How Much Storage Do I Need for Gaming

PC gamers tend to prioritize RAM and graphics cards over storage. While storage doesn’t impact the performance of a game, it is absolutely needed for the game to run without crashing again and again. So, the next obvious question is how much storage do I need for gaming?

Of course, that depends on how many games you want to store and also the size of those games. What storage would be enough for multiple AAA games? Before we talk about the minimum storage that you need, let’s look at the two types of storage options; SSD and HDD.

Hard Disk Drives (HDDs)

This is a common term that you will notice when looking at any budget desktop or laptop computer. HDDs are a more affordable option compared to SSDs, but these have their own advantages and disadvantages. How do you figure out if you need one of these and not the other type?

When you are building a budget gaming PC but require high enough storage, you can go for Hard Disk Drives. Here are the pros and cons of using these drives instead of SSDs.

Pros

  • Easily available in the market at affordable rates.

Cons

  • These have slower read-write speed.
  • The rotating disks in HDDs make a lot of noise

How Much Storage Do I Need for Gaming

Solid State Drives (SDDs)

These are based on a different technology and use Integrated Circuits to store data. These were being used alongside HDD for a long time. Now, you will find many gamers using SDDs alone for storage. In terms of performance, these are better than Hard Disk Drives, but can be twice as expensive.

Pros

  • These are faster than generic HDDs.
  • SDDs don’t have rotating disks so these are quieter.
  • These are not easily damaged so data stored will be safer.

Cons

  • A major disadvantage is their shorter life span. That’s because you can save and delete data on SSDs only a finite number of times.
  • These are costlier than HDDs.
  • Difficult to recover lost data stored on these drives.

How Much Storage Do I Need for Gaming

Any standard AAA game alone requires a minimum of 25 GB of free storage space. Some games like the Witcher 3 need a minimum of 40 GB disk space. Now, you may use your PC for other purposes as well that would require additional storage. Software application, movies, music, and other files might demand a lot of storage.

You will probably store two or more games on your PC that you quite frequently play. So, keeping all of that in mind, you should have at-least 512 GB storage on your SDD coupled with 1TB Hard Disk. But if you are a heavy gamer, even that could prove to be insufficient. So, it all comes to how many games or apps you intend to download.

Most games require free disk space between 50 GB to 100GB. So, 1TB Hard Disk is usually enough for a gaming PC. However, if you like to download high definition video content on your computer, even this might seem inadequate after some time, you can go for a 1TB Hard Disk in this case.

Frequently Asked Questions

What kinds of apps require most storage space on a PC?

Modern AAA games require a lot of disk space because of their high resolutions. A game that runs in 4K resolution would require far more disk space than a 1080p FHD game. Besides games, multimedia creation or image editing software need a lot of free disk space

If you use your computer to store multimedia content like movies or videos that also consumed a large portion of your disk space. Engineering software are another type of tools that might also need high storage.

Is SSD storage better for a gaming PC?

SSDs have a number of advantages over HDDs and are certainly faster. But these are more expensive and have a shorter life span. You can go with a combination of Solid State Drives and Hard Disk Drives for maximum efficiency. If you are building a budget PC, then HDDs are a better option.

Is 1 TB enough for gaming?

Yes, it’s a lot of space to store a number of AAA games. However, you can choose higher storage if you want to use your PC for storing other things besides games. For a majority of gamers, 1 TB should be adequate.

Conclusion

Gaming enthusiasts might not want to compromise with anything when building themselves a gaming PC. It is possible to build the perfect gaming PC for you even if you are on a tight budget. You must know your requirements and the best options available out there.

You should make sure that you at-least have the minimum storage needed to run AAA games. Gaming enthusiasts even buy disk drives with 3 to 5 TB storage. It all depends on how many games and other applications you want to store on your PC at a time. We hope this article will help you decide what would be the ideal storage for your system.

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