The 160GB version of the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 makes a lot more economic sense than its 80GB stablemate, although it still isn't great value at 22p per gigabyte. Neither is it particularly quick at loading Crysis, although the Gimp image editing score sits reassuringly in the middle of this month's selection. If you can't stump up more than £32 for a hard disk then the Barracuda 7200.10 is a reasonable balance of performance and low price. However, as data densities now go beyond 300GB per platter, it will become increasingly pointless to buy a drive this small.

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160GB / IDE100 / 7200rp

IDE, 160 GB, 7200 rpm, 3.5"

dell (uk)

• PSUs - 14th July 2008
• Multi-GPU graphics - 20th June 2008
• CPU water cooling - 17th June 2008
• Hard disks - 20th March 2008
• Audio hardware - 29th February 2008
• Graphics cards - 24th January 2008
• CPUs - 21st December 2007

• Cooler Master Cosmos S - Cases
• Lian Li PC-P60 Armorsuit - Cases
• Asus Rampage Formula - Motherboards
• Gigabyte GV-NX96T512H-B - Graphics cards
• Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 - Processors
• Akasa Vortexx Neo - Other cooling hardware
• Zerotherm Hurricane HC92-Cu 8800 - Other cooling hardware