As an avid PC gamer, you need the right amount of storage in your rig to accommodate your favorite games. If your rig does not have enough space you might be forced to delete games every time you want to add a new one. Furthermore, an almost-full storage drive can lead to slower game load times, and even highly frustrating crashes, mid-game.
Is 1TB Enough For a Gaming PC?
While, the specific storage size needed for gaming PCs depends on the unique needs and requirements of each user, 1TB storage is more than enough for most gamers. With it, you can be able to fit your OS, games, and even multimedia files in the rig.
Average Size of the Operating System
The right amount of storage should be able to accommodate your chosen Operating System from the three main options: Windows 10, MacOS, and Linux.
Windows 10, the most popular Operating System in the PC world – as well as the PC gaming world – normally takes up around 32GB of storage (for both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions).
While Linux OS might not be the most popular option in PC gaming, it has been gaining a lot traction thanks to the improvements made by a growing community of developers. If you are using Ubuntu, for instance, you will need about 25GB of storage space.
For those die hard Apple fans out there, you can choose to run macOS on your gaming rig. However, to do so you should be willing to give up 256GB of storage space in your PC.
Average Size of Computer Games
In this age of digital distribution, you will need to download games to your computer before you can play them. To have an idea of whether the remaining storage can comfortably accommodate your favorite games, you’ll need to know the average size of PC games.
Most triple-A titles take up anywhere from 25GB to 100GB or more of space. This means that you can download a good number of titles to your gaming rig, even if you have a relatively large Steam library.
However, some popular titles, such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Destiny 2 gobble up a lot of space when installed – 231GB and 92GB respectively.
If you also want to play Indie games on your rig, your gaming PC will likely have enough space to accommodate a number of your favorite titles, even with after packing a few triple-A titles in there, on top of the OS. Most Indie games have an average size of less than 1GB; while the largest ones are around 10GB.
Other Multimedia Files (Music, Videos and Photos)
If you want to use your gaming computer to store, render or edit multimedia files (such as music, images/photos and videos), you can benefit from having a lot of storage space. In addition to the fact that modern phones take high-resolution photographs and videos, editing and rendering multimedia files consumes a lot of storage space.
Hybrid Storage Setup Using SSD and HDD
Over the last few years, technological advancements have brought the cost of SSD drives down. However, if you are not willing to fork out the full cost of a 1TB SSD drive for your gaming computer, you can still enjoy the benefits of these drives and have enough storage for all your games and multimedia files by using a hybrid storage set up that uses both SSD and HDD storage.
To do this, just get a smaller – and more affordable SSD drive – and use it as your gaming rig’s primary storage. It can hold your PC’s installed OS, and a few of your favorite game titles and any other important files. Any other space hogging games and computer files – such as media files – that are rarely used can be stored in a larger and cheaper HDD, ready for installation whenever necessary.