I told him to ask here, but he won't. He says he wants a 2TB HDD and a large SSD. I'll link him to this thread later on. Any good ones out there? I know the Kingston is good, but I am not a SSD Expert.
how large of an ssd?
Well, he said whatever he could get with 100-150.
This is what I would get if I were your friend:
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136792
SSD: Kingston HyperX 120GB - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139599
Vortex has good suggestions.
With HDD's and SSD's it doesnt really matter tbh.... aslong as you stick to the good brands (HDD; Western Digital, Seagate, Samsung. SSD: Samsung, OCZ, Kingston, Crutial) They are all about as good as eachother and roughly the same price and quality.
HDD's it really doesnt matter, as Vortex said WD are good fast trusted drives, but if you can get another 2TB that is Samsung or Seagate for cheaper then it could be an option.
SSD's are of a bit more veriety, the Crutial M4 is the best from my experience and is a very good price, it uses the Marvell controller and is on paper the most reliable SSD to date, is also just as fast as most other SSD's in real world use.
One thing is dont read the SSD specs like the read and write they market them with, because thats not real world usage and never tells you how fasdt the actual SSD is for computer/operating system use. They are all very similar is speed and any difference in real world use is un noticable.
The M4 is nice, but its write speeds don't really compare to other SSDs on the market. That probably doesn't matter to a lot of people all that much though, because you're going to be reading information from it more than you'll actually be writing information to it. The M4 is a really nice option if you want something that's a little less expensive, but reads just as fast as (sometimes even faster than) the top of the line SSDs on the market.
I personally don't have any experience with Kingston, but Logan vouches for them. I can vouch for OCZ and Patriot though. I have an OCZ Vertex 2 in my laptop and a Patriot Wildfire in my main rig. They both work amazingly and at the advertised speeds. I did have a problem with the first Wildfire I bought, but Patriot has great support and they got a new drive back to me in less than two weeks.
He also wants a new case. Figured I'll ask it here.
Well...the case really depends on his budget and his own personal style.
http://www.ebuyer.com/341349-kingston-120gb-v-200-ssd-2-5-sata-iii-svp200s3-120g
This is only like £70 (around $105) and is a Kingston 120gb SSD.
If you could find a website that is the US equivilent at the same price :D
Dont get mixed up with the read and write speeds on the box mate, they mean nothing in real world usage.
The Curtial M4 is actually faster than or on par the OCZ Vertex 3 and Kingtson in allot of real world tests.
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Yeah, I know the advertised speeds aren't usually accurate, especially on the lower tiered stuff, but I thought the M4's still had slower write speeds.
That's one of Kingston's lower tiered drives though, which means it's probably not going to perform anywhere near the advertised speeds.
Nope, just have a look online there is a few comparisons of real world performance (and also using the latest Firmware)
The M4 is either just slightly behind (unnoticably)on par, or faster.