With digital storefronts such as Steam, Origin, Epic, GOG Galaxy, and Ubisoft Connect taking up the vast majority of PC gamers' hard drives, how much storage ꧋space do you actu🍃ally need in a gaming PC in 2022? 

It's common nowadays for most 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:gaming PCs to ship with a 1TB SSD as standard, be that an NVMe or a SATA, which is what your bootOS (where Windows is stored) taking up a chunk of this capacity. Now, should you be considering building yourself a gaming PC from scratch, being smart with the amount of storage on a budget system is a great way to keep those costs down. Fortunately, it's now easier than ever, with more op♓tions aff🗹orded to you, for both SSDs of all kinds and standard hard drives too. 

With optical drives largely phased out throughout the 2010s on the PC gaming platform, the present (and indeed the future) is entirely geared towards digital distribution. That's why we're taking a look at what you can do with a 500GB drive as well as a 1TB drive in various configurations for a budget-orientated gaming setup. Keep in mind that these models won't necessarily be the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best SSDs for gaming, but for those after wallet-friendly models, they should certainly fit𝓰 the bill. 🅷;

Is 500GB enough storage space for a gaming PC? 

Factoring in your OS install, with Windows 10 normally taking up around 20GB depending on which version is on your SSD, then you've got around 480GB total capacity left to play with. It's been estimated that the size of an average triple-A game in 2022 is between 25-60GB, as this is consistent with listings for titles such as 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Dying Light 2: Stay Human and 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Elden Ring, both ofꦇ which carry 60GB total install sizes. 

For two games, that's around 120GB 🥂of usable space (about 25%) occupied. From this example, we can surmise that you will have space for between six and seven similarly sized games, depending on where they fall in that average scale. From this, we can surmise that 500GB is indeed enough to store a fair few big games at any one time, although this is without considering other media and files on top. 

Of course, if you're getting a gaming PC to indulge in more casual gaming experiences, or Esports games that typically carry smaller file sizes (such as Valorent, CS: GO, and Dota II) then your total system space will stretch much further. That's to say nothing of the indie scene, of which titles can be as small 𝓡as a few hundred megabits to a couple of 🅺gigs.

Should I go for a 500GB HDD or SSD? 

The biggest cost-saving measure here is going to come down to storag😼e type as standard hard drives generally run cheaper, and consequently far slower, then faster SATA 🐻and M.2 SSDs. As a rule, we recommend running your games on an SSD as this will result in faster loading titles and better overall performance. 

Fortunately, SSDs are nowhere near as expensive as ﷺthey once were. We'v𒅌e rounded up the three best cheapest options on the market for you below.

The best budget 500GB storage drives