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500GB Black or 1TB Blue for OS?

ExcaliburMM

ExcaliburMM

Senior member
Quick question:
I have a WD Caviar Black 500GB (WD500AALS 7200 RPM 32MB Cache, SATA II) and a WD Caviar Blue 1TB (WD10EZEX 1TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache, SATA III) in my current machine.

I'll be moving up to an FX-8350 build in the next few days. Would I be correct to assume the Caviar Blue, which has a larger cache and the newer SATA interface would make a better OS drive? Does the fact that its a larger drive have any negative impact, such as on seek times or such?
 
I would go with the 1TB BLUE for the OS. Platter Density is better, so it should be faster than the old Black.
 
Black hands down. For OS drive, you need all the speed you can get. It will be painfully slow anyway, but why add to the agony? (if you never owned a SSD, forget the 2nd sentence 😛)
 
....Yes, I'm aware SSDs are awesome. There's just not room for one in the budget right now. 🙁

I am unable to find any information as to the seek times or read/write of either drive. Can anyone provide or point me in the direction of where to find this information? Any recommendation of an SSD is irrelevant at this point in time.
 
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The type of SATA interface is immaterial in your case.

The HD with the most density on the platters will always be the fastest, so in your case the WD Caviar Blue.

I would create some space on the HD (about 120GB) and reinstall the OS to that empty space. This will put all the OS files on the outside rim of your HD where the reads are the fastest. It will also mean that you will not have any hassle migrating your OS to an SSD at a later date.
 
The way I figure instead of 4C/8T I'll be on 8 physical cores and can probably OC the 8350 higher. I'll also have more RAM, a newer board with USB and SATA III which I currently do not have, as well as a hybrid liquid cooler, though my current air cooler is probably pretty close to it as is. I know it isn't much of an upgrade but I got the CPU, Kuhler 620, a 990FX, and 16GB off a friend for 375$. Wasn't going to pass that up. 😛

Thanks for the help guys. I figure I'll use the blue and maybe cut it in half since I usually need 300-400GB for OS/programs due to my applications and such.
 
Yeah you can OC higher but the performance increase is simply put marginal. You'll notice zero difference, take a look: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/697?vs=99 (substituted a 975 Extreme for the OC'd 920)

The only upgrade that makes sense to me, coming from your i7-920@4GHz, is a Haswell 4770K (assuming you actually need the extra threads; if it's just for gaming then 4670K).
I figure I'll use the blue and maybe cut it in half since I usually need 300-400GB for OS/programs due to my applications and such.
Click to expand...
300-400GB just for programs? Wow, you must have a lot of programs. Does that include games? I would probably install games on a separate partition from the OS files
 
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Right but it doesn't figure that I'll probably be able to get that 8350 to 4.4-5GHz, whereas my 920 is going to top out at 4.

Yes, tons of games and such, lots of mods which add a lot to file size, and I want to optimize my load times what little I can since I can't go to an SSD yet.

For 375$ and being able to get around 200$ for my old parts I think its a solid upgrade. Intel boards and CPUs are just too expensive for what they offer right now in my opinion. I'm also disappointed with every follow up to X58 so far.
 
If you read the benchmarks the only place where the fx shines is in single thread performance. Otherwise the old i7 will hold its own against it which is why I still run an oc'd 930 with a 920 on another evga x58 watercooled mb as backup. As for a new boot drive ssd is the only way to go and you can get a 64gb drive relatively cheap these days. Any ssd will dust a spinner in read/write performance.
 
ExcaliburMM, that's exactly what I meant. 4.5GHz vs 4GHz is a pretty marginal upgrade (the processors have similar performance per clock). That's only 12.5% faster, a difference you won't notice unless benching. This isn't worth $175, but you're getting other features along with it too... still, it's a bit meh. An OC'd i7-4770K would be 50% faster than what you have now
 
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