Hardware upgrade advice, please.

19 Oct 2013

Hello everyone.

I am looking to upgrade my hardware but I'm not sure on certain parts so may I have some of your advice before going out to buy them, thanks.

I'm looking to purchase additional HDDs and have come down to these choices:

Seagate 3TB 7200/64
WD 3TB Green 5400/64
WD 3TB AV-GP Green 5400/64

The price difference isn't that much and I don't need the fast WD Black drives because I'll only be using them to store my files. However, I'm not sure which to choose from. Personally, I do not like Seagate products because I previously have issues with their HDDs failing thus I switched all my HDDs to WDs. However, I would like to know of your experience with them and I also understand that they are faster but given my previous experience, I would rather have a stable drives than a fast drive. Also, if I were to choose the WD ones, which one of the two should I choose from? AV-GP seems to be more reliable but I'm not very certain about that because it is my first time buying a Green drive.

My GPU is pretty weak now and I don't have much cash left to spare. So, should I wait for the older gen GPU to hit lower price and buy them or SLI them because at my country, I can get another 560TI for about USD$130. Is it worth the upgrade or I will be better off waiting out?

Sorry for the long text of wall and thanks in advance.

TanyaC · 19 Oct 2013

Personally, I'd go for the Seagate. Overall I've found them to be a little more reliable than WD drives, and better performers.

This might also give you some insights.. PassMark Software - Hard Drive Benchmark Charts

I've never had a Seagate drive fail on me, but I've had over a dozen WD failures.

I'm sure other people have had different experiences.

The WD green drives are the budget drives. Noisier from my experiences. WD dropped their warranty on green drives from 3 years down to 2 years.

Boozad · 19 Oct 2013

I have a 2TB Caviar Green as my storage drive in both of my rigs and they seem fine, they're rarely accessed due to being storage drives so I haven't found noise to be an issue (my Blacks are both very noisy).

As for the GPU question it all depends on your budget and what you want from your graphics. Are you a serious gamer? With a 620W PSU I'd be looking at a better single card, plus that will equal less power draw, less noise and less heat.

Johnthefast · 20 Oct 2013

Hi there. Personally my experience with Seagate has been good. however after running them hard for 5-6 years the majority of mine crashed, as one would expect. However my western digital drives of 2-6 years are all fine.

Please be aware that unless you have a motherboard with a UEFI bios you may experience issues with drives bigger then 2.2tb and you CANNOT use one as a boot drive (to store your operating system on) without a UEFI bios.

as for graphics I currently use a 660ti and previously a 560ti and both have ran all my games perfectly and that includes current releases so a 560ti would be a good purchase as a single card setup.

For the storage drive I recommend a WD 3tb green

AddRAM · 20 Oct 2013

A green or a blue, no need to get a black just for storage

madcratebuilder · 20 Oct 2013

Newegg has 2TB Seagate USB 3.0 external drives on sale for $70 usd.

indianacarnie · 20 Oct 2013

I too have had problems with Seagates and will NOT buy another. Have had 3 failures of Seagate drives against zero failures (knock on wood

) with other brands. Just sayin.....

JackALope52x · 20 Oct 2013

For Hard Drives, I have always used Western Digital because I have never had any problems with them. I recommend their Blue line because I have always gotten more life out of them than the Green. The Black is obviously the best but it really isn't needed for a storage drive.

For your GPU, it all depends on what you do and what type of games you play. If there is any advice I an give you, I recommend waiting and saving up your money to get a newer card that fits your needs rather than older older card that fits your current budget. If you spend your money on an older card, you will have to upgrade it sooner than later and might end up costing you more money.

Hope this helps and let us know what you end up choosing.

kbrady1979 · 20 Oct 2013

WD and Seagate have both had their spells where they produced bad drives, but it seems like the past few years, Seagate has really stepped up their game. I own several Seagate HDD's and they all run quiet, and cool. The only failure I've had just happened to be a WD but that doesn't mean I won't buy another one. I like Seagates performance/reliability/price at the moment and have had no reason to go elsewhere. If you can catch the Seagate HDD.15 4TB on sale, you will be set for quite awhile! I have ordered 3 of them so far, two for me and one for a friend, and they have worked perfectly.

02 Nov 2013

Thank you everyone for the reply and I have been busy recently. Anyway, sent rep to everyone for such amazing advices.

I have decided to go with the Seagate as they are better in price

erformance ratio and hope that it wouldn't fail me.

Anyway, I have been looking at the recent GPU wars between the green and red. I am interested in either the 760 or 280X due to budget restrains. They both have good promotions for the games and offer but I was wondering how do the code works? I live in Singapore so, am I safe to say that if I were to go out and buy either a 760 or 280X, I'm eligible for the games? Or I must wait for the promotion to 'come' to Singapore?

Another questions, since I'm on a budget (USD$300) and I can either only get 760 or 280X, I was wondering which of the card can I squeeze out the most performance? I would like to play casual BF4, GTA V (hopefully on PC) some maybe some other 'graphics-intensive' games on decent settings. Also, is there any other card like 660TI, 270X which is cheaper than my budget can I also get the equal performance too? I would prefer to save as much as possible to get other peripherals.

Sorry for all the questions and thanks again.