Would storing games on an external SSD be a bad idea?

[Beer Lover 3000]

Hello, I recently bought a Dell Inspiron 15 7000 and it came with a 256 GB SSD, and I'm already starting to run out of room. I was wondering how much slower load times would be and how much fps would be affected if I stored my Steam games on a external SSD.

The External SSD I'm looking at[www.amazon.com]

My laptop[www.dell.com]

Thanks in advance for any help

[Omega]

You probably have a NVME SSD. There should still be room for a 2,5 inch drive. So you can get a 1tb internal drive and use that for games. I recommend a 1tb WD black 2,5 inch.

[Beer Lover 3000]

Originally posted by Omega:

You probably have a NVME SSD. There is room for a 2,5 inch drive. So you can get a 1tb drive and use that for games. I recommend a 1tb WD black 2,5 inch.

So you're saying there is room in my laptop to put an internal hard drive in there along with the SSD?

[Andrius227]

External ssd would perform just as fast as internal one.

[Beer Lover 3000]

Originally posted by Andrius227:

External ssd would perform just as fast as internal one.

I thought that might be the case, but I've seen some people say otherwise...

[Omega]

Originally posted by M'aiq The Liar:

Originally posted by Omega:

You probably have a NVME SSD. There is room for a 2,5 inch drive. So you can get a 1tb drive and use that for games. I recommend a 1tb WD black 2,5 inch.

So you're saying there is room in my laptop to put an internal hard drive in there along with the SSD?

Yes.

Open up the laptop to check.

The first 20 seconds of this video show you how to open the bottom of the laptop.
https://youtu.be/v93BfSjL6hs

It's just a single screw.

[Beer Lover 3000]

Originally posted by Omega:

Originally posted by M'aiq The Liar:

So you're saying there is room in my laptop to put an internal hard drive in there along with the SSD?

Yes.

Open up the laptop to check.

The first 20 seconds of this video show you how to open the bottom of the laptop.
https://youtu.be/v93BfSjL6hs

It's just a single screw.

Oh okay, thank you! I'll try to find out which slot the hard drive would go in and all that stuff. Thanks for the help!

[OLDMAN🎅]

Why would people install every game on steam on their drive?

[Andrius227]

Also, most games dont benefit much from ssd's anyway so you might as well save the money and get a regular 7200rpm hdd. A 2TB hdd would be much cheaper than 500gb ssd and would hold more games.

Originally posted by OLD*MAN:

Why would people install every game on steam on their drive?

Why not ? I have 4TB SSD storage (3 drives) dedicated purely to steam games. Only have 1tb of space left.

[Beer Lover 3000]

Originally posted by Andrius227:

Also, most games dont benefit much from ssd's anyway so you might as well save the money and get a regular 7200rpm hdd. A 2TB hdd would be much cheaper than 500gb ssd and would hold more games.

Oh really? I was under the impression load times benefited greatly from an SSD.

[Omega]

Originally posted by Andrius227:

Also, most games dont benefit much from ssd's anyway so you might as well save the money and get a regular 7200rpm hdd. A 2TB hdd would be much cheaper than 500gb ssd and would hold more games.

There are no 2tb, 7200rpm, 2,5inch drives, only 5400rpm.

If you want to get a 7200rpm, 2,5 inch drive you will have to go with a 1tb WD Black.

[Andrius227]

Originally posted by M'aiq The Liar:

Originally posted by Andrius227:

Also, most games dont benefit much from ssd's anyway so you might as well save the money and get a regular 7200rpm hdd. A 2TB hdd would be much cheaper than 500gb ssd and would hold more games.

Oh really? I was under the impression load times benefited greatly from an SSD.

I mean, it affects loading times, but thats pretty much it. Would you really care if your games loaded a few seconds longer ? You could get 4x more hdd space instead of ssd for lower price.

Originally posted by Omega:

Originally posted by Andrius227:

Also, most games dont benefit much from ssd's anyway so you might as well save the money and get a regular 7200rpm hdd. A 2TB hdd would be much cheaper than 500gb ssd and would hold more games.

There are no 2tb, 7200rpm, 2,5inch drives, only 5400rpm.

If you want to get a 7200rpm, 2,5 inch drive you will have to go with a 1tb WD Black.

I did not mean internal, his original question was about external drives.

[Omega]

Originally posted by M'aiq The Liar:

Originally posted by Andrius227:

Also, most games dont benefit much from ssd's anyway so you might as well save the money and get a regular 7200rpm hdd. A 2TB hdd would be much cheaper than 500gb ssd and would hold more games.

Oh really? I was under the impression load times benefited greatly from an SSD.

Yeah, loadtimes. Is it worth spend $500 for 1tb of storage to shave 5 seconds of loadtimes? In my opinion; no it's not.

And the few games that do profit from running off an SSD would fit on OPs NVME.

[OLDMAN🎅]

Originally posted by Andrius227:

Also, most games dont benefit much from ssd's anyway so you might as well save the money and get a regular 7200rpm hdd. A 2TB hdd would be much cheaper than 500gb ssd and would hold more games.

Only multiplayer games benefit with fast respawn time on a new match starts up.

[Beer Lover 3000]

Yeah, I think you guys are right, I'd rather spend the money on storage. I'm not a huge multiplayer fan (I play tf2, and I want to start playing Overwatch) but I can just store those games on my SSD.

[Astraea Kisaragi]

Some games do benefit from SSD, not many though. Mostly the open world ones with long loading times - like Fallout 4.

For gaming a 7200rpm drive is enough.