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born4sky

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Mar 14, 2008
528
43
as topic states, what do you think the difference in power consumption between 5400rpm and 7200 rpm?
 
not enough of a difference to worry about.

though a big modern 5400rpm is just as good as a 7200rpm drive in most benchmarks. Something like the WD Blue 500gb drive would be a great choice.
 
Just look at the power consumption listed on the drive specs.

As far as performance goes, you will notice a significant difference in large file transfers. The time will be moderately faster. Just browsing around finder and safari, mail, etc. you won't notice much difference.

Here is a good article for these questions.
 
Having personally downgraded from a seagate 7200 rpm to a hitachi 5400 I can say that it affected my battery life. I have a thread on batterylife and power consumption somewhere.

Anyhow to sum up on my 13 mbp i got about 5:30 with my 7200 rpm and closer to 6:15-6:30 on a 5400 rpm for similar use.
 
There are a number of issues to think about in addition to power consumption.

1) Noise and Vibration (do you want a noisy 7200 rpm drive?)
2) Increased heat (do you want overall increased system heat? ie: fans operating more often)

Not to say that the 7200 will cause these issues, but as for me I'd rather have a silent cool slower drive than a noisy hotter faster one.
 
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