what mechanical drive?

[Bman123]

I am building a new pc soon and I have a few questions.
Will be playing pc games, streaming netflix and hulu most of the time.
The pc will be on just about 24/7

What drives seem to be quieter and more energy efficient then others?
How big of a difference will there be if I go with a 5,400 vs a 7,200rpm hard drive?

 

[IronWing]

The WD Caviar Green drives are fairly quiet. The Caviar Black are a bit louder but still acceptable. My Puget Serenity quiet PC was built with WD Green.

Edit: I just looked up the latest Serenity system and Puget is still using the WD Caviar Green drives so odds are that they are the quietest drives available.

 

[zCypher]

Honestly I wouldn't bother sacrificing the performance for noise. My mom's 500GB WD Black is completely silent, I seriously cannot hear it make a damn sound. My 1TB Black does crunch a little but still very quiet. Try getting 120-130MB/s on a 5400rpm drive...

If performance is your goal and you're looking for a traditional spindle drive as opposed to SSD, then WD Black is #1 unless you want to save a little bit of money, usually the Samsung Spinpoint F3 is $5-10 cheaper and has been found to offer very comparable performance to the WD Black. Samsung seems to have a good track record with these drives.

The fans in my computers make way more noise than the hard drives, obviously the reason why I can hardly hear it. Still, I don't have anything special in my system. The stock HSF for CPU, stock HSF on GTX460SE video card, and 1 case fan that came with the CM 690. That's it. The 500GB drive I mentioned at the beginning of my post is in a system with integrated video so it's even quieter, yet the HDD is still almost impossible to hear.

 

[Bman123]

I plan on using a dual slot video card to keep airflow good there. Want to use a intake fan on the front bottom and a exhaust fan at the top and back. The pc is right in the living room so I want to keep noise down if I can

 

[Bman123]

Id use a ssd if I didn't need storage for a steam folder

 

[zCypher]

The HDD may not be the biggest source of noise, but my idea of quiet may not be the same as yours. Have a look here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/article29-page2.html. The WD Green looks very good.

Make sure the HDD is mounted in such a way to not cause noise (rubber grommets?) and look for quiet fans for cpu, gpu, case. look for exceptionally quiet PSU as well. maybe try and soundproof the case, noise cancelling foam?

 

[Bman123]

I had a wd hdd before that was noisy it may of been a black drive I don't remember.

 

[Blain]

I had a wd hdd before that was noisy it may of been a black drive I don't remember.

WD has made many drives over the years.

 

[Bman123]

I can't remember what it was lol. I know alot of it is case fans making noise but I remember that noisy drive like yesterday.

 

[exdeath]

Mechanical drive? Why not just go reel to reel while you're at it... then at least the crappy seek time and kilobytes per second transfer speed is justified.

If it must be a primative 50 year old data storage device, then only Raptor or Cheetah IMO.

 

[Blain]

If it must be a primative 50 year old data storage device...

Congrats on 1950s HDD "technology" that we still use today. Ugh.

Is it "1950's" or "50 year old"?

That's what I say about the old fashioned four wheeled vehicles we drive around in.
They're simply glorified "horseless carriages".
When are we going to get a clue and move on into the future?

 

[zCypher]

The tech is old. OP is concerned about noise. Not sure I'd recommend Raptor or Cheetah in that case.

 

[moriz]

if you want decent performance as well as quiet operation, dump the WD drives and use seagate's barracuda line. i have three of them (2x 1TB barracuda 7200.12 and 1x 2TB barracuda green), and with the case closed, i basically can't hear them. as a comparison, the 1TB barracudas are quieter than my 640GB caviar green.

 

[Blain]

Quieter & More efficient while still maintaining some performance = 500GB 7200rpm WD Scorpio Black