With literally thousands of possible PC configurations out there, people are often confused about the options they should go for and the same is the case with hard drives. We all know that games take up a LOT of space, by which I mean anything from 4-5 GBs to even 150-200 GBs. Considering the rate at which their file sizes are expanding, it will not be surprising that a modest PC runs out of space within a year or so.
Without a doubt in all gaming configurations today, you are to expect a large HDD (a 1 or 2 TB or so) coupled with a rather modestly spaced SDD (somewhere from 256GB to 512GB generally). It is in fact that the hard drive or the HDD bears the actual storage burden on your machine while the SSD contributes to the overall performance by running vital apps like the OS and other frequent apps. So, it is highly important that you make your choice wisely.
It’s all about what you want to do!
So, hard drives come in all sizes from 256 GB all the way up to 20 TB! The simple question of which one should you go for depends upon the nature of gaming you are looking to play on your PC.
Light-mode Entertainment
If you are a gamer who is not a full-time gamer but just does it for fun, you will probably do just fine with a 512 GB hard drive. But then if you are trying new games in the market very often, you might be out of space in possibly just 6 months.
Keep in mind that your operating system and the rest of your applications are going to share the same space as your games. It is recommended by expert gamers and tech enthusiasts to go for the 1TB minimum, irrespective of your gaming needs.
Competitive Gaming
When it comes to competitive gaming, things begin to get a bit intense. You do not only want to play the games, you are probably looking forward to streaming your games on a channel or recording your videos. While 1TB will do the trick for the games part of the story, you will need to level up for the video part.
We recommend going for 2TB of hard drive storage, this will allow you ample space for your games, their updates, and video recording of a decent resolution.
The World beyond!
2TBs of storage is more than enough for your gaming needs. If you need anything beyond that, this means you are not only a gaming enthusiast, you probably have a channel on YouTube and Twitch as well and are doing pro-grade photo and video editing side by side.
While you have the option to upgrade to a 3TB or 4TB hard drive, you should consider cloud storage options that are more flexible with facilities and convenient on the pocket.
What happened to SSDs?
Yes, SSDs are way faster than HDDs because of a much faster read-write speed. They are quite expensive, the price per GB of SSD storage is almost double the price per GB on a hard drive. So, you should get one for installing your applications and running your operating system, games should preferably be kept to the HDD. This will keep your costs down and provide a seamless user experience.
Bear in mind that…
Game sizes are increasing quite a lot, Black Ops Cold War is already at a whopping 250GB. This combined with the updates and log files, the size can go even up to 2X. Our above recommendations have tried to incorporate this fact as well but who knows what the future holds for us!