I bought a prebuilt gaming PC that seems to have about 800GB of usable storage, and I'm running out of room for the online games I want to install. I'm considering adding another SSD, but I'm not sure how storage affects gaming. Would installing games on an additional SSD improve or hurt online latency, or would it only affect loading and installation times? I also don't think my case has room for another internal drive, so I may need to use an external one. The PC appears to use a beginner-oriented case and already has a 1TB SSD installed.
2 Answers
An SSD gives you more and faster storage, but it won’t improve your internet ping or online latency. It can make game launches, level loading, updates, and installations faster. An external SSD should work well if it uses USB 3.0 or USB 3.1/3.2, though an internal drive is usually cleaner and may perform a little better. It’s also worth checking the exact PC model and motherboard before assuming there’s no room for another internal drive.
For games like Counter-Strike or Deadlock, storing them on an SSD won’t cause network problems. Your latency is mainly determined by your internet connection, router, and distance to the game server. The SSD mostly affects how quickly the game loads and whether large map or texture files can be read quickly. Also, a drive advertised as 1TB will normally show closer to 800–930GB of usable space after formatting and the operating system are accounted for, so that amount may be normal rather than a problem.
I mostly play online games, so I’m not concerned about single-player loading times. I mainly wanted to make sure an external SSD wouldn’t create problems while playing games like Counter-Strike or Deadlock.