March 2007 Extreme Gaming PC Buyer's Guide - Page 4

Hard Drives: Four Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA 3.0Gb/s

Current Cost: $360 ($90 each)
Consecutive Guides: 2
Price Change: -$10

Seagate's "little" perpendicular desktop drive still holds a slight "real world" performance lead over its bigger brothers, of which we almost chose two 500GB versions for their high capacity. But the goal is performance. The 320GB is fast, RAID 0 makes it faster, and four drives in RAID 0 can be even faster. The use of four drives also opens up the possibility of RAID 0+1 for anyone who wants both performance and redundancy, and the price difference between four 320GB and two 500GB drives is only $60.

Seagate's Barracuda 7200.10 series includes modern features such as a 3.0Gb/s Serial ATA interface, Native Command Queuing, 16MB cache, and a 9 millisecond advertised average seek time. Since we are buying OEM, Seagate also includes its exceptional 5-year warranty on the Barracuda 7200.10 320GB.

For those who prefer a dual-drive system, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3500630AS 500GB drive can be found for approximately $145-$150 a piece, which translates into 1GB of storage (unformatted) for under $300.

Optical Drive: Lite-On 20x DVD+RW/-RW LH-20A1S SATA

Current Cost: $45
Consecutive Guides: New
Price Change: N/A

Even a huge $4000 budget cannot justify the current prices for HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc drives, but the new Lite-On 20X burner at least has a performance edge with current media. Its 20X write speed applies to both DVD–R and DVD+R discs, while +RW and –RW media burns at the standard 8X and 6X speeds, respectively.

Users of older and newer media formats will be pleased with CD-R and –RW write speeds of 48X and 32X, but both Dual Layer DVD formats are still stuck at 8X. "Life's Good" for DVD-RAM users as this new model supports the classic media at 12X speeds.

Similar prices between Ultra ATA and SATA 18x drives haven't translated yet to 20x speeds, and the LH-20A1S 20X burner comes at a $15 price premium compared to its Ultra ATA counterpart. Yet nobody wants to mess with wide ribbon cables unless they absolutely have to, so Serial ATA gets the nod.

Floppy Disk Drive: Major Brand Black 1.44MB 3.5" floppy disk drive

Current Cost: $7
Consecutive Guides: New
Price Change: N/A

Bringing back the floppy may be a step in the wrong direction, but Windows still requires one to load RAID controller drivers during initial installation. Most people would rather use an old drive just to meet "F6" driver prompt demands and remove it immediately once Windows is installed, but those few users who don't already have one can find these in black for $7. Major brand labels include Mitsumi, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, and Teac.