Hard Disc or SSD?

[pjrobyn]

Hi,
I'm buying a new computer for recording. I'm recording accoustic instruments and vocals in a small room. Would it be better in terms of computer noise to only use SSDs in the computer? Surely a hard disc would make a racket.

Thanks PJ Robyn

[Hugh Robjohns]

SSDs are noiselessand would be my choice. HDDs make some noise, although they can be quietened in some cases.

But fan noise on the CPU and PSU are likely to be significant problems too...

[pjrobyn]

Hi,

thanks for the quick reply. I thought so. I'm buying the computer from a reputable company here in Germany. I've been advised to include the following components:

Be Quiet Silent Base 600 Miditower
2 Be Quiet Pure Wings
650 Be Quiet Silent Power Supply
Noctua CPU cooler
with silent fan
2 GB Passive cooled Nvidia Geforce Triplehead PCle graphic card
32 GB Crucial Ram
Intel Core i7-1300K 16 Core
512 GB WD SSD M2 Modul
2 TB Hard Disc
Windows 10 Professional 64 Bit
amongst other things.

I'm assuming that'll be ok for my needs

PJ Robyn

[Nazard]

Ideally, go for something like a 1TB NVME boot/application disk, then a 4TB SSD. Having said that, the only noisy HDD I have ever had, was a WD Raptor, spinning at 10,000 RPM.

In terms of other computer noise, fans are noisy, when working. So go for a very efficient PSU, (mine is a Corsair Ax 850, ultra efficient and essentially silent as the fans never have to run up). Plus, I have a high end graphics card, (for video, etc,), that too, is silent under normal running.

The case will probably make more difference than anything else in terms of 'silence'. And let's remember that they will always be some background noise, unless you're in an anechoic chamber!

[Wonks]

SSDs use far less power than an equivalent hard disk, so in themselves will reduce the cooling load for the main computer fan(s), so the fan(s) won’t need to run so fast.

[resistorman]

I wouldn't think noise would be a problem, especially since the drives don't spin up unless you're using them, which is generally the case if they are just for backup, but SSD drive prices are falling fast!

[Folderol]

As a matter of interest I recently changed the SSD in my 'office' computer. This was in daily use for about 8 years. The only reason for the change was that I wanted more space. As a matter of curiosity I ran a health test program on it. It showed no errors and the wear leveling (which starts at 100) showed 98, with the failure threshold being 20

It's now in a caddy for backup and copying duty

[ef37a]

Yes, SSDs all the way. I have also read that from W10, Windows actually expects an SSD and will not run optimally on a spinner?

Dave.

[ajay_m]

Ideally I would also use an NVMe SSD for both drives as the performance is several times faster than a SATA SSD drive. Note when specifying these, confusingly there are SATA drives in the M.2 format, which you don't want (M.2 drives are just little 'sticks' that plug directly into the motherboard). Pretty much all modern laptops use them now. SATA is a legacy technology now. As for HDDs the problem is their mechanical seek time which imposes significant performance bottlenecks.

[Sam Spoons]

I'd buy a Mac Mini M1 and a large external SSD or two. My 15 year old Mac Pro can handle a couple of dozen tracks without breaking a sweat, the M1 is an order of magnitude faster (I have an M1 MacBook Pro) and runs very cool so fan noise is rarely an issue.

[tea for two]

650 Be Quiet Silent Power Supply
32 GB Crucial Ram
512 GB WD SSD M2 Modul
2 TB Hard Disc

Is the power supply 80 Plus Gold rated or 80 Plus Platinum or 80 Plus Titanium. Gold is the lowest rated I used, I didn't touch silver nor bronze rated.
64GB RAM instead of 32GB it's much cheaper now then when I last assembled a pc in 2018. 16GB then was about same price as 64GB now.
1TB nvme is only some euros more than a 512GB.
2TB another nvme. Although SATA SSD, SATA m.2 drives are so much cheaper now than even a year earlier. I picked up a 1TB SATA SSD external USB3.2 gen1 storage £40.

::

I recall recording audio onto a 4200rpm hd lol on a HP laptop back in the day.
I did get a 10K Raptor for an audio music pc I put together in 2008.
Ridiculousness of Gen5 nvme such as Crucial T700 "up to 12,400MB/s sequential reads, up to 11,800MB/s sequential writes (up to 1,500K IOPS random reads/writes)" they require their own cooling lol.