Steam storage: small SSD or large hdd

[Gdourado]

Hello, 

I am wondering what is your preference. 

If building a small form factor gaming pc where space is limited, would you prefer to have a "large" 512gb ssd for both system and games but running the trouble of having to much more frequent installs and uninstalls but have greater speed, or have a small m.2 128gb ssd for system and a large 3tb 7200 rpm drive for your game library? 

What is the best option? 

 

Cheers 

[79wjd]

If you have a large library and you frequently play many games to the point where you would need to be constantly instaling/uninstalling stuff, then definitely the 128gb M.2 ssd + HDD. But for me personally, I tend to play a few games consistently and then play through other games one at a time, so 500gb~ would be sufficient for me. 

[Digital_]

I'd do just go for the m.2 ssd and the hard drive just because not all games have the longest load times. 

[DevilishBooster]

Depends on the internet connection. If the internet connection is really fast and it doesn't take too long to download/install a new game the I would go with the single SSD. If it take a long time (e.g. more than a couple hours) to download a modern game, then I would go with the HDD so that you can just install a bunch of games.

 

Idealy, if you have a mobo with an m.2 slot, put something like a 128GB m.2 drive in for the OS and then put the 512 GB SSD in for game storage. Then you kinda have the best of both worlds.

[Penny5837]

I've used a HDD for a while now and usually have my games installed just to have them installed. I would probably choose the m.2. 

[Crowes]

Realistically, I'd advise a 2TB HDD. 

 

Personally, I have a 500GB SSD and a 1TB HDD. I shove games that I load up every once in a while onto the HDD, and games I play frequently (daily, if not every other day) onto the SSD. I digress, though, because the load times are very similar, even in the old HDD-only computer I use as a steam machine.

[grayperview]

M.2 for OS then 2 x 2 and half inch 7200rpm hdd in raid 0 for games.

[Camisto]

I have a few of my favorite games on my 250gb SSD and i have a second library in an HDD for all of the games I barely play or that an SSD really wont impact much in performance.

[EChondo]

18 hours ago, Gdourado said:

What is the best option?

I would definitely go for the M.2 SSD+HDD. However, I would spring for a 240GB/256GB M.2 SSD if you can spare.

 

I have a 256GB SSD and a 3TB hard drive. I have enough space on my SSD for all my main programs, MS Office, adobe suite, and a very decent amount of games. Usually after installing Windows and all the programs I use, I have about 150GB left. Which might seem like a lot of space, but if you put your most played games on it OR a couple of the recent AAA games(most 50GB-60GB in size each) that have come out then that 150GB is gone instantly. I also like a little buffer zone, about 30GB-40GB of free space on my SSD just in case I need to move files or something. Everything else can go on the 3TB. I like to have the games I'm playing through once installed on the SSD until I beat it, just feels better with shorter load times and the game will be deleted later anyway.

 

Obviously this is really dependent on how big your Steam Library is. I have almost 600 games, obviously I don't play them all at the same time, but there are games that I *need* to have installed on my PC at all times, but only a few really benefit from a SSD. Recently Fallout 4 has noticeably faster loading saves on SSD's(obviously), and it's only ~30GB. If you had a 128GB SSD, after formating and installing Windows you'd have about 100GB of space left, then Fallout 4 would bring that down to ~70GB.

 

So if you don't have a lot of games or any games that benefit from being on a SSD, then just get a 128GB M.2 SSD, but if you do have a few games then you might want to consider a 256GB M.2 SSD.

 

Either way, I'd definitely do a M.2+HDD setup.