New Hard Drive and Memory Help

[Stevenpfo]

As the title would suggest i'm thinking about getting a new hard drive and more memory. My question is: What do I look for? I have no clue other than the big popular numbers. RAM: 256MB or HD size.

To go a little in depth on HDs: My HD is 5400rpm and I want to raise this to the next level (7200). Has anyone tried going higher than that? 10k? 15k? Does it help a lot more and is it worth the big jump in price?

This is all for a gaming computer (think doom3 and everquest 2 graphics and memory wise).

 

[Thrawn]

How much ram have you got now? Cos if it's going to be a gaming pc, you'll want at the very bare minimum 512mb of RAM. 1024mb would be preferred. Some of the games that have come out recently have requirements of at least 512mb.

I've got 512mb now, planning to up that to at least 1024mb. I'll probably just buy a 1024mb stick of ram and put that in alongside the existing one.

 

[Stevenpfo]

Yeah, i'm sitting at 512 (two 256s) now and looking at adding two sticks of 512 (i've got 4 slots).

 

[citizen001]

There's no real need to get a stupidly fast 10/15k rpm hard drive for casual users. a 100G 7,200 will do fine.

 

[Stevenpfo]

Would it help though if you were in a high graphic enviroment? In a game where there were high detail of graphics and a lot of moving objects and shadowing and the such? Or would the money be better spent elsewhere?

 

[bobgote]

in a high graphic environment, you'd be better off with more ram and a good graphics card. the graphics card is going to make the most difference in FPS type games.

and depending on what you're wanting to achieve, it might be worth going for a gig of memory. for your hard drive, i'd say 7200 rpm is fine, i find it best to stay the step behind the big jump in cost. might want to get one with cache memory on it, i don't know how well they go, but i've got one

 

[DreadCthulhu]

What type of motherboard/processor do you have - some older Intel ones would be using RDRAM, while most recent computers use DDR RAM. Make sure you get the right type.

Some brands of RAM have a better reputation for quality than others. I would go with Crucial, Corsair Value Select, Muskin, or Kingston RAM, and if you machine uses DDR, make sure to get the PC3200 stuff. Another thing to look at is the CAS latency - get the 2.5ns, not the 3ns. They are about the same price anyways. Here is a 512MB PC3200 stick from Corsair for $79.

As for the harddrive, in addition to the size & rotational speed, the amount of cache on the drive can impact performance too. Most drives these days come with either 2mb or 8mb of cache (I do know that Maxtor makes 300GB drive with 16mb) - be sure to get a 8mb cache version, the price difference is only like $5. As for the brands, generally Western Digital, Maxtor, and Seagate are considered the best. Here is a 200GB drive from Seagate for $110; it also comes with a 5 year warranty, which is the best that I know of.