Post by Tanin'iver BlindDragon on Mar 24, 2008 9:24:42 GMT
From my perspective, yes, the Raptor is loud. Noticeably so, even though I have it installed in a silencer (one of these).
I have all quiet fans in my case, none of them over 1600 rpm. When booting Windows or loading a game, the clicking/rumbling from the Raptor is very clearly audible over the rest of the noise from the case.
In contrast, if I am doing heavy access to the other "drive", a RAID5 array of four WD5000AAKS, even something like extracting a large archive from and to the same drive, I don't hear any noise from those drives at all.
As for if it's worth it, that's harder to say. If you are looking for a really high performance system and already have decent CPU, plenty of RAM, etc... then this thing will certainly speed up loading times and reduce Windows boot time.
On the other hand, flash based drives are going to become affordable in a year or two. Previously they have been limited by low capacity and slower transfer rates than regular drives (think 35 Mb/sec write instead of 50-70) but some of the newest ones on the market are showing greatly improved speeds (>100 Mb/sec write). Prices are still pretty insane but should drop by about 40% per year. I will replace my Raptor with one once I can get one for £2 per gigabyte of capacity or less, both for the higher performance and because it will be totally silent.
And Chris - TEC! Bloody hell.
I have all quiet fans in my case, none of them over 1600 rpm. When booting Windows or loading a game, the clicking/rumbling from the Raptor is very clearly audible over the rest of the noise from the case.
In contrast, if I am doing heavy access to the other "drive", a RAID5 array of four WD5000AAKS, even something like extracting a large archive from and to the same drive, I don't hear any noise from those drives at all.
As for if it's worth it, that's harder to say. If you are looking for a really high performance system and already have decent CPU, plenty of RAM, etc... then this thing will certainly speed up loading times and reduce Windows boot time.
On the other hand, flash based drives are going to become affordable in a year or two. Previously they have been limited by low capacity and slower transfer rates than regular drives (think 35 Mb/sec write instead of 50-70) but some of the newest ones on the market are showing greatly improved speeds (>100 Mb/sec write). Prices are still pretty insane but should drop by about 40% per year. I will replace my Raptor with one once I can get one for £2 per gigabyte of capacity or less, both for the higher performance and because it will be totally silent.
And Chris - TEC! Bloody hell.
