After tinkering with the Sony PlayStation 3 and replacing its 5400 rpm hard drive with another that clocks at 7200 rpm, poster hotpocketdeath from the Official US PlayStation Forums ran some tests and found out that a faster HDD does indeed yield better results.

The first test involved running the 7200 rpm HDD to find out if it can cause overheating. Turns out it only produces slightly more heat - a mere five degrees Fahrenheit increase than the original PS3 HDD, which can easily be disregarded.

Next up, games downloaded from PSN were installed using both hard drives to finally see if one performs better over another. Among the four demos,  Tony Hawk experienced a 40-second faster installation process while others chopped 10 seconds off at most.

When games were actually played, no significant improvements were observed. Some would appreciate how loading got faster by one or two seconds, but others shrug the small numbers off. On the good side, the faster HDD does provide better speeds, but it can be risky to mod your machine.