Picking the Ideal Gaming HDD

[DevITIS]

I've already chosen my SSD for my OS partition and maybe a few high requirements games, but all the rest of my games and other data will go on a secondary drive. Following are what I'm looking for in a HDD.

Desired parameters:
- Reasonably priced (< $150)
- Best reliability possible for the price
- Minimum 1TB, preferably 2TB
- Good enough performance for gaming and massive multitasking
- Quiet enough that I won't really hear it in my Corsair Obsidian (which is built for quiet operation)
- Reasonably low power, but not a major concern

Considerations:
- Seagate Barracuda Standard Series (best all around I think with better gaming performance? and quiet?, but reliable?)
- Western Digital Black Series (best performance, but too noisy?)
- Western Digital Blue Series (general computing, but high enough performance for gaming?)
- Seagate Barracuda XT Series (more storage for the money, less performance?)

I'm looking forward to your comments and experiences, particularly if you have purchased any of these with my case. That would be ideal to hear from you.

Cheers

 

[Guest]

The WD blacks really are the best for the money. Is there a reason you're wanting to go down a silent route so badly? Silence is overrated unless you have a reason for it imo. That being said the blacks really aren't that noisy. Real noise is going to come from loud DVD burners while burning, or huge fans like the ultra kaze. As for power consumption, the amount of money spent on power consumption is so little it's negligible unless you're on a laptop. Also, given you're a gamer, you'll be more likely wearing headphones/sets, no?

 

[DevITIS]

Well I'm not CRAZY about a silent box, but I don't want it to sound like a jet turbine either, lol. I've heard a lot of complaints about the Blacks being really loud, so that's where that concern came from. As for the optical drives, since that is non-sustained noise, I could care less about that. My fans will be quiet, and all fans and hard drives are mounted with rubber grommets so no vibration noise. I just don't like listening to a loud machine, that's all. I've been a laptop gamer for the past 5 years or so while I was going through college since they were more portable and I moved a lot.

Now I'm building my first desktop rig in about 5 years, and have everything ordered except for my HDD. That's been the most difficult part to choose because I want at least a 1TB drive and all I've found at that size and above have several complaints, from noisy, to unreliable, to poor performance, etc. Just wanted to get some thoughts from peeps who have had these hard drives to see how they match up to what I'm looking for.