Does a higher RPM hard drive have a noticeable effect on a gaming computer?

The short answer: yes.

The long answer: oh god yes!

With all of the high end equipment in a gaming computer, you may think that how fast a magnetic platter spins is relatively unimportant. After all, hard drives are measured in terms of their size, not their speed - right? Well, in a gaming computer, speed is everything, and size only matters when you want to rip your DVD collection.

The faster a hard drive spins, the faster it is able to access data, and the faster you're able to play your games. The most common speed, 5400 RPM, is very slow by today's high end equipment. In fact, it can take several minutes of access time just to finish loading many of today's popular games on a 5400 RPM drive.

The middle ground between price and performance are the 7200 RPM hard drives. Since they spin faster, these drives naturally access data faster. Of course, the trade off is that you generally don't see nearly as much storage space. In fact, if you compare storage space to rotational speed, you'll notice a direct correlation: the higher the RPM to lower the disk space.

This correlation holds especially true at 10k RPM drives. While you may notice several hundred GB drives in the 5400 and 7200 RPM models, the 10k RPM drives often offer much more limited storage capacity, sacrificing storage for speed. It's these high spinning drives that I recommend for storing your often played games, operating system, and swap space, while using the slower drives to hold your bulkier data (such as movies, music, and general storage needs).

So, does a higher RPM matter in a gaming computer? Absolutely!

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