1TB Blue $60 1TB Black $80 The 1TB drives will house Windows 8.1, games, photos/documents, and some applications. Should I save the money on the Blue?
I do have 2 640 blacks in a steam machine chugging away so its fine as a boot drive The black should be more reliable I would get a smallish 120gb ssd for the system amd the black for your other stuff
Voted but I agree with the above. I have an 840 pro 128 GB as my boot drive and then a 1 TB WD as my storage drive and its a great combo.
Black are a bit faster, and more reliable than Blue. Assuming you have no drives. I would get an SSD (120GB) and a 1TB Blue drive. SSD you put your OS, and you can put your programs as well, and currently playing games, and the HDD you use for your personal data, videos, pictures, etc. If you can afford a 256GB SSD the better, you can put more games inside. Don't get anything bellow 120GB at the moment of this posting, because: a) it's not worth the price for the capacity b) It's slower than the larger sizes, and rarely sent to reviewers c) You'll be tight in space d) You can put Windows, and that is about it, making your computer boot fast, and it stops there. Your programs won't take advantage of, so it will feel slow once in Windows, and startup programs will slow your account loading.
If you're dead set against buying a SSD then the WD Black would be better. In terms of performance it will be slightly better than the Blue but still massively slower than a SSD. Also, as GoodBytes said, it should be more reliable. Well worth the extra $20.
Buy the black then - I have used both fairly extensively and would say that the black is not only more reliable, but faster, too. Just out of curiosity, why no SSD?
I will also jump on the ssd bandwagon! Built 4 pcs now and all run an ssd for OS/programs and a normal drive for storage. I wont build them any other way now. and as above... any reason why you dont want an ssd?
I keep my system fairly lean, anything I don't use gets uninstalled. With that in mind I don't need huge storage capacity and use a pair of SSDs in RAID 0, Crucial M4 256GB each. Been using this setup nearly 2 years and it is still fast and reliable.
Well the question was an option between 2 HDDs for gaming/boot drive. I can't give an opinion on either of those as I would only advise getting a SSD for a gaming/boot drive. It's not being difficult for the sake of it, but for a gaming/boot drive your question is like asking how should I get into town, by walking or by bicycle, well neither, I'd suggest a car. Considering your other thread is about dropping $2200 on a system you can squeeze an SSD in there and still have a 1TB storage option. If you don't then you may as well call yourself Achilles and start prodding yourself in the heel.
