WD Black 5tb with 128MB RAM or 4TB SSHD?

[poohbear]

Hey all, i currently have 2 Western Digital blacks (2TB & 1TB), but just want to have a single HDD to simplify things and upgrade my capacity. (My main OS drive is a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB).

I'm looking at the newer 5TB WD Black which has a 128MB cache & newer Dual-core processor over previous WD Blacks, or i'm considering the 4TB WD Blue SSHD (8gb SSD with 4TB HDD). I'm open to other brands/options, but for me WD has always been great. Will be used for storage & Steam games (demanding games will go on my SSD). Any recommendations on which one would be the better option?

Thank you for all opinions!

 

[Soulkeeper]

I've never been a fan of the SSHD offerings.
In theory it's a good idea and can perform well, but the benchmarks always seemed to disappoint compared to the standard offerings. Not to mention price differences.

 

[Elixer]

I tend to not like SSHDs either, while you may get some performance boost in very specific circumstances, but, I just don't like the fact that there are more things that can go wrong with it than a normal HD or a normal SSD.

 

[Coup27]

Having an SSHD for a storage drive kind of defeats the purpose. The purpose is to use it as a boot drive and it will learn what gets used the most (ie, OS, regular programs etc..) and cache them into the NAND portion of the drive for quicker access.

By using it on a storage volume this isn't going to happen. It will cache what it thinks you use the most or what you used last, but if what you access from your storage volume is more random and large in size you'll see no speed increase from it over a traditional HDD.

SSHD's are designed for people who can't afford a large SSD or one drive only systems (laptops). You don't fall into either category.

 

[poohbear]

OK thanks for the advice guys! Coup27, didn't realize SSHD are marketed as boot drives, thanks for the detailed info! So WD black it is!^^