HD upgrade worthwhile?

I have not looked into PC hardware for a while now but was recently thinking of upgrading my sytem; I usually am a few years behind everyone with my upgrades usually dictated by each total war update. I currently have a SATAII 8mb/7200rpm 250Gb hard drive; It had rave reviews when it was released. I was wondering whether it was worth upgrading for a newer 16mb cache model and whether there is any major performance increase.

I have a very limited budget as most of my rig rig also needs improving.

The other option I suppose is to use a RAID array if I could find the same model quite cheaply. Any ideas?

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Originally Posted by Domestic_Ginger

I have not looked into PC hardware for a while now but was recently thinking of upgrading my sytem; I usually am a few years behind everyone with my upgrades usually dictated by each total war update. I currently have a SATAII 8mb/7200rpm 250Gb hard drive; It had rave reviews when it was released. I was wondering whether it was worth upgrading for a newer 16mb cache model and whether there is any major performance increase.

I have a very limited budget as most of my rig rig also needs improving.

The other option I suppose is to use a RAID array if I could find the same model quite cheaply. Any ideas?

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TBH,save your money for a total system rebuild. Even for around £200 to £250 you can build a really nice new modern system!!

For example:

AMD Athlon II X2 245 ~ £50

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=1040351

Asus 760G motherboard ~ £45

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asus-...Board-VGA-HDCP

4gb PC2-8500 DDR2 RAM ~ £37

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/4GB-%...S-5-6-6-18-EPP

Corsair CX400 PSU ~ £40

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/400W-...-year-warranty

OR

Coolermaster Elite 340 case and 460w PSU combo ~ £50

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Coole...60W-PSU-Fitted

Novatech HD4850 ~ £74

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s....html?NOV-4850

OR

Sapphire Vapor X HD4850 ~ £83

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...tml?SAP-4850VX


Scan has free postage for members with over 20 posts and Novatech also has free postage.

The total comes to around £245 for the cheapest components. You should be able to play most modern games well with this setup including Crysis.

Also a modern 320gb hard drive such as this Samsung F1 can be had for around £33:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/320-G...MB-Cache-89-ms

It seems for around £300 you can build yourself a decent gaming PC nowadays!

Thanks for all the reply. I'll aim for the 20 posts (15 to go)! I'm trying to upgrade piece by piece as my budget allows; although my mb, cpu and ram need upgrading all in one go.

You reckon I could save the £33 quid for a few years and not see a loss in performance? Any good reviews or comparisons out there?

Realistically most people won't notice the difference in access times with hard drives - certainly a drive from a few years ago won't exactly be slow anyway (provided it's kept defragged and so on). You could indeed just keep your hard drive and save the £33 quid, but in reality i would worry about getting some more space rather than the performance increase. With games taking up more and more space, and with HD on the rise, etc, etc it's well worth bumping up your space a bit.

You may benefit from things like faster boot time, faster installations, faster searching and so on, but unless you buy a really really knackered hard drive i doubt it will make much difference. I've got a 250GB Western Digital AAKS from a couple of years ago and it's still working fine, it's probably slowed down a bit, but it's still perfectly usable to my mind and i've never noticed it being obviously slow.

The 500GB point is probably what you should be looking at for a cheapish budget, though they're not quite £33 yet!

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/sto...ra-720010.html

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/sto...d-roundup.html

Those are reviews for 500's and 250's, i couldn't find any shoot outs for the 320GB area, i guess because most people go for "rounder" numbers.

So, if you want to stick with the HD you've got, i see no problem in that, 250GB is plenty (Win7 is only 3GB and you might hit 20GB with all your favourite apps installed) you'd have at least 200GB for photos, videos and games, which is fine unless you're likely to be doing a lot of downloading (or photo/video editing).

Thanks for the reply. The £33 could be saved or ploughed back into a better CPU; a 550 instead of the 245 (and a chance to play core lottery!)?

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Originally Posted by Domestic_Ginger

Thanks for the reply. The £33 could be saved or ploughed back into a better CPU; a 550 instead of the 245 (and a chance to play core lottery!)?

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You would have to spend more on the motherboard though. A 770,790GX,790X or 790FX with an SB710 or SB750 with ACC enabled in the BIOS is what you need for unlocking. The 760G based motherboards have the SB710 southbridge which has ACC but many companies do not bother to have it enabled in the BIOS.

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Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH

You would have to spend more on the motherboard though. A 770,790GX,790X or 790FX with an SB710 or SB750 with ACC enabled in the BIOS is what you need for unlocking. The 760G based motherboards have the SB710 southbridge which has ACC but many companies do not bother to have it enabled in the BIOS.

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Good point. I tried to find a 760G with ACC to no avail. Thanks for all the help; If I get to 20 posts I'll make use of Scan's free post and start improving my system through any special offers they run. I may wait for 790's to come down in price (thinking AM3).

Thanks for the help!