I can't afford a new SSD. Should I get an HDD or is that not good enough for gaming pc

please save up

"...the porn and family pics..." God, I hope those are two separate sets of photos! 😉

Back in my day, it was the homework folder

Also games like League of Legends and most older titles will run just fine on an HDD as they don't load textures from the disk on the fly. You only deal with longer loading screens, no gameplay disruption.

Stares at 8tb filled with random games I might play or come back to one day

This. A long time ago when SSDs were first making their way to the masses, the single best performance upgrade for a PC was upgrading to a SSD.

There was a youtube vid of a guy (2009/10ish) who threw a HDD out of a 4 or so storey window. As soon as it left his hand they started copying files to an SSD to see how much transferred before the HDD hit the ground. My mate and i watched it at work, blew our minds lol. Sold me right there.

Playing League of Legends is inadvisable, however

you could get a used one

Bs lol

Yout got a 1TB SSD. You can get a HDD and archive some files to it, so you have at least 20% storage left in your SSD.

Agree. 2 TB is very comfortable but who plays several big story games at the same time. Only excuse is slow or limited internet so you can pre dl what you need. If you play 500gb cod games I have no empathy for your problems 😂

He probably should not buy any SSD at all if he struggles to buy one

I dont play many games but all of mine are on a 500GB HDD and they all run fine

NVME is a huge upgrade too. When my NVME overheats and throttles to sata SSD speeds (400MB/s) i notice it feeling slow.

So many comments below this missed the existing SSD. Most users are fine just keeping windows and whatever games you're actively playing on the SSD. Hard drive for long term storage.

you have 1 tb ssd and you need an upgrade? for what man? 1tb of porn or 1 tb of games that you'll never play? Delete some old games and move the porn and family pics to HDD. 1TB is plenty for games alone...

No joke. Games are HUGE now of days like 150 gigs. It's very easy to fill your drives up if u play newer games.

Oh my gosh, this. I'm showing my age now, I remember back to the days when having any sort of hard drive was a luxury (instead, loading your OS from a floppy disk and then switching disks for your game). Every other upgrade after getting a HD was incremental but I remember when I first swapped to an SSD - Windows loaded almost instantly, and incredibly quietly too. I remember showing friends - like "look at this, I'm turning the PC on now.... and look, it's loaded! Woah!"

not league. if you ever get into a match and are staring at the champion loading screen for minutes at a time waiting for everyone to load in, that's the hdd in the group. if you ever get disconnected, you're going to get banned before you can reconnect. I'm talking from experience, i used to use an hdd to store some of my games. that game does not like slow drives.

HDD is fine for storage, not Windows or games.

Ummmmm...not anymore depending on games. RDR2, Dayz with mods, DCS, with terrains and dlc aircraft, iracing, il2 gb with mods, 1tb is cooked. That's 5 games. Plus windows, paint/editing program..and what if want some fps games like Grayzone warfare, or mindless BF, CoD or world of warships. Easier to just have 2tb or more. 3tb externalHDD for movies/pics etc. Games are big now. I used to have to shuffle shit, delete shit etc, gets annoying.

If you're playing any older or less demanding games an HDD is absolutely fine to play them on. Things will usually just load a bit slower. If you're playing new and more demanding games then yes you'll want an SSD. It depends what you're playing and using your storage for.

Save up, buy used, or buy a cheaper SSD then originally planned. https://www.newegg.com/team-group-1tb-t-force-vulcan-z-sata/p/N82E16820331833?item=N82E16820331833 this one's $122 for 1tb, no DRAM but if it's just going to be used for game storage should be fine. Way better than an HDD My friend tried to run marvel rivals off an HDD and it would take minutes to load into the game, and sometimes the player model wouldn't even load in. Modern games are built with the SSDs in modern consoles in mind.

I have a small SSD with windows installed on it. I have baldurs gate 3 on my HDD because there was not enough space on my C:/ The game takes a couple of minutes to load, several seconds to save. HDD light on constantly. However, once it has finally loaded, it plays completely normally. It's not ideal, but I still enjoy playing it BTW, I bought a replacement HDD recently to store videos and photos, and was shocked how expensive it was. Turns out the memory shortage has indirectly caused HDD to increase in price too!!!