2 SSD and 1 HDD for new gaming build?

[Lew123]

Hi everyone, I will be building my first gaming PC soon and I was just wondering what would be the best way to setup my drives. I was planning on getting a 500gb Samsung EVO 850 ssd for the OS/programs and then a 1T ssd for games, and finally a 2 TB WD Black for mass storage. Would this be the best way to go? Or should I just get 1 ssd and 1 hdd? Let me know what you all think, thank you very much.

 

[greens]

there would be no real benefit in having your OS and games on seperate hard drives.

Your best is probably a single SSD with HDD for storage.

If you're looking for a bit of performance, which your budget lends itself to, you could go with multiple 500GB SSDs in a RAID array. This can give you some absolutely incredible speeds, but with added risk for complications and data loss.

 

[USAFRet]

there would be no real benefit in having your OS and games on seperate hard drives.

Your best is probably a single SSD with HDD for storage.

If you're looking for a bit of performance, which your budget lends itself to, you could go with multiple 500GB SSDs in a RAID array. This can give you some absolutely incredible speeds, but with added risk for complications and data loss.

SSD + RAID 0. Read this first:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html

 

[Hlsgsz]

Just teh teh highest capacity SSD you can afford and put both your OS and games on it. SSDs perform better as they get larger. This is because of their parralelistic nature. And get a large WD blue for storage, as it'll be quieter and you don't need the speed of a black for media.

 

[USAFRet]

Hi everyone, I will be building my first gaming PC soon and I was just wondering what would be the best way to setup my drives. I was planning on getting a 500gb Samsung EVO 850 ssd for the OS/programs and then a 1T ssd for games, and finally a 2 TB WD Black for mass storage. Would this be the best way to go? Or should I just get 1 ssd and 1 hdd? Let me know what you all think, thank you very much.

The only real benefit of having the games on an SSD is level loading time.
Not insignificant benefit, but you won't see any FPS increase.

What and how many drives? All personal preference.
I prefer OS and applications on one drive (250500GB SSD), and other drives for other things.

Other people have different opinions.

Start out with the SSD C drive, and a HDD for all that other stuff.
Add new drives down the road. Especially as SSD's become cheaper and cheaper.

 

[Hlsgsz]

there would be no real benefit in having your OS and games on seperate hard drives.

Your best is probably a single SSD with HDD for storage.

If you're looking for a bit of performance, which your budget lends itself to, you could go with multiple 500GB SSDs in a RAID array. This can give you some absolutely incredible speeds, but with added risk for complications and data loss.

I do not recommend RAID0-ing SSD. There is no real benefit in real world usage except in some fringe scenarios(4k video editing) and tehr eare risks. Also some funtionality will not work in RAID.

 

[SBMfromLA]

there would be no real benefit in having your OS and games on seperate hard drives.

Your best is probably a single SSD with HDD for storage.

If you're looking for a bit of performance, which your budget lends itself to, you could go with multiple 500GB SSDs in a RAID array. This can give you some absolutely incredible speeds, but with added risk for complications and data loss.

CORRECTION:

It's actually better in my opinion having your games installed onto a different drive. First and foremost, it makes backing up and restoring your Windows O/S drive so much faster. Another thing.. say in the future you want to increase the storage space where you install your games on a separate drive.. all you'd need to do is install the drive and copy over all the folders from that drive onto the new one and when you're done.. give it the same drive letter as your old one.. and you're done.

It also helps to keep your O/S drive smaller.

I think the setup you asked about is great and it's similar to the way I have mine set up:
Drive C (SSD): Windows 10
Drive D (SSD): Program Files & Games
Drive E (3TB HDD): Archives, Media [photos, videos, music]
Drive F (600GB Velociraptor): Formerly for game installs.. now strictly for downloads and Drive C Image Backups

 

[Hlsgsz]

there would be no real benefit in having your OS and games on seperate hard drives.

Your best is probably a single SSD with HDD for storage.

If you're looking for a bit of performance, which your budget lends itself to, you could go with multiple 500GB SSDs in a RAID array. This can give you some absolutely incredible speeds, but with added risk for complications and data loss.

CORRECTION:

It's actually better in my opinion having your games installed onto a different drive. First and foremost, it makes backing up and restoring your Windows O/S drive so much faster. Another thing.. say in the future you want to increase the storage space where you install your games on a separate drive.. all you'd need to do is install the drive and copy over all the folders from that drive onto the new one and when you're done.. give it the same drive letter as your old one.. and you're done.

It also helps to keep your O/S drive smaller.

I think the setup you asked about is great and it's similar to the way I have mine set up:
Drive C (SSD): Windows 10
Drive D (SSD): Program Files & Games
Drive E (3TB HDD): Archives, Media [photos, videos, music]
Drive F (600GB Velociraptor): Formerly for game installs.. now strictly for downloads and Drive C Image Backups

One can partition SSDs if desired, so IMHO a single larger SSD is still teh way to go.