I can buy a regular SSD immediately, but my father wants to save up for about a month and give me an NVMe SSD as a birthday gift. I don't want to take that opportunity away from him, but I also want to finish building and using my PC now.
I have a few spare HDDs available. Would one be perfectly usable for roughly a month, or would it be smarter to spend around $50–$60 on a small 256GB SSD for Windows and basic programs, then switch to the 2TB NVMe drive later? I've been buying parts gradually and testing them in older PCs. Everything is ready except the SSD, graphics card, and monitor; I have temporary access to a Radeon 7600 XT and a spare monitor.
The games I'm most likely to play initially are Terraria, Total War: Rome II, and League of Legends. I'm also interested in Baldur's Gate 3 and the SevTech: Ages mod, but those can wait.
5 Answers
Check how many M.2 slots your motherboard has. If it has two, you may be able to keep the temporary drive installed alongside the future NVMe drive, using the smaller drive for extra storage or another purpose. Either way, there’s no technical problem with starting on an HDD.
I’d wait and let your father get the NVMe drive if that’s what he wants to give you. You can install Windows on the spare HDD temporarily, keep the setup fairly minimal, and then do a clean installation on the faster drive when you receive it. It’ll be slower, but a month is manageable.
If you can afford the drive now, another option is to buy it immediately and have your father reimburse you later as the gift. That could avoid possible price increases, but only do that if he’s comfortable with the arrangement. Otherwise, waiting a month is completely reasonable.
A small SSD would make the system feel much more responsive than an HDD, but buying one for only a month is probably not the best use of your money. Use the HDD for now, especially since games like Terraria and League of Legends should still be playable; expect longer loading times, particularly with larger open-world games.
An HDD will work fine for a month. Windows and games will take longer to load, but the drive won’t significantly reduce your actual in-game performance once everything is running. For your current games, waiting is probably better than buying a small SSD you’ll barely use before replacing it.
That makes sense. My current computer already uses an HDD, so it wouldn’t make things worse—it just wouldn’t be the upgrade I’m hoping for.