The 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 sits in the middle of the pack. It has four 250GB platters, and therefore a higher areal density than the Hitachi, but much less than the Samsung. However, its performance in some areas was disappointing. Its Crysis level loading was exactly on a par with the Western Digital Caviar GP, coming in at a commendable joint fourth overall.

However, the Gimp image editing score was noticeably slower than those of the other 1TB drives. This was a surprise, as its HD Tach 3 RW results showed very good sustained throughput and an excellent average access speed. It's also one of the most expensive drives this month. Unlike Samsung's SpinPoint F1, which at least has its league-topping performance to tempt you, the Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 seems overpriced.

• 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