Hard Drive Questions- From a Noob

[alpha fox]

Hey everyone. I am building my first PC and I have a couple of questions on drive specs. First I plant to use this computer for gaming, photoshop (light rendering), and general multitasking. As it stands for now my rig is shaping up as follows.

Case: Cooler Master Haf 932 Black
CPU: i7 950
CPU Fans: Corsair H50
Motherboard: Asus P6X58D-E
Memory: CORSAIR XMS3 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMX6GX3M3C1600C7
Video Card: 6870
Power Supply: Corsair HX 750
Hard Drive: Western Digital 7200 RPM 1TB 64MB Cache 6.0 sata
Optical Drive: Asus Black 24x DVD/CD
Wireless adapter ASUS PCE-N13 IEEE 802.11b/g/n PCI Express Wireless Adapter Up to 300Mbps

Now I put the Western Digital in as the choice at the moment. My questions are as follows.

1. I know cache is important that i why I went for the 64mb cache, but am I wasting money on something that is overkill?

2. I went for the 6.0 sata connection, does this matter or is the drive to slow to take advatage?

Any other advice you guys could provide would be awesome, thanks.

 

[smokedalmond24]

For Gaming and photoshop you could get an SSD (Solid State Drive). They are superfast but super expensive.

Whether 6.0 sata will make a difference in speed would depend on the mobo supporting it I would assume

Bigger the cache the better!

Also, this post looks like something for the First Time Build section of the forums

 

[geofelt]

1) Cache is not that important to performance. The hard drive designers pick the appropriate size. I would ignore it as a selection criteria.
2) Current hard drives can not saturate even the slower 3.0 sata. The transfer rate applies to the hard drive cache to sata transfer which is already miniscule. It has no bearing on the platter to interface transfer rate which is much slower and determines much of the drive performance. Still, 6.0 sata is a good thing. the rapid advance of SSD's will soon allow then to saturate the bus.
3) I am not much in favor of liquid cooling. Any decent air cooler will do the job unless you are a record seeking overclocker.
You can get a good one for <$40.
4) Budget $100 or so for a SSD for the OS and apps. Your system will feel much snappier. You can then use a cheaper, slower drive for storage and backup.
5) Look at the XFX750w unit; equally good, and a bit cheaper:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817207003
6) Are you near a microcenter? They will sell you a i7-950 for $230 to a walk in customer.

 

[alpha fox]

Wow, Thanks for the answers. Guess I will see if I can shift around for some other stuff. Thanks for the advice. I will post a build soon in the new/first time build forum.

 

[alpha fox]

Best answer selected by alpha fox.