When building or upgrading a gaming PC, one of the most important considerations is your storage. Having enough storage capacity and the right type of storage device can make a huge difference in your gaming experience. But how much storage space do you really need for gaming these days? What types of drives should you use? And how can you balance performance and budget when choosing storage? This comprehensive guide will cover everything you need to know about picking the right storage solution for your gaming rig.
Factors That Determine Storage Needs
There are several key factors that influence how much and what type of storage you need for gaming:
Types of Games Played
Some games take up much more storage space than others. For example, massive open world games can easily eat 50GB+ of space, while indie games may only need a few GB. If you mainly play huge AAA titles, you’ll need more storage compared to someone who sticks to smaller indie games.
Number of Games Installed
The more games you keep installed at the same time, the more storage you’ll need. Gamers who play 3-5 major titles at once will require more capacity than those who focus on one game at a time.
Game File Sizes
The average file size for games is increasing steadily. New releases with high resolution textures, detailed models, and expansive environments are now anywhere from 30GB to over 100GB per game. Even indie games are taking up more space than they used to.
Resolution and Texture Quality
Higher resolutions and texture quality settings means larger game file sizes. If you play at 1440p or 4K resolutions with ultra texture settings, you’ll need more storage compared to 720p low settings.
Replay Value
If you spend dozens or hundreds of hours replaying the same games to grind for loot or achievements, you’ll need room for fewer titles compared to blowing through story driven games once.
Game Capture
Capturing gameplay video and screenshots takes up drive space quickly. An hour of 4K 60fps footage can require over 50GB. If you’re a streamer or content creator, this factors into your storage needs.
Game Mods
Modding games addsnew textures, models, quests and more that have to be stored. Heavily modded games like Skyrim can quickly balloon from 12GB to over 100GB.
Minimum & Recommended Drive Capacity
Based on the factors above, here are some general guidelines for the minimum and recommended amounts of gaming storage:
Minimum Storage Needed
– 250GB SSD – For 1-2 lightly modded smaller indie titles
– 500GB SSD – For 2-3 lightly modded AAA titles
– 1TB HDD – For a decent game library with 5+ titles
Recommended Storage Amounts
– 500GB SSD – For 3-5 moderately modded AAA titles
– 1TB SSD – For 5-10 AAA titles with some mods/captures
– 2TB HDD or SSD – For 10+ AAA titles with heavy modding
– 4TB+ HDD or SSD – For a huge 20+ game library with 4K captures
These amounts give you room to install your game library and additions like DLC and mods without worrying as much about running out of space. But you may need more or less depending on your specific gaming and storage habits.
SSD vs HDD Storage
When choosing drive capacity, you also need to pick the type of storage device – solid state drives (SSD) or hard disk drives (HDD). Here’s how they compare for gaming usage:
SSD Advantages
– Much faster load times – scenes load instantly
– Faster texture streaming – less blurry textures in open worlds
– Quicker access to saves and launchers
– Improved level loading and transition times
– Consistent performance – no slow downs as drive fills up
HDD Advantages
– Significantly cheaper per GB compared to SSDs
– Available in larger capacities up to 10TB+
– Still usable for gaming, just longer load times
SSDs are highly recommended for gaming whenever possible due to their huge impact on load times. Use SSDs for your Windows drive and for storing your active game library. Supplement with large HDDs for bulk storage of captures, old games, and media files.
Balancing Performance, Capacity, and Budget
Given a fixed budget, you’ll have to balance performance, capacity, and cost when shopping for gaming storage. Some general tips:
– Invest more into a 500GB-1TB SSD over high capacity HDDs if possible
– Prioritize the SSD for OS, launchers, and 1-2 active multiplayer titles
– Use budget HDDs for older single player games and cold storage
– Get an SSD with room to grow your library over time
– Consider starting with a smaller SSD and adding HDDs later as needed
A good compromise is a 500GB SSD paired with 1-2TB of HDD storage. This allows fast load times on key titles while giving plenty of room to expand. Invest more in SSD capacity rather than high speed HDDs for the best experience per dollar.
NVMe vs SATA SSDs
For SSD storage, you’ll also choose between NVMe and SATA interfaces. Here’s how they compare:
NVMe SSD Advantages
– Sequential read/write speeds over 3500MB/s when using PCIe 4.0
– Much lower access times under 0.1ms
– Reads and writes small files much faster
-Ideal for Windows, launchers, and online multiplayer
SATA SSD Advantages
– Peak speeds capped around 550MB/s
– Good value and performance for the price
– Fine for single player games and older titles
NVMe drives are 3-5x faster in theoretical transfer speeds. But for gaming, both SATA and NVMe provide quick load times. NVMe helps most in open world games with streaming textures. For pure gaming, SATA SSDs are often the better value. Reserve NVMe drives for production workloads that need the speed.
Ideal Storage Setup Examples
Here are some real world examples of balanced gaming storage configurations:
Entry Level 1080p
– 500GB SATA SSD for Windows and 1-2 games
– 1-2TB HDD for extra game storage
High End 1440p
– 1TB NVMe SSD for Windows and active games
– 4TB HDD for captures and media storage
– 8TB HDD for game library and backups
Enthusiast 4K
– 500GB NVMe SSD just for Windows and launchers
– 2TB NVMe SSD for active games and projects
– 2x 8TB HDD in RAID 1 for game storage and redundancy
Tailor your setup based on your own resolution, game genres, and budget. Mix SATA and NVMe SSDs with large capacity HDDs to get the best combination of speed, capacity, and price.
Tips for Managing Limited Storage Space
If you have limited SSD or total storage capacity, here are some tips for the best gaming experience:
– Uninstall games you aren’t playing actively
– Use symlinks or junctions to move less used games to HDD
– Limit capture resolution and frame rate where possible
– Lower texture resolution settings in games
– Avoid high resolution texture packs and mods
– Disable Windows hibernation and reduce pagefile size
– Store media and captures on external USB hard drives
Careful management of your game library and associated files allows you to stretch limited space further. But upgrading to more SSD or total storage is recommended whenever possible.
The Future of Game Storage Demands
Game file sizes will likely continue increasing over time as graphics fidelity and resolution improves. We can expect some of the following in the next few years:
– 4K will become the new mainstream resolution
– 8K textures and assets will start appearing in some titles
– Ray tracing greatly increases texture detail
– New consoles will accelerate these trends
– Average AAA game sizes could hit 150-200GB
To prepare for the future, invest in 1-2TB or larger SSDs, use higher capacity HDDs for bulk storage, and leave room to upgrade your storage down the road.
Conclusion
To sum up, here are some key takeaways on gaming storage requirements:
– 250-500GB SSD minimum just for core games
– 1-2TB total storage ideal for good sized library
– Favor SSDs over HDDs whenever possible
– Use SSD for Windows, launchers, and active games
– Supplement with large HDDs for extra capacity
– Balance NVMe speed with SATA value
– Manage installs and modulate settings with limited space
– Prepare for continued size increases in coming years
Carefully consider your gaming habits, titles, resolution, and budget when planning storage. Combine SSD and HDD devices to get the ideal mix of speed, capacity, and affordability for your needs today and into the future. With the right storage strategy, you can build a gaming PC that loads games in a flash while still offering plenty of space.