Some Suggestions, Please?

[lescarpio]

So I'm having a hard time making a decision on this... I'm planning to upgrade my HDDs to something speedier. My current setup is a little wacky:

OS drive is a Maxtor SATA I 230GB drive (from an old Dell Inspirion that had WinXP) I don't even know the RPM...

My "bulk" drive is a WD Caviar Blue IDE ULTRA100 320GB 7200rpm I bought when HDs were up in prices, and also didn't realize it was IDE... I also download all my games to this drive.

I am a hardcore gamer that downloads a fair amount of games. I want to upgrade my setup but don't want to spend a whole lot (less than $200). I was thinking of getting this:

WD Black 500GB 7200rpm SATA III

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008968L6M/ref=cm_sw_r_an_am_ap_am_us?ie=UTF8

Coupled with this as the OS/cache drive:

ADATA XPG SX900 64 GB SATA III 6 GB/sec SandForce 2.5 Inch SSD (ASX900S3-64GM-C)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007M7XT98

Now would this be an efficient setup? Or should I just save some money and just go with the Black drive alone? I heard SATA III 7200rpm drives are good enough for gaming and SSDs are just for a little boost in OS startup/shutdown and helps slightly with game loading screens.

I definitely want to keep my system current and cleaned up a bit, rather than having this legacy IDE cable and aged Maxtor drive.

Thanks for the advice ahead of time!

[WoodenMarker]

Get a samsung 840 120GB for boot and applications. It'll be a world of difference to the snappiness and feel of your machine: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mz7td120bw

 

Also, a caviar black  is not needed if you're getting an ssd. A caviar blue/seagate barracuda will do: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/seagate-internal-hard-drive-st500dm002

[gts250ftw]

buy a samsung 840 for 100usd and a 2tb seagate drive for 100usd....

[lescarpio]

haha probably after taxes that last one will exceed my budget for now, but it seems the 840 is the popular choice so far.

[lescarpio]

Get a samsung 840 120GB for boot and applications. It'll be a world of difference to the snappiness and feel of your machine: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mz7td120bw

Also, a caviar black is not needed if you're getting an ssd. A caviar blue/seagate barracuda will do: http://pcpartpicker.com/part/seagate-internal-hard-drive-st500dm002

this is a cool website, never seen it before. thanks for the insight!

[jaypro]

If you are going from an HDD only solution to an SSD solution, you can pretty much pick up any SSD on the market and see a very noticeable improvement.  You don't have to go for the 840 or 840 Pro to see the massive speed improvement.  If you have a fixed budget, I'd go for a cheaper SSD and a larger HDD drive.

The price of SSDs are falling faster than the price of HDDs.  If in the future, you need either (1) faster SSD or (2) more HDD space, I feel that you should go for (2) first because (1) is dropping in price faster.