I am looking to purchase an external SSD to play my desktop PC games from. My current SSD does not have enough room for games, so I am hoping to get something I can plug in and still get good performance. I assume I can plug in, copy my game files over, delete them from the PC and then boot from the external. Is this how this works? Can I still have games in my taskbar boot from the new external?
Also … and most importantly, anyone have an external they suggest? There are so many available its hard to select one.
Why an external SSD? You may be limited to the port speed you plug the drive in to. Yes you can copy the games files with an app most brands provide although for STEAM, WoW, etc., I would just do a clean install and bring over the save files (if their is no cloud save feature).
my guess as well but if all he has is USB 2.0 ports then he would be better off using an internal PCIe x4 adapter even it was just 2.0 (still 4x faster then USB 2.0).
I have an older Digital Storm PC …
It has a 110GB SSD with Windows and a 500GB SATA
i5-4590 3.30GHz
8gb RAM
and recently added a GeForce GTX 1660 Ti because my old GPU crapped out.
I have never really done any installations myself, so I figured an external would be easiest. I am not against installing one, just not sure my older system has the proper setup for another storage device. If I go with internal, any suggestions there? Is external really bad?
Ignore the keys part if you want - it shouldn’t affect you because you already have Windows 10 digitally activated (presumably) and it remembers your motherboard.
Recommendations from me outside of this - unplug your 500gb SSD until you’re done setting up windows, then plug it back in after. Windows likes to put boot stuff on all the drives and sometimes if you have had a previous install with your old HDD in there, it can complicate things.
Honestly the Samsung EVO (don’t get the pro, not for your usage) is around $139 vs the Crucial MX500 $105 for the same capacity. I would get the Crucial.
I opened up my computer and it seems I have an open spot on my motherboard to plug in a third hard drive and a few unused options to run to the peripheral & SATA plug coming out of the PSU. I may order one of the suggested SSD and mount in one of the open slots and plug into those. Then I can keep the current windows SSD. Sorry for being such a noob, but does this sound ok? I am not 100% on the motherboard but the open slot is identical and right next to where the other drives are plugged in. It’s an Asus HD1M-D plus
sounds like a plan, I have five SSDs in my current gaming PC and four more in wifes…another two in my laptop…for some reason I tend to collect them. Regardless, according to guru3D the difference between launching WoW via the NVMe Samsung 970 pro (very fast) and SATA Samsung 860 QVO (not very fast) is 1.8 seconds. From my experience of playing WoW across all my SSD’s, I have found similar results. Get the largest drive with the best warranty for gaming. All things being equal then get NVMe over SATA.
