SSD vs HDD Raid for gaming

[Jons0n]

Hello!

 

So i've recently been on the hunt for cost effective gaming storage (this is mostly out of curiousity rather then something i actually need). 

 

Most people say "just buy an SSD you cheap f***" but i want to know if raid 0 with 4x 2TB Seagate barracuda compute disks with 7200RPM and 256MB cache can be faster then, for example "Samsung 870 QVO 2TB" with a read speed of 560MB/s. 

 

What i'm thinking is that since each Seagate barracuda drive costs around 83 US dollars (In Sweden) the combined total for 4 drives is 331USD (combined 8TB)

Compare this to the "Samsung 870 QVO 2TB" where you pay 279USD.

 

Would the speed of the combined disks in Raid 0 be equal or faster then the SSD alternative while getting much more storage?

 

Would a raid controller card help reduce possible speed losses if there are any?

 

And the final question, Would this raid array be an alternative to the higher priced SSD option when it comes to gaming?

 

I very much appreciate that you took your time reading this!

 

Have a good one!

[Stahlmann]

I can't say for sure but isn't raid on hard drives kind of a bad thing for latency? Just think about how the drives constantly have to wait for each other becauss one is still searching for data. You don't have this problem with SSDs. For HDDs raid is pretty much just a fail-safe afaik.

 

I know this is again like the "just buy an SSD you cheap ****", but do you actually need 8TB of space for games only? I pretty much just install any recently played games and can easily manage with 2TB of space for that. There's no need to install your whole steam library imo. Or you play 20 different games each day and actually need the space idk...

[WereCatf]

2 minutes ago, Jons0n said:

but i want to know if raid 0 with 4x 2TB Seagate barracuda compute disks with 7200RPM and 256MB cache can be faster then, for example "Samsung 870 QVO 2TB" with a read speed of 560MB/s. 

No. You could've just searched the billion threads here about this, but the more drives you have in a RAID, the higher the latency, so by going for a 4 HDD RAID, you're making the already bad latency of the drives several times worse. Sequential read-speed increases, sure, but with such poor latency you won't see much of a benefit to loading-times.

[ProjectBox153]

One thing that you would have to keep in mind when running RAID 0 with mechanical storage is that if you lose one single drive you lose everything. You are much better off with an actual SSD if you want to see a significant improvement in speeds. 

[Naijin]

2 minutes ago, Jons0n said:

Hello!

 

So i've recently been on the hunt for cost effective gaming storage (this is mostly out of curiousity rather then something i actually need). 

 

Most people say "just buy an SSD you cheap f***" but i want to know if raid 0 with 4x 2TB Seagate barracuda compute disks with 7200RPM and 256MB cache can be faster then, for example "Samsung 870 QVO 2TB" with a read speed of 560MB/s. 

 

What i'm thinking is that since each Seagate barracuda drive costs around 83 US dollars (In Sweden) the combined total for 4 drives is 331USD (combined 8TB)

Compare this to the "Samsung 870 QVO 2TB" where you pay 279USD.

 

Would the speed of the combined disks in Raid 0 be equal or faster then the SSD alternative while getting much more storage?

 

Would a raid controller card help reduce possible speed losses if there are any?

 

And the final question, Would this raid array be an alternative to the higher priced SSD option when it comes to gaming?

 

I very much appreciate that you took your time reading this!

 

Have a good one!

The sequential reads may be faster, but gaming loads are rarely sequential. An SSD is simply much faster in random reads.

Of course, there will be some maths to it and someone will probably explain this better.

I would never suggest a RAID 0 array to any gaming pc. A regular SSD will always outperform.

 

Have a look at this video, this compares 3 drives in RAID 0 and an older SSD. SSD will always in in 4K reads and writes, as you can clearly see in the video.