SSD's v.s. a WD Black Hard Drive for gaming.

[RYNO MAN]

Which is better in terms of performance and space.

I have a Seagate Barracuda 1TB in my rig right now but am looking to upgrade (or just slide a new drive in). Which do you guys think is better a WD Black with good performance and lots of space, or a SSD with amazing perfromance but little space.

My PC Specs:
CPU: Intel Quad Core i5 3330 (4 Cores; 4 Threads)
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 750 Ti FTW Edition with ACX Cooler (2 GB)
RAM: 8 GB
PSU: Corsair CX 430M
Primary HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1 TB
OS: Windows 8.1 64bit
Keyboard: Sidewinder X4
Mouse: Sidewinder X3

[Air]

Personally, I think that you should go with both. SSDs are much faster but have much less space for the same price. Use an SSD for a boot drive and startup programs and the HDD for most everything else. For the most part, an SSD will only really increase load times for games, not much else for performance unless you're playing games like Garry's Mod or DayZ which access data more than usual. Other than that, it's probably best to keep most games on the HDD.

[RYNO MAN]

Originally posted by Air:

Personally, I think that you should go with both. SSDs are much faster but have much less space for the same price. Use an SSD for a boot drive and startup programs and the HDD for most everything else. For the most part, an SSD will only really increase load times for games, not much else for performance unless you're playing games like Garry's Mod or DayZ which access data more than usual. Other than that, it's probably best to keep most games on the HDD.

Ok thanks. I am a mostly looking to improve load times and startup. My HDD stinks. I will boot up basically any application and my HDD goes to 100% instantaneously. When I am using applications it is at like 70%-99%. So yeah a pretty crummy HDD to begin with so either will be an improvement.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Cheap 120 Gb SSD like Crucial M500 or Samsung 840 EVO for OS and 2 Tb WD Black Series HDD if you can afford it.
You can also get SSD and another 1 Tb Barracuda and RAID-0 two Barracudas together but considering the poor quality of Seagate it would probably be just accident waiting to happen.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Originally posted by Rumpelcrutchskin:

Cheap 120 Gb SSD like Crucial M500 or Samsung 840 EVO for OS and 2 Tb WD Black Series HDD if you can afford it.

That was also going to be my suggestion.
SSD for your OS and core apps
1 - 2 TB WD Black Series HDD for your games

If u have alot of games that would easily fill your current 1TB drive, then go with 2TB if that is within your budget. Then once u have your OS all setup on an SSD, you could transfer files u might need from the Seagate, then wipe the Seagate clean and use that for other things.

[RYNO MAN]

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:

Originally posted by Rumpelcrutchskin:

Cheap 120 Gb SSD like Crucial M500 or Samsung 840 EVO for OS and 2 Tb WD Black Series HDD if you can afford it.

That was also going to be my suggestion.
SSD for your OS and core apps
1 - 2 TB WD Black Series HDD for your games

If u have alot of games that would easily fill your current 1TB drive, then go with 2TB if that is within your budget. Then once u have your OS all setup on an SSD, you could transfer files u might need from the Seagate, then wipe the Seagate clean and use that for other things.

I only need 1TB of HDD space. I use my computer mostly for gaming schoolwork and media (music, HD movies and such). I am using 268 GB on my 1TB HDD right now, so I dont think I will be needing a 2 TB.

I also don't have a massive library of games. I also only install what I plan to play. When I am done playing it, it gets deleted.

What I am wondering, is if the WD Black HDD compare to an SSD when it comes to gaming and performance on your PC. I had a laptop with an SSD in it before and it was lightning fast. I understand that the WD Black drives are not an SSD but will they perform close to what a SSD will? Because the concept in my head now is to get an SSD (or WD Black HDD) to put my OS and games on, but use the old Seagate drive for storing my media.

I dunno...I am confused now...

[Bad 💀 Motha]

No single HDD will come close to providing the lightning fast read/write and overall smooth OS responsiveness that an SSD w/ installed OS can provide.

In your case given your usage and such then best bet would be just getting an SSD and install your OS to that. Then use the Seagate for your games, docs, music, downloads and other files. If you have a particular game that has long loading times when it is installed & run from the HDD, uninstall it from the HDD and then install it to the SSD and that should help out with a particular game. With the OS running off an SSD though, the entire system responsiveness will be much improved.

[RYNO MAN]

Originally posted by Bad-Motha:

No single HDD will come close to providing the lightning fast read/write and overall smooth OS responsiveness that an SSD w/ installed OS can provide.

In your case given your usage and such then best bet would be just getting an SSD and install your OS to that. Then use the Seagate for your games, docs, music, downloads and other files. If you have a particular game that has long loading times when it is installed & run from the HDD, uninstall it from the HDD and then install it to the SSD and that should help out with a particular game. With the OS running off an SSD though, the entire system responsiveness will be much improved.

Thanks. Yeah, most of my games run fine on my Seagate only my really demanding games (i.e. Planetside 2, Garry's Mod, and Shift 2: Unleashed) could use some shorter load times.

But Planetside 2's performance will increase I heard since the game is constatly having to retrieve data.

That sounds like a pretty good setup...

[Pomelo]

SSD (Crucial M500 or Samsung 840 Evo) with 250GB or more for the OS and primary games. 250GB because e.g. the 840 Evo 120GB model (same for many other series) is somewhat slower than its bigger counterparts for reasons.
I myself got a 500GB 840 Evo a while back and oh my god it feels good. Fast startup, fast loading, fast everything. BF4 loads so fast I am in the map playing before most others and before all close LODs are loaded.
However I suggest not using the Samsung Energy Plan if you get one. It'll have your CPU run at full clocks all the time to increase read/write speeds, but well, that'll run your CPU at full clocks, e.g. had my i5 4670 run at 3.4GHz and 1% load. Disabled that energy plan and while my read/write speeds went down a bit, at least now the CPU dynamically clocks down again, meaning 0.8GHz and 2% load as it should be.

[Silicon Vampire]

Using 240GB Chronos SSD for W8.1, core apps and Steam base install with a few bigger games.

1TB WD Black on a SATA 6.0 controller for the majority of my games. I have less than a dozen games on the SSD and they all benefit from being there. However, the WD is very fast as well and even those games seem to benefit from having the pagefile on the SSD.

I also have a 640GB WD Black SATA 3.0 I use for smaller, less disk intensive games that also seems to benefit from this configuration.

[Steve Mahanahan]

Originally posted by Rumpelcrutchskin:

considering the poor quality of Seagate it would probably be just accident waiting to happen.

Unless their quality in the last 4 years has has gone down hill.....I recently upgraded to a 4x Raid-0 SSD from a 3x Raid-0 Barracuda. Its the first time in 10 years my main drive is not a Seagate. I have never had a failure of a seagate, whereas My first HDD Failure was a 40gb WD pata. Recently I was given a WD hdd that "failed" to try and recover info. It would only work if it was standing on its end. Any other direction would cause it to do nothing but click. I feel I need to add that I spent less than $200 retail for my 4x SSD. A savvy shopper can find 100+gb SSD for $50 usd or less.

1 SSD will blow your mind even comparing to a spectacular HDD Raid-0. Loading and boot times and general system response makes it worth the trade off in size and cost...Just My 2 cents.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

In the consumer HDD market, Seagate and WDC are basically all that is left.
The likelihood of you getting a drive that doesn't last long, or is a dud upon arrival is minimal, but it could happen regardless of what you buy.

Just a matter of budget really and choice.
WD costs more but has longer warranty for most drive models.
Seagate is cheap, rather short warranty, but can still perform just as well as WD Blue or Black.

Long as the Seagate is a 7200rpm model, you really shouldn't have performance issues using it for your OS or to run your games off of.