HDD to M.2 SSD performance increase question

[KING]

Hello all, I currently have a HDD in my PC (i built this pc almost 10 years ago). I upgraded everything else but was kinda lazy on changing the drive since I wondered how big a deal it would be. A lot of games require it these days & I can feel the effects of my HDD being too slow. So I am changing tomorrow to a samsung 980 pro 1TB. I am just wondering if I would still get increased game loading performance if I put steam on the M.2 but not my windows install. I am thinking of doing this because the M.2 I am getting is only 1TB so fitting steam & windows will be a tight fit. I was thinking to leave windows on the HDD since my PC actually boots decently considering how old the drive it (ready to use in about 2 mins). Will I be bottlenecking any game performance by only installing steam on the SSD & not windows?

[Ogami]

Honestly, one of the main advantages of a SSD/M.2 is how much more responsive and fast your Windows installation works with it.
Its not just the boot process, everything you do goes faster and feels smoother.
To keep the OS willingly on a old HDD when you have a sparkling fast SSD seems a real waste.
Dont get me wrong, i still have one old style HDD in my system next to my SSD´s and M.2 but its pureley a archive drive for video and audio files since its 8 TB, a size which is still very expensive in SSD format.
But i would never go back to run any kind of OS or program/game from a mechanical HDD, the thought alone is... brrrrrr.

Also 1 TB is really not that small, you dont need to have 20 AAA games installed at once do you?
If you use it for your OS and a handful of games you regularly play it shoulf be more then enough.

[KING]

Would it then make sense to install windows on the SSD & pick only games that require SSD speeds? I suppose I could keep a lot of my games on HDD since stuff like CS2 & left 4 dead 2 load fast enough on it. Its newer games I have an issue with like warhammer darktide, it takes 3 minutes to load from main menu into the game. Battlefield 2042 also loads very slowly when loading maps

[Ogami]

You can do that, sure. You can also install games on the HDD and just use the Steam internal option to move a game installation to switch the game over to your SSD when you want to play and keep it on the HDD if you dont plan to play it for a while.
Thats what i did when i started out with SSD and the standard size for a SSD was like 250GB at most.
Nowadays i dont care anymore, i have 4x 2TB SSD in my system but at the time it was a good solution.

[MBK]

You should have both the OS and your games on the SSD.

If you play multiple games, 1TB is not enough storage these days

[Ogami]

Originally posted by MBK:

You should have both the OS and your games on the SSD.

If you play multiple games, 1TB is not enough storage these days

Depends entirely on the games you play i would say. If you only install the newest graphic wonder AAA game with 200 GB each then sure, you will run out very fast.

But for example i have currently 65 games installed on my 2TB M.2 main drive that also holds my OS and i still have 1.35 TB of free space.

[KING]

I suppose I will install windows on the M.2 after all & put games that need SSD the most with it. I could buy a bigger M.2 but I intend a fully new build next year so I am waiting until then to buy a bigger one.

[Muppet among Puppets]

Ssd like to have free space. That makes them last long. There are short videos which explain how an ssd works.

[Karumati]

Originally posted by KING:

Hello all, I currently have a HDD in my PC (i built this pc almost 10 years ago). I upgraded everything else but was kinda lazy on changing the drive since I wondered how big a deal it would be. A lot of games require it these days & I can feel the effects of my HDD being too slow. So I am changing tomorrow to a samsung 980 pro 1TB. I am just wondering if I would still get increased game loading performance if I put steam on the M.2 but not my windows install. I am thinking of doing this because the M.2 I am getting is only 1TB so fitting steam & windows will be a tight fit. I was thinking to leave windows on the HDD since my PC actually boots decently considering how old the drive it (ready to use in about 2 mins). Will I be bottlenecking any game performance by only installing steam on the SSD & not windows?

there is no reason to keep windows on hdd

[KING]

I’ve already installed the M.2 and put windows on it. I done it first thing this morning