Green Blue or Black?

[JNB]

I'm currently asking questions and finding parts for a new computer build, whilst looking at hard drives I've found Western Digital Green, Blue and Black hard drives. Can anyone explain to me what the difference between them is, and which one they would recommend? The Green costs £59, the blue is £56 and the Black costs £77. The main purpose of this computer is going to be gaming, and with that in mind which one would you recommend and why.

 

[scout_03]

cache size is not the same and warranty also that why there not the same price see this http://www.wdc.com/en/products/internal/desktop/

 

[dextermat]

Hi,

The first think to look at is the speed: get a 7200 RPM

(their is velociraptor series @ 10000 rpm but I saw more failures on them. Their is also SSD that you can consider for more speed since your gaming, but more expensive)

Right now a sata 3 gb vs 6 gb doesn't make a real difference but eventually computers should get faster for 6 gb ones.

As for cache size: no big difference between 8 mb, 16 mb 32 mb or 64 mb but the price (no better performance)

the last thing to look at is the warranty : blue and black are 5 years and on newegg, has less failure rate than green.

In that case I would stick with black. For my part they never let me down.

here's my two cents

 

[Onus]

As far as speed goes, Black > Blue > Green. You do NOT want a Green drive as your OS drive, or one with a pagefile on it; they're fine as data drives but are obviously slow as primary drives. The speed advantage of Black over Blue is less pronounced, and is at the expense of noise; my WD Black is one of the loudest drives I've owned. It's fast, and works very well, it's just noisy. It is also a little warmer, but that hasn't been a problem. With the prices you list, I'd think the Blue drives are obviously the better deal.

 

[JNB]

Thanks everyone for the replies, I'm going to go with the WD Blue.

 

[catatafish]

Blue 3 years.
Black 5 years.
Green very slow.

 

[vrumor]

Cache size doesnt matter? Really? Hate to break it to ya, but there is a huge performance difference in between the cache sizes.

 

[mmilner1]

I actually asked this question at a computer store a few weeks back and the response I got was green was the entry level blue was mid level and black was the high end level.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Performance wise.....Black > Blue > Green


Data from cache moves at SSD speeds, so yes it matters.

 

[po1nted]

Black, always black. Once I went black, I never went back!

 

[thedimsum]

Go with WD Caviar Black it's pretty good for gaming in terms of speed and reliability. Just be aware that there is the Caviar Black with 32 MB Cache with SATA 3.0 Gbs/s
and another with 64 MB Cache with SATA 6.0 GBs/s. If your motherboard can take the faster SATA 3 (6Gbs/s) I suggest getting that one.

 

[JNB]

This is the motherboard i was planning on getting:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigabyte-ga-z77-d3h-intel-z77-s-1155-ddr3-sata-iii-6gb-s-sata-raid-pcie-30-d-sub-dvi-d-hdmi-atx

The only thing that puts me off the Black is the noise and also is it worth the extra £21 over the Blue?

 

[anti-painkilla]

We have a couple of hundred of the Blues, fairly minimal fail rates. A DOA and couple of others over the last 2 years, but mostly have been fine. Personally i would get a black for a home/ gaming computer, not that there is much difference.

JUST DONT GET THE GREEN as others have said. I find them terribly annoying with their power saving features. Like going to sleep while im watching a movie off it.