5400RPM vs 7200RPM SECONDARY drive for Steam games?

[FatalKeystroke]

I am looking into replacing my existing gaming rig with a new build. I will be installing the operating system on a 120GB SSD and am considering multiple options for a secondary drive to actually install Steam games to. I am trying to determing if using a 5400RPM drive will actually have a significant impact on gaming performance compared to 7200RPM. Everywhere on the internet I am finding powerful support for 7200, however they always seem to assume the operating system is also installed on the drive and cite slow loading times. I dont care about time to load a game, only performance once I am in-game. My experience thus far with my current rig was a 2TB 5400RPM HDD originally (it died) and now a 240GB SSD. I have indeed noticed Windows is much snappier and load times are shorter, but from my perspective I haven't noticed any major difference once in-game. However I'm not allowing myself to make a decision based on my own experience here because there was a 7-8 month period between these two drives being used where the computer was in temporary decommission (due to the first drive failing and lack of funds for the new one) and I feel that is too long of a stretch to make any direct comparisons just from my subjective analysis.

So my condensed quesion:
If Windows is installed to an SSD and games are installed to a separate hard drive, will 5400RPM demonstrate a significant decrease in performace over a 7200RPM once IN-GAME?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Well there is no 5400/5900 Desktop Drive worth buying.
Why would u use anything besides 7200?

The other slower drives are fine for just file storage, downloads, music, pictures, backup needs.

Not for gaming.

Get WD Black

[[☥] - CJ -]

As said above, 7200 RPM WD Black will do the trick.

SSDs only really show performance in games that need them, Battlefield series, ARK, and so forth.. Large open world games with long loading times is where the difference shows.

I have a 240GB SSD for my OS and 2-3 games that require it, all other games are on my 500GB Samsung spinpoint, which i definitely believe ill be upgrading to a WD Black at some point as the spinpoint is only a SATAII drive.

So to answer your question, as stated above it depends on the circumstances, Motherboard and said Games in question, it can be a noticable difference.. WD Black is your best choice.

[76561198258988800]

Firstly, it isn't secondary storage if you're loading games from it. It is primary storage, just not your OS drive.

In games that load data from storage during play you'll notice lag and stuttering with a 5,200rpm HDD once in game.

Such as Just Cause 3, RAGE, ARMA 3, etc.

This dynamic texture loading feature is becoming the norm for 'next gen' 2016 games.

Practically every game released after April 28th 2016 will expect the customer to have a 7200rpm HDD of 1TB or larger.

The Western Digital Black is a good recommendation.

I've tried 5200rpm HDDs in the past and they slow down the pagefile, etc. too much for an enjoyable gaming experience. IMHO.

I run a 120GB SSD and a 1TB 7200rpm Seagate for 'most' my games.

I moved Just Cause 3 to the SSD and it runs much better. :-)

[Bad 💀 Motha]

In Short, if your intended usage is running games off of; then u want a higher performance drive; that does not have to be an SSD, but a 7200rpm HDD will help alot compared to slower ones.

And I would not buy anything from Seagate on it, period.
There is even class action lawsuit now for Seagate Desktop Drives; because of high failure rates.

I still have WD drives going back to the old 10 and 20 GB IDE models that still work; we're talking before the days of WinXP mind you.

WD for HDD, all the way.

[Alexalmighty502]

WD BLACK all the way my friend a have only the 3tb version with no ssd and it has very acceptable read write speeds

[initiaLiSeD]

Have you considered a 500GB SSD?

[Alexalmighty502]

Originally posted by initiaLiSeD:

Have you considered a 500GB SSD?

That won't really be enough storage

[_I_]

get a 2 or 4 tb 7200rpm 64mb cache hdd

[FatalKeystroke]

I'm getting the strong impression 7200 is still the best choice in my setup, to give a little more clarification to why I wasn't just defaulting to 7200 because I could is because the case I will be using (Fractal Design Node 202) only supports 2.5" drives and they tend to be 5400 more often than not and the higher speed, higher capacity ones tend to drive up the cost and I wanted to ensure the price-performance tradeoff would be worth it were I to invest in them.
To respond to initiaLiSeD, I need at least 1TB (luckily I can fit 2 in the case because I'll be using an mSATA SSD) on the second drive and 1TB SSDs are definitely over my budget as lovely as they would be...

Thank you everyone fo your advice, I'll likely be using 1-2x 1TB 7200RPM HGST Travelstars given the information.

[Ryzier]

Stay away from the 5400rpms

[rotNdude]

That really depends on the game. Some games load a lot of things on the fly and others don't. If you were satisfied with a 5400RPM drive before with the games you enjoy, you may be just fine. I don't think the 7200RPM drives are much more expensive than the 5400RPM drives, so I guess it depends on how much you want to spend to get a desired drive capacity.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Originally posted by initiaLiSeD:

Have you considered a 500GB SSD?

That is just for OS and few demanding games.
The rest games on HDD; yes get a 2, 3 or 4 TB WD Black

Games like Dayz, Arma3, GTAV, Fallout4, Division; u want on the SSD; as these have crap-loads of real-time prefetching as you move about.

[initiaLiSeD]

500GB is plenty, right now I have 370GB of games installed alongside my OS.

A 120GB SSD is almost too small for the OS, so get an M2 500GB Samsung Evo (£130) and add an extra HDD or SSD when you find it's getting too small.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

500GB for OS & Games; yea if they are older, smaller, or otherwise indie games perhaps.

Most of us have TB worth of games we'd like to have "at the ready"

And u really only need games on SSD that will actually benefits, most of them will not.

[canamrotax]

If a 5400 rpm drive is "too slow" to run large games, then why do Playstation 4 consoles work just fine with those exact drives? I have upgraded several PS4 units with Samsung ST2000LM003 drives (to get 2TB) and the results have always been excellent. And those units also run the OS on that drive, albeit in one of 15 or so Linux partitions. I run my desktop gaming rigs with OS on SSD, game files stored on a RAID array in the rig, 7200 RPM drives. But on gaming laptops, 7200 RPM drives of large size are not that common. I feel that on gaming laptops, that use M.2 for OS, a 5400 RPM second drive is a valid choice.