HDD For Gaming

[thdevi]

Would Anyone Say Its No Longer Worth Getting A Hard Drive For Gaming Or Should I Spend More And Get The SSD

[5x5]

HDDs are for mass storage of multiple terabytes. For gaming, a 1TB SSD is always optimal. A Crucial MX for example or a Samsung EVO

[Crunken]

3 minutes ago, thdevi said:

Would Anyone Say Its No Longer Worth Getting A Hard Drive For Gaming

no

[Princess Luna]

HDDs are still perfectly fine for game storing if you're okay waiting from 30 to 60 seconds more on the main loading screens.

[Mr.Humble]

there are no RGB hard drives currently, so...

[Admiral Breaker]

The way I have my system set up is massive games such as ARK Survial Evolved, and Single Player Games are stored on my 4TB WD Black. However games that I am currently playing go onto my 1TB SSD and part of my 256GB NVMe Drive. 

[steelo]

7 hours ago, Admiral Breaker said:

The way I have my system set up is massive games such as ARK Survial Evolved, and Single Player Games are stored on my 4TB WD Black. However games that I am currently playing go onto my 1TB SSD and part of my 256GB NVMe Drive. 

 

2 hours ago, comander said:

Hard drives are mostly fine. 

Something to consider - using a cheap SSD to accelerate the drive. Primocache works pretty well (liking it so far but currently in the testing phase), StoreMI (note: increase # of SPOF) and Intel RST are decent as well. 

Thanks for the info - I wasn't aware utilities like that existed. I only have about 60gb free on my SSD and 8 gb of RAM...would this still be beneficial? I could move some of my games back over to the HDD to free up space but its only a 240 gb SSD to begin with.

[steelo]

22 minutes ago, comander said:

My limited experience with PrimoCache is that it's good for cases where you have a drive dedicated to it. Think 240GB drive you got for $20-30 on sale (250GB HP EX900? off newegg). I have spare parts (SSDs that're now too small for a primary drive, HDDs, etc.) laying around and PC is a good way to put them back into use. 

I think that partitioning your current, nearly full SSD and dedicating it to the HDD would push things too close to the edge since SSDs really slow down once they start to get full and primocache NEEDs a decent amount of space.  Also thrashing on an SSD is BAD for longevity. Also avoid QLC for a cache drive. 
 

Using RAM to accelerate a drive is optional.


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FWIW my system is currently 1TB nvme SSD (boot), 2TB SATA SSD (storage); [480GB SSD + 3TB HDD] for bulk storage (will be gifting to a family member who will use it mostly for photos)

I've only been fiddling around with it for a day so it's too early to say anything definitive. FWIW LTT did a video on Optane + RST vs StoreMi vs SSD + Primocache


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One thing to be aware of, while the PC trial is free and seems to be pretty good... $30SSD + $30 software = $60 spent. That's about the same cost as actually getting a 480GB SSD these days. I really do think it's better for min-maxing or reusing old parts (good enough performance + tons of storage) as opposed to trying to "save money" on a shoestring budget. The use case Linus used was 10TB HDD + cache for example. 

Thanks. I may check it out tonight. Right now I have my ssd (its a gigabyte 240gb ssd I got on sale at newegg) dedicated to the OS and larger VR games that I play often. The lesser played and often larger files are stored on the HDD. I only have 8gb of ram, which really is the minimum these days so ram caching may not work. I may play around with it a bit though but as the os is already using the ssd and I dont have much free ram, it may not provide much of an improvement.

[TehPlayer14]

On 8/25/2019 at 10:31 PM, Princess Luna said:

HDDs are still perfectly fine for game storing if you're okay waiting from 30 to 60 seconds more on the main loading screens.

Or more depending on file fragmentation

[tikker]

On 8/25/2019 at 10:31 PM, Princess Luna said:

HDDs are still perfectly fine for game storing if you're okay waiting from 30 to 60 seconds more on the main loading screens.

2 hours ago, TehPlayer14 said:

Or more depending on file fragmentation

 

I still do all my gaming off of HDDs and I've never been bothered by the additional loading times. The biggest effect I've noticed is they take a minute to start maybe, but nothing unbearable.