The Caviar SE16 managed decent throughput results in HD Tach 3 RW, achieving 88.4MB/sec when reading and 80.4MB/sec when writing. Its 16.3ms access time wasn't quite so commendable though. Despite this, the Caviar SE16 tied for first place with the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 in the 250GB category in the Gimp image editing test. Its score of 969 was identical to those of several larger drives, although the Caviar SE16 320GB version was quicker. It was the quickest 250GB drive at loading the Relic level in Crysis too, although none of the other 250GB drives was particularly fast in this test.

The Caviar SE16 is the fastest 250GB drive, and its £40 price makes it one of the best-value drives too, working out at a very reasonable 18p per gigabyte. If you can't afford a larger-capacity drive, and 250GB will meet your needs, the Caviar SE16 should fit the bill nicely.

• 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