Pre-AM2 Mid-Range Buyers' Guide, May 2006

Storage Recommendations

There hasn't been a lot of excitement in the area of computer storage lately - unless you follow the flame wars being waged online between the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD marketing departments? I've used quite a few hard drives over the past year, from every major manufacturer. Western Digital, Maxtor, Seagate, Hitachi, and Samsung all make reasonable hard drives, at least as far as performance is concerned. Without running benchmarks, I certainly can't tell the difference between any of the hard drives. A second area of performance is noise levels, and while most of the hard drive manufacturers are pretty close together, Maxtor drives are definitely among the loudest on the market. (A friend described them as "bongo drums" recently.) Older model drives can also be louder, so we would recommend sticking to the latest models if at all possible. Samsung and Seagate are the quietest drives, with Samsung having a slight lead, but depending on the rest of your computer it may not matter too much. Hard drive noise levels only become a factor if you have a relatively silent system. If you plan on having three or more case fans (counting the PSU), it's unlikely that you will notice hard drive noise.

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Hard Drive Recommendation: Western Digital SATA3.0Gbps 250GB 7200RPM 16MB Caviar SE16
Price: $95 shipped (OEM)

Since performance isn't the overriding concern, we're mostly left with looking at price perGB. It's also reasonable to state that most people don't need more than 250GB of hard drive space - and probably not even that much. The 250GB models continue to offer the best price perGB of storage, and for a couple dollars extra you can get 16MB of cache on certain models. Coming in at $.38 perGB, the Western Digital 250GB SE16 SATA2 gets our pick. I've purchased four of these drives in the last six months, and I haven't had any problems. (I haven't had problems with my Hitachi, Samsung, or Seagate drives either.) If you're looking for a bit more storage capacity, the Seagate 300GB 7200.9 and the Western Digital 320GB SE16 both have a similar cost perGB and also come with 16MB of cache. Seagate also carries a standard five-year warranty, but of course if you ever need to use the warranty you'll be really unhappy with the loss of your data. The best way to avoid data loss is to back up your hard drive, which brings us to our optical drive recommendation.

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DVDR Recommendation: NEC 3550A (OEM)
Price: $37 shipped (OEM)

With prices under $40, we once again reiterate the statement that there's no point in getting anything other than a DVD burner these days. If you've already got several DVD burners in other computers, you might want to go with a 16X DVD-ROM, but that's about the only case where we wouldn't spend the extra money. BenQ, Pioneer, LG, Plextor, and Lite On also make reasonable burners, but in terms of price/performance we would take the NEC 3550A. Plextor also has an 18X burner out, but with a price of $100 not to mention reported media incompatibilities, you should save your money for now.

Hard Drive Alternatives
Western Digital 3.0Gbps 320GB 7200RPM 16MB Caviar SE16	125
Seagate 3.0Gbps 300GB 7200RPM 16MB Barracuda 7200.9	122