We all know that HDDs are essentially obsolete as a technology, as SSDs now do everything better. But HDDs have continued to be manufactured and recommended, as they have one very desirable advantage: A lower price.
SSDs have been getting cheaper though, and have overtaken HDDs in some price segments…
If you are looking to store your digital goodies with the most bang for the buck, then hard disk drives are undoubtedly the way to go. Whether it’s for a NAS, a secondary drive for some less-played games, or any other use where capacity is a priority over speed—there’s no beating the ‘price per gigabyte’ of HDDs. But how do you pick the perfect drive for your use case?
Although almost any modern drive should fit and work fine if there is a free compatible motherboard slot and power connection present (usually SATA, although older systems might have other connectors), there are a few different things to consider when looking to get the perfect drive. In this guide, I will be going over the what and the how of picking out your new drive (or drives!). But first, let’s take a closer look at what HDDs can offer us that an SSD or some other technology can’t, and what drawbacks there might be.
One of the key features in the marketing of the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X was the blistering fast storage drive contained in each of them. Welcome to the big leagues, console players! You’ll finally be able to understand why us PC gamers have been harping on about the excellence of SSDs for the past decade.
However, with great speeds come greater costs for additional storage, so we’re going to do a quick dive into picking the right storage for a PS5, Xbox Series X, or even Xbox Series S. We’ll even include one non-SSD choice, for the budget-conscious gamers.
Let’s get into some details!
In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare famously said: “Keep the body free from disease, what affects RAM affects SSDs.” As always, this ancient wisdom has proven to be correct, and the recent (enormous) RAM price dive is being mirrored in SSDs.
So, let us update our SSD recommendations!
M.2 SATA, M.2 NVME, SSD, HDD—if any of those abbreviations make your head spin faster than a hard drive platter, look no further. This article outlines the different storage options on the market today, highlighting the best use-cases for each and recommending the best product in every class.
Upgrading an older storage drive to an SSD is one of the surest (and cheapest) ways to give a boost to an older PC, but where should you begin? There are three main options on the market today: HDDs, SATA SSDs, and M.2 SSDs. Here’s a look at each.
If you’re close to the ‘Destitute’ level on our main chart—or even within spitting distance—new hardware prices can seem insurmountable. But what if you didn’t have to pinch pennies waiting for a sale? What if you could have a powerful—if slightly dated—system for a fraction of the cost?
Thankfully for you, there’s a surprisingly huge market for used hardware online! eBay is obvious, but forums like /r/hardwareswap are tight-knit, self-policing communities of enthusiasts eager to swap silicon. It’s also quite safe: PayPal is the most popular payment method, with their Goods and Services option offering buyer protection in the event of fraud.
That being said, not all used components age as gracefully as others. We’ve created this guide so you can shop wisely.
Icy Dock’s Expresscage Tool-less Hot-swappable 2.5″ Drive Enclosure
While there are a great number of options these days for good-looking PC cases that entirely lack 5.25” drive bays, the majority of cases still offer at least one of these spaces. And efficient builders won’t want that space being used for nothing.
Don’t get me wrong: Many builders still do want to use those spaces to house intended utilities, including disc drives, card readers, extra USB ports, and even floppy drives. But that doesn’t mean there won’t still be an unoccupied bay sitting around at the end of the day. (I personally have a Pioneer Blu-Ray/DVD/CD player in my tower, and for the time being, it sits above an unused 5.25” bay.)
So, here are a few ideas for what to do with those bays instead of leaving them as cavities in your build:
We’ve gone through Newegg’s current pre-Black Friday deals, and picked out the best deals on PC components.
These sale prices are guaranteed to be the best prices on these parts through Black Friday, which means you can safely buy them now without worrying about a better deal showing up on Black Friday.
Not long ago, there weren’t many options for storing data on your computer. Standard mechanical hard drive disks (HDDs) have long been the de facto choice, but a different type of storage drive is becoming much more popular: the solid state drive (SSD). Solid state drives bring a wealth of improvements over standard HDDs, so let’s take a moment to understand why many PC builders are now choosing SSDs for their primary data storage solution. No wonder server companies similar to https://www.hostiserver.com/ decide to use SSDs for their VPS applications.
