How much storage do you think is appropriate for a "gaming PC?"

[Mister Woof]

I often see new pre-built gaming PCs on the low end come with a single low-capacity SSD, sometimes with a secondary 1 or 2TB hard drive.

But with games getting much larger and some games taking up to 250GB alone, how is just a single 500GB SSD, or even 1TB, sufficient these days?

 

I am presently running 3TB worth of SSDs that I've had to purchase over time to expand my collection (had I really known my needs I would have grabbed a 2TB SSD earlier instead), in addition to a 2TB hard drive for miscellaneous storage. 

 

I posted this in General because while it's about storage, it's more on the philosophy of storage size and not about specific drives or any specific product discussion.

 

What do you think?

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, Mister Woof said:

I posted this in General because while it's about storage, it's more on the philosophy of storage size and not about specific drives or any specific product discussion.

definitely still under storage, but will let mods decide

 

1 minute ago, Mister Woof said:

What do you think?

depends on your budget, i would say

for low end, 250+2TB is still the way to go IMO, one to two fav games on SSD and the rest on bulk storage

500gb + 2TB seems okay for mid-range, but i would definitely start looking at 1TB and up for games, but only if you dont sacrifice too much on other crucial components like GPU and CPU

but it also depends on your style, some people like RPG, some like indie games, the file size are different

 

storage is easily expandable, so overspending on things that are dropping in price when you dont need it seems kinda silly

[Mister Woof]

I went over my data plan a few times and each time was $20.

 

So having less storage and just redownloading again is not cost effective as just having more drives.

[WhitetailAni]

500GB NVMe boot, 2-4TB HDD storage.
 

[NineEyeRon]

250GB SSD boot drive, 1-2TB SSD for games, 2-4TB HDD for "stuff".

[Helpful Tech Witch]

My philosophy:

ssd 250-500gb

hdd1-2tb

[Mad153]

I'd say most people on this site are enthusiasts and therefore our perception is slightly skewed. Most people would be fine with a 1tb SSD for games and windows.

 

Personally I think 2TB is probably the best place to start if money wasn't an option but storage is so easily expandable to suit your needs

[Radium_Angel]

The answer, as with most things in life is "all. All the storage"  

But not being much of a gamer, I'm curious, what games demand 250GB of disk space? That seems....excessive...

[NineEyeRon]

1 minute ago, Mad153 said:

Most people would be fine with a 1tb SSD for games and windows.

I think a separate boot drive is a good idea but as long as your "stuff" is on a different drive to the OS then all is good.

[Mister Woof]

Just now, Radium_Angel said:

The answer, as with most things in life is "all. All the storage"  

But not being much of a gamer, I'm curious, what games demand 250GB of disk space? That seems....excessive...

COD MW is 250gb+

 

I read about that and was like, jesus that's 1/4 of my whole game drive for one game.

 

Not to mention 1/4 of my monthly data allotment. 

[sub68]

laughs with 500gb HDD as boot and game storage

the second drive is just media storage

[MadAnt250]

3 minutes ago, Mister Woof said:

I often see new pre-built gaming PCs on the low end come with a single low-capacity SSD, sometimes with a secondary 1 or 2TB hard drive.

I think most people who bought low-end systems are not playing games that take up a lot space, like RDR2, CyberJunk and COD.

[Moonzy]

1 minute ago, Mad153 said:

I'd say most people on this site are enthusiasts and therefore our perception is slightly skewed. Most people would be fine with a 1tb SSD for games and windows.

i own a 500GB SSD game drive, now im sad coz im not enthusiast enough 

 

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

what games demand 250GB of disk space? That seems....excessive...

a rhythm game named osu can take up to 400gb i think if you download enough beatmaps to play

im currently at 300gb+

[Radium_Angel]

4 minutes ago, Mister Woof said:

COD MW is 250gb+

 

I read about that and was like, jesus that's 1/4 of my whole game drive for one game.

 

Not to mention 1/4 of my monthly data allotment. 

That's insanity....

But then again, I suppose to a fan, it'd be worth it.

...is it worth it?

[Mister Woof]

3 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

i own a 500GB SSD game drive, now im sad coz im not enthusiast enough 

 

a rhythm game named osu can take up to 400gb i think if you download enough beatmaps to play

im currently at 300gb+

that's insane lol

[Mister Woof]

Just now, Radium_Angel said:

That's insanity....

But then again, I suppose to a fan, it'd be worth it.

...is it worth it?

no, I don't play it but I frequently use it as a reference because its so outrageous.

 

I'd say on average most games are around 40-50GB, which adds up pretty quickly, especially when Steam baits you into buying so many games

[whm1974]

Now I would shoot for at least a 2TB Drive for just the games alone. Well if I was building a new Gaming PC.

[Shoopman]

I used a 500GB SSD and 1TB HDD for years and never felt like it was restrictive. I also don't play modern AAA games that are 200GB each though.

 

Now I use a 1TB SSD and a 3TB HDD which is about 25% full of stuff that isn't games. Both drives are far from being full.

[Arika]

Depends on the person and what "other" things they store besides games.

 

I have:

SSD - 120GB: boot drive

SSD - 256GB: Games

HDD - 4TB:     Main storage + Games that i dn't care about loading times

SSD - 120GB: Some games and Photoshop (w/ Scratch disk)

HDD - 1TB :    External drive that keeps all my installers and random utility programs

HDD - 6TB:     More games and my Media drive

SSD - 1TB:     Main games drive

HDD - 2TB:    Backup drive

HDD - 2TB:    Auxiliary drive with no current use

 

 

[MadAnt250]

I have a total of 3TB of storage, now I am thinking of buying another HDD for my games, and use my portable HDD for my projects.

[Kilrah]

28 minutes ago, Mister Woof said:

I often see new pre-built gaming PCs on the low end come with a single low-capacity SSD

Anything less than 1TB SSD doesn't make sense nowadays, so prebuilts are what's left to get rid of leftover stock...

[Mister Woof]

Maybe this thread should be less about SSD size and more about data caps

[thepoorgamer]

34 minutes ago, Mister Woof said:

I often see new pre-built gaming PCs on the low end come with a single low-capacity SSD, sometimes with a secondary 1 or 2TB hard drive.

But with games getting much larger and some games taking up to 250GB alone, how is just a single 500GB SSD, or even 1TB, sufficient these days?

 

I am presently running 3TB worth of SSDs that I've had to purchase over time to expand my collection (had I really known my needs I would have grabbed a 2TB SSD earlier instead), in addition to a 2TB hard drive for miscellaneous storage. 

 

I posted this in General because while it's about storage, it's more on the philosophy of storage size and not about specific drives or any specific product discussion.

 

What do you think?

I think 1tb of fast ssd storage is good for most. If you have a large library, a 2tb might be good. I can’t really visualize a situation where you would need more ssd storage then that for games, as you could just have a X tb hard drive with titles you arn’t playing on it and move them to an ssd when you want to play them.

[AndreiArgeanu]

It highly depends, there isn't a 'one size fits all' for a gaming PC. After all this shouldn't matter a lot, since you can usually always add more hard drive's and ssd's if needed at a fairly low cost. Personally I see 250gb ssd + 1TB hard drive sufficient. While sure, there are very few games out there that take 100gb+ of storage they're not really numerous, most AAA titles like Cyberpunk, Assassins Creed, Hitman etc. only take about 60-80GB or so.

[GDRRiley]

for a low end system I'd be looking at 2tb
for a midrange I'd go 1TB SSD and then a 4-6tb HDD as those are the sweat spot over 2-3tb ones in GB/$

High end 1-2tb of SSD with again a large HDD

I'm moving my old 500gb 2nd drive to a 2tb SSD half for games and the other half to video edit off of. I've got 5tb of spinning rust locally and 5 in a NAS