Should I invest in a larger SSD and just wait to buy a HDD?

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GoldMonkeyTMM

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Jul 2, 2015
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I am building my first gaming PC and I don't what I should buy. My options are:
1) Buy both the 1TB HDD and the 120GB SSD for about $110.
2) Buy both the 1TB HDD and the 250GB SSD for about $140.
3) Buy the 250GB (and wait a little while longer to buy an HDD) for about $85.

I'm leaning towards the first option because I'm only going to use the SSD for the OS, the Steam install, and a few other programs but if I get the 250GB SSD only, I'll have to download the games I will get (Fallout 4, Besiege, BeamNG.Drive, and so on) onto the SSD.

Which should I choose?
 
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RCFProd
To be fair might aswell get an 120GB SSD if you're going to use it for OS and a few other stuff.

Install Steam on HDD not SSD by the way.

So go for option 1.
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techgeek

techgeek

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Apr 11, 2004
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I would go with option 3. I think a 250GB SSD is the sweet spot. As for putting your STEAM install on it, do you intend on the STEAM games to be installed on the HDD? Depending on how many STEAM games you have, 250GB probably won't be enough. For instance, my STEAM folder (which is on my HDD) is just over 500GB. So it wouldn't fit on my 500GB Samsung 840 EVO even without Windows on it. Now it is possible to put STEAM the software on your SSD, and install the games on your HDD. However there is practically no benefit to doing this, you might as well put STEAM and all your games on the HDD. That is unless you install and remove them as you play them.

I would consider getting a 250GB SSD and a 2TB HDD. I would put all your user files (Music, Documents, Downloads, Pictures, etc) on the HDD as well as all your games including STEAM.
 
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mattji104

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Hmmm, I haven't even considered using my HDD for games. I got a 500gb SSD and just rotate games on it as I need keeping it around 75% capacity. But I purposely did that for the load times. Maybe I should consider another HDD for my backlog just cause
 
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techgeek

techgeek

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From all the benchmarks I've seen, load times in games isn't drastically reduced on a SSD. That is because as the CPU pulls the texture files (which are compressed) from the drive, it has to decompress them before loading them into the VRAM. There is a marginal increase in performance, but nothings that's drastically noticeable. Now the games will start faster, it just won't drastically improve load times in game.
 
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RCFProd

RCFProd

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Except for Battlefield 4. That makes it start drastically faster.
 
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techgeek

techgeek

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Starting the game from desktop? Or in game level loading? Because as I said games will launch games faster.
 
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mattji104

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Depends how the game handles it, I mostly play multiplayer games and typically they seem to handle it by loading on a map by map basis. The difference in my most play game, Natural Selection 2, which is horribly optimized, is drastic, and it's significant if not drastic in map loads in any other game I've played. It certainly doesn't improve performance outside loading by any important amount.
 
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RCFProd

RCFProd

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The game cannot be started from desktop unless in offline mode. It goes through Battlelog website which has to launch the game everytime but It's also for in-game loading that's slow in BF4.
 
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