive. Budget wise, a WD Blue 1TB would be fine, really anything that is 7200rpm speed. As others have stated, if you really want games to load faster you should go to a dedicated ssd for games. Though given your older mobo, I wouldn't go high end ssd because you only have sata2 ports.
Click to expand...

Since you mentioned best, bigger drives are better since hard drive performance isn't linear.

Also SATA2 or not, get an SSD, no reason for putting games on HDDs these days unless you have significantly more game space than you are willing to fork out for SSD.
 
When is Firecuda coming in capacities greater than 2TB?

I'd consider switching but pushing 3TB installed atm
 
I'm using the Firecuda on my machine. SSD for OS and programs and SSHD for game storage. I haven't done any comparison, but it seems to work well and I haven't had any issue.
 
+1 for a 2TB SSHD.

It's what I've done for my games drive the last few years and it works fantastic. I started with a 500gb momentus SSHD and now have a 2TB Seagate SSHD.

Good mix of space, value, and performance!
 
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Another thing to keep in mind the Firecuda in 2.5" is not a 7200 rpm drive, while I believe the 3.5 option is. But, maybe the Seagate rep can confirm that.
 
jlbenedict said:
Another thing to keep in mind the Firecuda in 2.5" is not a 7200 rpm drive, while I believe the 3.5 option is. But, maybe the Seagate rep can confirm that.
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You are correct. Thank you for the clarification. This is actually a really good point.

The 2.5" FireCuda is a 5400 RPM drive and the 3.5" FireCuda is a 7200 RPM drive. The lower RPM rate is part of how the laptop version of the drives saves on power consumption. Here is the product manual for 2.5" and one for the 3.5" if anybody would like further information on them.
 
Archaea said:
+1 for a 2TB SSHD.

It's what I've done for my games drive the last few years and it works fantastic. I started with a 500gb momentus SSHD and now have a 2TB Seagate SSHD.

Good mix of space, value, and performance!
Click to expand...

I ordered this drive for my rig. Awesome responses. +1 for the 2TB SSHD.
 
I use a 512GB SSD for OS, apps, and a few games (GTA5, BF4, BFH, BF1, take up over 250GB on the SSD) and the rest of my games are on a WD 4TB Black.
 
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