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Which attribute is more important?

M

Mustang64p

Member
I'm buildinga computer for my wife to use lightroom and photoshop.
I5 2500k
Asus P8Z68 M PRO
8gb1333mhz ram (corsair)
Radeon 6570 video
vertex 3 60gb for os programs and scratch

heres my question. for the storage drive is it more important to get a hdd with a larger cache or 6gb/s? im sure both is the right answer but ineed to prioritize so i can afford one wi atleast 1tb. my main question is does 6gb/s make a big difference on mechanical drives? if you see y other chges youd make feel free to let me know. thanks!
 
6G HDD is no faster than 3G HDD in anything except burst speeds. Get the largest DRAM(64MB is good) equipped HDD you can afford.
 
The storage side isn't THAT important. CPU and RAM is. Unless you're working with multi-gig file sizes, the storage side really isn't going to be that big of a deal, and even then, you want the RAM to load into and the CPU to crunch whatever it is you're doing...IMHO.

But, it depends on what you're doing. If you're just retouching, resizing, other minor things, then my point it moot.
 
Thanks for the input so far. My wife will be handling a lot of large RAW files so she will be stressing the storage system a little more than the average user. Ill stay away from the the 6gb drives and focus on the cache size a bit more. any recommendations on a drive around 150 or under the bigger the better?
 
You can buy 300GB velociraptors right now on ebay for $69 apiece (supposedly new, good rated seller). Get like 5 and build a redundant raid array and a couple spare drives. Mega fast performance for a decent price.
 
I would go with a Western Digital black drive. WD has the best reliability at the moment and their black drives are the fastest if you don't want the increased noise of a Raptor.

6Gb/s interface for HDD's is all marketing. A WD blue has a sequential max speed around 130MB/s.
 
the biggest issue I see with the above mentioned build spec's is the use of a smaller Sandforce controlled drive. You'll want to be sure and scratch that data to another volume or you'll degrade that SSD and slow it down even moreso than it will already be when writing incompressible data to it. May want to check into using Fancycache by Romex to keep that smaller SSD a little leaner/cleaner.

As for the rec'd HDD to use?.. well.. that's purely user perspective and you'll et mixed reviews for sure. I've always liked Seagate's Barracuda's and have never had issues(although I skipped the -11 series issues). I've tested many HDD brands before settling on about 12 Cuda's for various raid arrays. Cooling and consistent V's can make all the difference though for just about any HDD out there.

If the above posters prices are right?.. not a bad deal at all since the latency for those drives is pretty decent despite the smaller capacity points. 4 of those raptors in raid.. and 2 of those V3's in R0 would be awesome for such a machine. Probably overkill.. but you'll be jealous of that machine and want a new build for yourself. lol
 
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