New build: Better to have games on a separate drive to C: drive?

Rezident

Rezident

Rezident

Soldato
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For a new build for gaming, I'm looking at a 1Tb M2 drive for starters but is it better to have the games on a separate drive (e.g. on a another NVMe drive or a SATA SSD)?

Would it make much difference going for a single 2Tb M2 drive for everything or is it best practice to put the games on a different drive?

It's for my brother and it needs to be as simple as possible (he has not even updated his gpu drivers on the last build I did for him years ago!) so he'll probably install games on the C drive anyway, does it make much difference with the new drives these days? It will be a new build, new cpu, board, etc.
 
I personally ditched my SSD for one M.2 and will never go back. ( I am not a heavy gamer so a 1TB is more than enough for me )
Mainly because of simplicity, performance and less cables in the front of the case for aesthetics.
 
It works fine, look at how many people have Laptops with only one drive.

But it is better to have the OS on its own drive with plenty of spare room though.
 
I know my brother will probably keep the same PC for years and years.

Mate of mine has seen power gamers burn through an SSD in 5 years, particularly where OS and games are on the same drive and in less time on laptops apparently.

OK I will get a second drive for games, cheers.
 
I suppose the best case for Windows would be OS, page file and application all on separate drives.

I’m not sure how much performance you would actually notice though.
 
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Most clients are really easy to “set and forget” the installation drive. I’ve almost always exclusively had a drive dedicated to games (and other gaming related software like mods).

If your brother is as tech-adverse as you make it sound, you need to weigh up if you want a small amount of pain now to teach him how to install games on the dedicated drive, or pain in a year or 2 when he has installed too many games and windows starts flapping due to insufficient space.

In terms of performance, it all depends on the secondary drive. 2TB NVME drives can be had for sub £80 now, makes SATA drives irrelevant.
 
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I just have a single 2Tb M.2 NVMe drive. I have seen concerns about the longevity of these drives, but my previous PC had a Corsair sata SSD for OS and hard-drive for games and data. When I built my current PC I tested the SSD and it was fine, so I reused it for my server whose OS hard-drive was getting errors. That's an SSD that has seen heavy use for about 12 years.
 
The biggest reason not to have them separate, in my opinion, is due to two things: using the M.2 slot with a small drive (when many builds only have 2, or 3) and the (often, but not always) better value of larger drives. The wear on a games drive isn't something I'd be super concerned about, but on a workstation I might choose differently.
 
I always use 2 x 2 NVMe now. All games/utilities are on 2nd drive - if nothing else, when I do new build, it makes moving games to a fresh windows install on the new PC easy
 
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