So I'm trying to figure out a high spec machine for playing Skyrim, or rather medium-high (about $1000-$1200 budget). I've already decided on a 560Ti graphics cards, but now I wanna decide if I want to bother getting a bigger harddisk than 60Gb.

I'm eventually going to get 1Tb harddisk. I'm mostly going to play Skyrim, The Old Republic, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, but later on I'm gonna deal with a ton of design stuff - programming, photography, videos, etc. But right now, shouldn't 60Gb be more than enough? I'm trying to save as much money as possible and I'm thinking that harddisk size is a good thing to minimize.

Please discuss pros and cons about having harddisks less than 100Gb. Thanks.

If this is the only game you will be installing and you have room for future needs, then keep what you have. Otherwise, you can get a 160 GB drive for less than $80 (even with the flood related price spike where drives have almost doubled in price during the last two weeks)

Cons: It will be filled before you even know it. The Operating System alone will eat up close to 20GB on average.

Like CCNA said, you want at LEAST 160GB, but in my view it should be no less than 300-320GB. This is the modern era. Internet is not slow and pictures, software, and games are not small.

Right now, I'm looking at:
Corsair SSD Force Series 3, 120GB SATA 6 Gb/s (SATA3.0), 550MB/510MB/s read/write, SandForce? SF-2281

Oh you meant SSD, not HDD!

I'd stay far away from those. They're not only too expensive, but the failure rate is absolutely atrocious. As in "it WILL fail without a doubt before you buy a new computer" atrocious.

If your budget is $1200 you can afford some nice 500GB Caviar Black drives as the OS and game drive, and STILL manage a cheap 1TB Green for bulk storage.

No I didn't mean anything, I'm just a noob looking at lists. I guess I'll have to learn everything about hardware sooner than I thought, I guess. That's a rather critical mistake if you're right about it. lol


I know, but I'm gonna be very specific about what I put on my harddrive, and once I'm starting to really fill it up, I'm getting the 1Tb harddisk anyways.

Just save yourself the trouble and make room in the budget for http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136795 or one of http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152185&Tpk=spinpoint%20f3. They're the go-to standby for pretty much every build now days.

Damnit, things are so freakin expensive in Norway, it seems like I'm not gonna get lower than $1800 when monitor is included. Ridiculous.

Cut costs man. Get a cheaper GPU and CPU that's still capable of running Skyrim (which already doesn't have THAT high of a requirement to begin with). Don't get more than 4GB of RAM. Don't buy a motherboard that's $150 when a $100 one will work just as well.

Don't buy a $400 case.

Those kinds of things. Skyrim doesn't need a $300 video card.

Cooler Master Elite 430 Midi Tower Black Vifte: 1x 120mm Front, Blue LEDs, mATX, ATX, 2x USB, 1x Audio
Silver Power SP-SS500 500W PSU ATX 12V V2.2, 80 Plus, Standard, 1x 6pin+1x 6+2pin PCIe, 6× SATA, 120mm Vifte
Intel? Core i5-2500K Processor Socket-LGA1155, Quad Core, 3.3Ghz, 6MB, 95W, Boxed w/fan
MSI H61MU-E35 B3, Socket-1155 m-ATX, H61, DDR3, 1xPCIe(2.0)x16, GbLAN, VGA, DVI, HDMI, USB 3.0, EFI
Gainward GeForce GTX 560Ti 1GB PhysX PCI-Express 2.0, GDDR5, 2xDVI, HDMI, 822MHz

Still 10,000 NOK (1,785.56 USD) on Komplett.no

I think I gotta wait a little. Maybe get it in 2012.

Just gotta do some shopping you'll find it there are tons of ways to cut costs. Switching from Intel to AMD is one since AMD processors are relatively cheaper than Intels along with the motherboards. GPU wise you don't need some obscene beast card like this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121470 to run Skyrim or this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131438 you can get by with a good solid card if you shop around.

Right now if you were to build my machine with some other parts it would probably be around $1400 though with you being way out there that might jump to $2k i'm not sure about price differences.

The only sticking point might be the case itself where you may have to splurge a bit and get some beefy mobo like a http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133056. Have an ATI Radeon 5870 card and I have maybe 1.5 to 2.5 inches of clearance between my graphics card and the HD cage. Best part is that svcker has several bays for expansion and can fit like 8 to 10 HDs if you need THAT much room.

Yeah Komplett.no seems like a [censored] place to buy anything, because you're limited to certain options when customizing your PC. I guess I'm better off just building a complete PC from absolute scratch. But it'll take longer though, I need to read up on everything. :-/