nstgc

Apparently, quiet high capacity drives don't exist any longer, so that is not the question. I own several old Seagate Constellation drives which are whisper quiet, but they are small and I need to consolidate. I purchased a refurbished HGST HC520 a few months back and it isn't too bad while spun down or idle. Even when not in use it isn't too bad (except in the case of heavy random seeks, which aren't common for me), but the spinning up is quite annoying. From what I can tell, aggressive power management has been a feature of WD drives for a while, which is why I switched to Seagate in the early 2010s. (None of the WD drives I've owned since the Re4s seem to respect power management settings in software.)

Some noise can be dampened, of course, and I do use rubber mounting parts, but that only gets you so far. Drives can be moved to a NAS so they aren't arm's length away, but my NAS is in the living room by the router, which isn't much better.

So the question is, which is less bad, HGST HC or Seagate Exos? If HGST drives are using WD's PWL "feature", then that's a non-starter as periodic clunks trigger me (I've heard it too many times, and it was always very bad). I do have an SSD, but I can't afford to put all my data on SSDs.

Apparently, quiet high capacity drives don't exist any longer, so that is not the question. I own several old Seagate Constellation drives which are whisper quiet, but they are small and I need to consolidate. I purchased a refurbished HGST HC520 a few months back and it isn't too bad while spun down or idle. Even when not in use it isn't too bad (except in the case of heavy random seeks, which aren't common for me), but the spinning up is quite annoying. From what I can tell, aggressive power management has been a feature of WD drives for a while, which is why I switched to Seagate in the early 2010s. (None of the WD drives I've owned since the Re4s seem to respect power management settings in software.)

Some noise can be dampened, of course, and I do use rubber mounting parts, but that only gets you so far. Drives can be moved to a NAS so they aren't arm's length away, but my NAS is in the living room by the router, which isn't much better.

So the question is, which is less bad, HGST HC or Seagate Exos? If HGST drives are using WD's PWL "feature", then that's a non-starter as periodic clunks trigger me (I've heard it too many times, and it was always very bad). I do have an SSD, but I can't afford to put all my data on SSDs.

I was watching a review video for a "Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Elite X Wi-Fi 7" released late last month and it was mentioned that the socket looked beefier. Does this mean the bending issue has been solved, or are aftermarket solutions still required for those of us who don't want our CPU's bent?

Note that this isn't a question of "should I be worried", but rather "will it bend".

A few days ago Tech PowerUp released a review of the 14900k with various power restraints. This was both telling and interesting for me, and something I really wish I had seen a week ago. However, those other chips are running at stock. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison. Is there anything similiar to that for any of Ryzen 7000 CPUs? I've read plenty of anecdotes, but such evidence is plentiful and all over the place.

Absolute balls-to-the-wall benchmarks are meaningful and have their uses, but when that's all you have, it's just a fruitless dick measuring contest. Why Intel is playing that game, I can't imagine since it's a really bad look, but that isn't the subject of this post.