Usually when I am putting together a list of parts for a new build I do it in two stages. First, I build a template, find how far beyond it is from my limit. Second, I start making compromises, and that's why I created this topic and why the price of the build was so high. I still really want to go with the hybrid drive because it covers both criteria I always set. I highly doubt that he will get within 20gb of a 500gb limit before doing some cleaning. I have also used a hybrid drive and kinda compared it to a decent SSD, and the SSD was not a ton faster than the hybrid drive. Plus, my friend is use to a slow laptop hard drive on a laptop that likely can no longer take advantage of it's depressing speeds.