uwisuwerme7

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I'm building a new system. I get a killer deal through intel which gives me a C2D6300, 965 Intel board, and Vista Ult for 220. I was thinking about making my primary HD A 74 gig Raptor for the reason that I don't use more than fifteen gigs for storage myself. Would I really benefit from this or have regular SATA drives gotten better to rival this older Raptor?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136033

I was also looking at this memory

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820148017

Suggestions on a power supply?
 

immagikman

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I would go with the newer 160GB Raptor for my boot drive, you can't have too many RPM's :)

The extra space if you don't want it for your boot disk, just partition it off.

Just my opinion though...Im a bit of a Disk Space freak with roughly 3.5 Terabytes in the house at the moment.
 

horstmann

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I don't know how much you want to spend on a powersupply or how much power you will need because you didn't list a video card, but THIS ONE should power 90% of the systems out there and be very reliable.
 

uwisuwerme7

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I wasnt planning on getting a video card for the reason I just don't play games. I'd like to just to have it, but I dont need to spend an extra 200 bucks on something i wouldnt use. If I did I would have to go high end just cause that's how I am.
 

frankienyc123

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I use the 74gig drive and its fast! If your building a new system and want the best performance the Raptor is the way to go, but it will be a bit noisier than most drives and cost way more. Its not a very good bang for the buck upgrade, the performance upgrade over a 7200rpm drive is small but noticable. Its not a major differance like say the differance between a pc with 256megs of ram and one with 2gigs, its very minor. Its for those people who dont mind spending alot to get a small performance increase. The 74gig Raptor is about $150 which is over $100 more money than a standard 80gig sata drive will cost you. So if your on a tight budget that $100 would be much better spent on a better cpu, gpu or more ram. If money isnt a factor and you want top performance then the Raptor is for you.
 

Scooby2

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untitled1as6.jpg
 

fuzzy33

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I was thinking about making my primary HD A 74 gig Raptor for the reason that I don't use more than fifteen gigs for storage myself. Would I really benefit from this or have regular SATA drives gotten better to rival this older Raptor?
No, newer 7200 rpm SATA drives are not as fast as a 74 gig Raptor.

You would notice the speed difference if you get frustrated at the time it takes to boot, to load software, to load or save files or to scan a disk.

Another difference is that Raptors are noisier, especially the 150 gig version. If that is a problem, you might want to get a quiet computer case.

An alternative to a Raptor is two identical small drives in a RAID 0 setup, with a third larger drive for backups. This would probably be quieter, but it would be more expensive and have three times the failure rate, since there are three drives. Also, my understanding is that the speed benefit with RAID 0 would occur only when booting up or when loading or saving large files, while Raptors are faster for all files.

Fuzzy
 

diplomat696

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raptor all the way baby, I have a 74gig raptor which I bought for my system when I built it about 3yrs ago and its still going strong.

The raptor makes boot times much faster, windows install is faster, everything is faster basically. If you want top of the line then get the new 150gb raptor, or do a raid 0 with 2 74gb raptors.

When I build my new comp if i can afford it i think I am going to try to do a raid 0 with 2 of the 150gb raptors but the cost is kind of heavy. If you get 1 74gb raptor and then use all your other drives for storage you wont be disappointed in its performance.
 

ma2ha3

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honest i cannot tell the difference between a modern 7k rpm hd and the raptor 10k hd.

In real life application.

i have the 150G non view port version.
 

goldfish

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I have 2 36gig raptors in raid 0. I purchased them about 3 days after they came out (had to wait for newegg to get em). I have been using them as my primary storage ever since... God, that has to be over 3 years ago. The only thing that i have found that is faster then 2 36 gig raptors in raid 0 is 2 74 gig raptors.

Also, when the raptors first came out, they came with a 5 year warrantee, something that no other company was doing with desktop drives. Heck, back then, that was when manufactures were dropping down to 1 year warrantees.

If you absolutely have to have the fastest sata drivers, accept no substitute.
 

dean7

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That Raptor is a great drive. Even though I haven't trusted WD for many years (I have had a TON of WD drives go out on me), I have to admit that they might have finally done something right :D.
 

niz

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honest i cannot tell the difference between a modern 7k rpm hd and the raptor 10k hd.

In real life application.

i have the 150G non view port version.

Then either you don't have it set up right, or you never do anything very disk-intensive.

Just emailing/web-surfing you won't notice a difference,but running stuff that hits the hard drive hard ( DVD encdoding etc) or just copying large files around you should see a significant difference.

>> I have the 150G non view port version

This is definately the right drive to get comared to the windowed raptor X. Its the same drive mechanically but because there's no window its much quieter and for some reason the non-windowed version has a higher reliability MTBF. Also $50 cheaper for otherwise the same drive.
 

excentric_13073

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I've got twin 36's also, and they are one of the best purchases I have made for my computer. I don't use all that much space either, and these are worth their weight in gold. on the other hand, if you aren't really gaming, then what do you do that would fully use the ability of these hard drives? It's something to think about. I would say the extra cost isn't worth a faster Windows boot time alone.
 

Blown_65

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Really, in my opinion, it depends on what type of hdd's you're used to working with. Like me for example... I've been using my WD250KS 7200rpm sata3.0 and when I made the jump to a new raptor 74gb about 2 months ago... not much difference. I mean, don't get me wrong, boot up is just a hair faster, but on the other hand install/uninstall/defrag/disk check are all much quicker, but when it comes down to day to day performance... ehh, so-so. Personally a few milli-senconds here and there aren't worth the price tag. BUT, if you've been one of those who has held on to your Athlon XP or P4 northwood or any other system with an IDE hdd... any new raptor will knock your socks off!!!
 

rodney_ws

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honest i cannot tell the difference between a modern 7k rpm hd and the raptor 10k hd.

In real life application.

i have the 150G non view port version.

This guy must not be very observant... I went from a 7200 RPM WD drive with 8 MB of cache up to a WD 74 GB Raptor and there was a perceptible difference... no, it wasn't night and day... but it was definitely noticeable. If you're going to build a high-end system, I don't see how it could hurt to drop an extra $100 and upgrade to a Raptor.
 

lcdguy

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after having owned a 36gb raptor drive for a number of years i probably wouldn't buy another one. Not that it's not an awesome drive. But rather the actual performance difference between my 36gb and 320gb drive are quiet small. I personally love my new Seagate drive to pieces.
 

ddrcollegeguy

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I'm building a new system. I get a killer deal through intel which gives me a C2D6300, 965 Intel board, and Vista Ult for 220.

Sounds a lot like the Intel program, but before you begin building an aggressive system you should know that the provided mobo doesn't overclock (which limits the usefulness of good RAM), and the rest of you reading this should know that there is no choice in cpu. But addressing the question, the raptor makes a good difference in loading times and being that you have no large storage needs I would recommend you pick one up. You may be lucky enough to find the older 8MB cache versions at nearly 1/2 the price, but that is another price/performance choice you have to make. Good luck!

Verdict: YES. Get the raptor.
 

zerapio

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honest i cannot tell the difference between a modern 7k rpm hd and the raptor 10k hd.

In real life application.

i have the 150G non view port version.

Well, there are this things called games that have awfully long load times. With this driver those load times reduce a LOT!

I also don't have huge demands for space but I like things to move fast and so this drive was the one for me. As for noise I don't notice anything out of the ordinary and no, I don't have a hearing problem :)

I've had the 150 since they came out and have been extremely happy. Like another user said they are worth their weight in gold.
 

lcdguy

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heres a HDTACH test i just ran on my 2 drives i ran the long test.

Untitled-1.jpg


I would test a 74 or 150gb raptor, but someone needs to send me one first :)
 

g3neration

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I dont really think the Raptors are worth it but then again I went down a different path. Currently I have a UW SCSI Atlas IV as the main drive and 1TB in a raid 0 ( none of them Raptor ).
 

ethel

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I bought a 74GB raptor 6 months ago to try and speed up my PC and it made a significant difference compared to the 2MB 7200 drive I have.

Like you, I'm not one for a lot of storage, so it didn't matter to me whether I got 300GB or 74GB.

The main differences are loading Windows, loading game levels and much less time when leaving a game to wait for the swap to be sorted out by Windows (even though I have 1GB RAM).

So if you don't really need the space, it's probably worth getting one for the extra speed. If you do want the space it's not worth it.

But they are definitely louder - mine makes that coffee-grinder sound when it is seeking.