How does a Ssd help in gaming?

[nsjy04]

Recently I went to YT cuz I was bored and watched people build gaming PCs, most of them have a ssd in their setup but my pc does not have one. I wanted to buy one but I don't know why do I need one and the prices are very expensive for some. Can someone tell me why do so many people put a ssd in their system and how does it help in gaming? And of I need one? Thank u.

 

[jimthenagual]

SSDs have much higher read write speeds compared to mechanical drives. The difference is substantial. That said, they have little to no effect on FPS.

They are not mandatory for gaming. You'll notice a HUGE difference in load times, but that's it.

That said, I'll never build a system without one now that I've had one.

 

[smorizio]

older pc and laptops look at the older 2.5 inch ssd drives. you want a 256g ssd min for the os and some games. if you have the funds look at 512g drive. your rig has to be a few years old it may have m2 ssd slots on it. (z170) chipset.

 

[jdlech2]

Here's the details, as best as I can think of them.
Everyone knows SSDs are much faster - both read and write. But what can a gamer get out of that?
First, if your boot drive is an SSD, then obviously, your machine will start up a bit faster.
If your game is installed on the SSD, then your game will start a bit faster.

But how about while you're in the game?
Let's say you have a windows machine. What version of Windows is not all that important for this discussion because all version after 98 behave somewhat similarly.
All windows machines use "virtual memory", which means they spool out unused code and data from memory to the hard drive and then back into memory if it is used again. If you're short on memory, this can cause the infamous "drive thrashing" that beats up HDDs and slows computers down. By locating your virtual memory on an SSD, you speed this up significantly. But at the expense of reducing the SSD life span. You can also reduce (but never eliminate) this by adding more memory to your system. Meanwhile, W8 and beyond has significantly reduced this problem, so a typical windows machine doesn't use virtual memory nearly as much as it used to. (maybe W7 too, not sure)
Even so, you can expect to see some small - perhaps even insignificant- gaming improvement by having your virtual memory on an SSD. This improvement may become significant if you're low on memory.

Another improvement is during scene changes - when lots of data is loaded all at once into memory. The time it takes to do this should be much lower. There's a reason why games give you a break while they load scenes. It takes time to load all the data for a new scene, and that time would be reduced; letting you get back to killing things much more quickly.
What it will not do is improve processing speed or increase framerate or help save an obsolescent system. For instance, if your motherboard has a SATA I controller, you're not going to see much improvement at all by switching to an SSD.

As mentioned earlier - I would not build a machine without an SSD boot/OS drive anymore. My current machine has a 4SSD RAID for a boot/OS drive with all virtual memory located on it. I'm so totally spoiled now - I hardly wait for anything.

If your motherboard supports RAID, there are some pretty cheap SSDs that you can set up as RAID 0. Don't bother with 2 drive RAIDS - a 4 drive RAID... ANY 4 drive RAID... annihilates waiting for anything. And those NVMe drives - they're basically 4 SSD RAIDs on a chip (small board, actually). Better read speed, but not as good write speed. For gaming, read speed is king. So an NVMe drive is much better than a 4 drive RAID.

Which brings me to my final point. If you're going to buy an SSD, pay close attention to read and write speed. As I said, for gaming, read speed is king. But write speed is also important for the Windows virtual memory and general computing.

I got these on sale for $40 each a couple years ago.
https://www.amazon.com/KingDian-Internal-Solid-Desktop-Laptop/dp/B076ZK5S5H
I got all excited to find them on sale because the write speed is much better than average for an SSD. I bought 6 of them - 2 spares for when - not if - one of my SSDs die.

And that's my final point, I guess. SSDs die. It's a matter of when, not if. My RAID is still going strong after 2 years (knock on wood), but eventually one of those drives WILL die. Backup often and be prepared to buy a new SSD and restore from startup without your OS (create a rescue disk for your backup)