An External SSD for GAMING vs HDD & SSD - What You NEED to know
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ก.ค. 2024
- The debate about the best game storage drive between HDD vs SSD vs NVMe has been raging forever but in this video we look at how external SSDs can be used for modern games in 2021. How does an external drive perform against the internal drives in game load times, game updates and stability? Also which USB ports should you use for the best external drive performance?
Buy items in this video from Amazon at the links below:
Crucial X8 External SSD - geni.us/X8SSD
Crucial X6 External SSD - geni.us/X6SSD
Crucial MX500 - geni.us/MX500SSD
Crucial P5 NVMe - geni.us/P5SSD
Western Digital Black HDD - geni.us/WDHDD2TB
Western Digital Blue HDD - geni.us/WDBLUE2TB
Corsair 5000D - geni.us/C5000D
Timestamps:
0:00 - External drives for gaming Intro
1:27 - USB Interfaces EXPLAINED
3:37 - How to Choose the BEST USB Port
4:36 - WATCH OUT for Front Panel Connectors
5:11 - How we Tested External Drives
7:34 - External vs SSD vs HDD Performance
8:10 - Game UPDATE Times
10:23 - Game LOAD Times - External vs SSD vs HDD
11:42 - Game FRAMERATES
12:20 - External vs SSD vs HDD Conclusion
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Review unit provided free of charge by the companies listed. This video is sponsored by Corsair. As per Hardware Canucks guidelines, no review direction was received from manufacturer. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Gear list (Available on Amazon):
Main Camera (Dmitry) - geni.us/SONYA7III
Main Lens (Dmitry) - geni.us/Tamron2875
Main Camera (Eber) - geni.us/CanonEOS-R
Main Lens (Eber) - geni.us/dLL
Main 2nd Lens (Eber) - geni.us/Canon24-70MKII
Main Camera Mic (D & E) - geni.us/RODEMIC
Cheap 4K Camera (Panasonic G7) - geni.us/24nm
Awesome Slider - geni.us/1Hwt
Our Shotgun Mic - geni.us/Sennheiser-MKE600
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#externalssdforgaming #ssdvshddfps #hardwarecanucks - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
External SSDs are fairly affordable and a great option for gaming laptops if you don't want to have to replace the boot drive.
Also worth noting that many new Notebooks have an empty hard drive bay next to their nvme boot drives. So it's worth checking that first
@@mastaw My Razer Blade 17 has one so I put an extra 2TB 970 EVO plus in there for game storage. I just like having games stored off my boot drive. I used an external SSD on the laptop I had before that and it worked just fine for my needs when connected to the USB-C port.
@Ziv Zulander I use a very similar solution for my backup drive. I put a larger C drive in my laptop so I put the original SSD in an enclosure and partitioned it so that it has a windows ISO, my backup files and some important drivers to get me going in case I need to repair the system.
@@mastaw This is really worth checking. I upgraded the HDD in a notebook that was a few years old. Since it was to be a drive swap I just bought a Samsung SATA SSD and cloned the internal drive to it using the software on the Samsung website. When I opened the machine I discovered that in addition to the SATA drive there was a M.2 slot next to it. Now if I had known that I could have bought a M.2 SATA drive and kept the HDD as a backup or just to store movies and such.
Now if your notebook has an M.2 slot then check just what drives it will support before you go shopping for one. In my case it only supports SATA drives. The slot has a tab that prevent you from even installing a NVME drive so you will know if you've got the wrong kind of drive as it won't even fit. If you have a machine with NVME support that's not the case. A SATA M.2 drive will happily slot into the slot and I think most if not all NVME enabled M.2 machines will support using a SATA drive, but it will mean that you are leaving some performance on the table.
External ssd is a saviour for me. I have a macbook air with only 128gb and having a Bootcamp partition is no go. It takes too much storage space.
Anyone else still mindblown that an external drive the size of a credit card can fit so much data into it?
Nvme's are just absolutely an out of this world concept to me. they can casually fit 8TB on them. if you truly want to be mindblown, look up DNA digital data storage. A single gram of DNA can theoretically store up to 215 petabytes (215,000,000 GB) of data.
@@afuturehobo How do I hook up my DNA to my skytech gaming pc? I am not sticking my penis into this one, not after last time dammit
im still mind blown you can run triple A games off an external ssd usb drive
Thanks. I'm getting a Crucial X8 for my more taxing games. Really appreciate your clear info on this subject.
Great video. Very informative. I Love the presentation and the timings to jump to certain content. I am definitely going back to watch others you posted.
Interesting content as always guys. Definitely worth mentioning how much CPUs can impact game updates due to decompression though!
Can't wait for USB 4 gen 2x2 revision 2 gen 2 superspeed. Gonna be great!
When's that supposed to roll out?
@@HawkSea its a joke
@@Amogh-Dongre yeah, why can't they be like pci-e?
@@fhkkjjk9255 yeah that's true
Thanks for sharing! Me and my wife share a laptop and so I don't want to hog up storage with all my games and slow the system down. At the same time, I'm also in the market for an external drive to store photos and documents so this would seem like an appropriate solution.
Fantastic video with great advice, including information on the speed realities of these devices on older and newer USB hardware.
This video helped me make a choice to purchase the Crucial X8, something I can now use for multiple purposes and have great speeds when needed.
I'll be using my incoming (today!) X8 as a quick fix for backing up my Android smartphone (S21 Ultra) sans laptop, use as a temporary external device for my aging laptop (internal SSD failed so X8 will be utilised for diagnostic purposes and running an OS), and later as a new storage source for my PS5 on occasion.
Crucial X8 1Tb has the raw speeds I like for when I need it on USB 3.2 Gen 2 devices (or whatever the previous names were 🙄), but has storage capacity useful for older devices on short notice.
Having the X8 preformatted in exFAT makes this option seamless across multiple devices in my home too.
Thank you again! 😊
Banging video. Thank you so much, I was needing a bit of help!
Switched my PS5 external storage from a WD Black HD to an NVME SSD and loving it. For PC, I'm always going to store games on an internal SSD so I don't need to worry about the bandwidth limitations of the USB ports. A+ video
USB and thunderbolts have more bandwidth then the m.2 slot
@@SomeoneFighter What PS5 has USB/thunderbolt ports faster than m.2 slot?
@@hachooo in ps5 specifically the external ports aren’t as fast as m.2 but in general thunderbolt 3 and 4 devices are faster then m.2 pcie 4
But it doesn’t really matter because nvme ssds can’t take advantage of the full bandwidth of m.2 anyway
THANK U for the advises in the end of the vid . i was wondering what i should choose and now i know 👍
The USB consortium really needs to have a non-engineer come up with the naming scheme.
As an engineer, I hate this naming scheme. Designations, along with technical reports, are for conveying information as *clearly* as possible. Someone didn't get the memo on that.
@@stenduginski2306 You might hate it but most of the engineers I'm friends with are completely happy pushing out what are basically internal identifiers into a public facing name, because they don't have the training or expertise to recognize the headaches this causes on the consumer's end. There needs to be oversight on naming conventions, especially when they are being used by literally hundreds of millions of people.
@@stenduginski2306 IEEE mafia to blame.
This isn't an engineer name, engineers wouldn't keep changing the names of previous revisions. This is a marketing name. That's why when you buy Gen 3.2 Generation 1 you're actually just buying USB 3.0. It stops the backlog of 3.0 devices that they still want to sell from becoming unsellable if you can just relabel them as Gen 3.2
@@jimmehjiimmeehh9748 that should be illegal, its clearly a scam. Its abusing people who is not tech savy and that is the mayority of the world.
2 years later and you are the ONLY youtuber who properly covered gaming on external hard drives. Everyone else just goes off features not even related to gaming.
@@freedomisdead9638 An SSD can't overheat your CPU. If your CPU is capable of overheating, then it will do that regardless of a USB drive.
@@KonglomeratYTwill external ssd affect fps?
Exactly what I wanted to know, super thanks!
I have the Crucial x8, so this was perfect.
wow this has been the best video on the topic so far. I've even learned something about USBs, thank you so much!
Best and most informative video on subject that I have found. Thank you! Liked and subbed
Thank you for all this real world testing :)
Thanks for this video. This is a very interesting topic and a very nice presentation.
Love the vids! Thanks for the information.
Good information, good presentation. Thanks!
Hey, just want to say I enjoy your tech takes and thoughts on your channel.
I know this is random, but after 2 years since seeing your review on the Glorious Model O mouse, I've finally managed to convince my parents to buy me one in December last year! Hopefully I'll be able to get my hands on the other peripherals a bit faster than the mouse. :)
GREAT VIDEO !!! Thanks bro!
Amazing video quality ! By content and production, you got a new sub !
Awesome video Eiber!
Keep up the great content!!
very good video helped me a lot thank you.
Thank you learned alot from this video
Freaking awesome video, very informative and to the point. You gained a subscriber
What about network attached options? I like the idea of downloading games onto a NAS and having them available on any device connected to the network. I think ideally it would act as a central cache for all downloaded games that each device can then install from as required so it acts more like a local steam server.
Great video. The speed difference between the x6 and x8 isn’t that much different. Sure the x8 is faster, but not by much. What an eye opener.
Great video. I'm almost a little curious as to how a SATA to USB interface hooked up to an internal SSD would perform. Maybe that could be something to include in a potential follow up video?
Did you find that out?
I don't understand the setup that you're suggesting... care to rephrase?
You need to go for usb 3.2 and you can get speeds of 500mb/s
So nvme are not really good for this because you will be wasting money
Nice video! Would've liked to see the same test with an external server connected via 10 gigabit ethernet ;)
Excellent coverage as always. Love your voice too.
U know no idea how hard it is to find this info on TH-cam, I'm a beginner and that all made sense. So tank you very much!
That ROG nvme enclosure you have,.. I have it and its a life saver.. I was using 1TB WD sn550 as a secondary storage for Multiplayer based games like Warzone, apex etc, along side 1TB 970 Evo Plus as boot and work app drive.
I was able to score PS5 and needed a external drive for it. So i was looking to use the sn550 for ps5 and swap it with another drive but this time with good random speed one, and was got 2TB WD Black SN750 on deal so transferred many other games to that ssd..
Luckily, the ROG enclosure was on sale on second hand market, sealed.. So now this is now my PS5 intall for PS4 games and transfers are so fast.. This will serve well when we would be able to transfer PS5 Games too..
literally I was waiting for this particular video.....
USB should just be designated by speed, throw away the annoying 3.x gen something bullshit.
There's USB2, USB 5 Gbit/s, USB 10 Gbit/s, USB 20 Gbit/s. Just like ethernet everything is simple now.
even the first row he used, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, simple, without the gen 2+2=4 BS
@@JoLong the Problem is that 3.0 and 3.1 don't exist anymore with new terminology
@@tommihommi1 i know, should have been the name from the start, instead of renaming existing generation
So good video quality, amazing work good job
when it comes down to the game updates with I think internet performance has a larger effect, because i have an 8tb WD green drive that spins at 5400rpm and i downloaded the same updates and got the same times that the nvme got. I do get 50mb/s - 200mb/s as of internet bandwidth. Yet this could honestly be different with anyone with different HDDs
great video bro 👍🏽
Subbed son! Quality info!
So I’ve been considering getting a USB SSD (Adata SE900) but I have a question about your comment on not having too many usb slots plugged in. Was that specifically for the front panel IO or was that overall as well? Like, should I not be using any usb hubs with one of them plugged in? I have my main peripherals and audio devices plugged into the back of the motherboard, and the front usb slots are usually reserved for my wired controllers or my midi piano keyboard. If I’m going to pick up an external ssd, will any of these split up bandwidth?
Switched to full SSD recently : a 240gb corsair nvme drive (gen3, might go gen4 soon) and 2*1tb crucial MX500. I'll admit it was more of an aesthetic choice by getting rid of the drive bay, but I'm glad there's an actual difference with the chunky 7200rpm they replaced
I have crucial mx500 as well, but kinda disappointed to be honest.
TBW on crucial ssds are joke compared to Samsungs one. particularly to evo 860 2tb which offers up to 1.200 tbw.
@@DarkAngel-vf4em even if the crucial are half of that, it would mean filling up my SSD 600 times. It's more than enough for non-server use
@@guillaumejoop6437 with 1tb crucial you get 300 - 350 tbw which is tbh a lot but my point is that while paying almost the same price as samsung, samsung offer better endurance which translates for me into better endurance, longevity and without worrying about driver failure.
amazing video! thats a sub! any advice....i need to upgrade my nvme, should I clone it or run games off an external? would i notice much difference?
Video well put E, thanks for your efforts.
Great Review . Finally i know , i no need buy 2 x 1TB M.2 for my laptop . Toshiba 3TB 7200rpm are just 50% of the cost for 1TB M.2.
Best tech content on TH-cam!!!
The MX 500 is just so competitive ... you see it in every review and tech channel for several years now. Legendary
It really is a legend.
@@HardwareCanucks Thank you E for the informative video
yes and no, also it has the least tbw among ssds out there.
I have bought six (three for myself and three for family) over a span of 3 years and its awesome
Plus it’s a great deal. Does it last a long time?
Thank you for this..
I am not surprised. It’s been a common occurrence that I thought 💭 I needed more performance. Only to be okay with what I already had.
Using a Crucial X8 SSD on my PS5 and it's working great
excellent video.
Hey there, great video! I just bought my m1 macbook and I wanted to ask if I install games on an external drive will it leave any "footprints" of temporary or otherwise game files on the internal drive? I don't want to "polute" and overload my drive with unnecessary stuff.
Great Video👍
SSD's seem to have got stuck at a certain price point and 2TB or above is really expensive in comparison to 1TB SSD's. Not sure why though. It seems that 4TB SSD's are not common enough to drive the prices down.
It's good to see that now you can get a 2TB M.2 SSD for $200. I can't wait to see how this comment ages when we start talking about how many cents you pay per TB instead of per GB. :)
Even at 2TB you're getting twice the storage of a 1TB for less than twice the cost. Not saying that's all there is to it but I don't think that's necessarly unreasonable.
Lol 4 tb are now like 200 bucks... You dont need external drives anymore and i saw on amazon an internal sata 4tb not m.2 ssd for 150
I just got a new NVMe m.2 and USB-C Enclosure for my external storage. I only use it to store videos I have recently been recording.
Bought a new gaming pc but it doesn’t have a lot of storage, this video is very helpful
He has the taste and refined air of a sophisticated gamer.
I was going to make a joke about sophisticated gamer being an oxymoron, but I actually agree with you.
Great video. Did you experience any overheating impacts on the external ssd? They run good on cold but after a few minutes some that are not well designed go to bottom speeds.
Did you experienced any of that from the models you tested?
Thanks for the video and advice!
I stream video games and have a question:
I have several peripherals plugged into my PC’s USB ports (camera, mic, joystick, rudder pedals, throttle, Track IR, keyboard, mouse), as well as a 1TB SSD in a SATA-to-USB enclosure plugged into the fastest USB 3.1 port on the back of the machine and things run well, though sometimes the camera, which is also plugged into a fast USB port in the back, lags in Open Broadcaster Studio.
There are no devices plugged into ports on the front of the case.
Could the lag be caused by the USB bus being overloaded?
Great video. The x6 wasn’t that much slower than the x8 as original thought. Yes
New viewer, well done, subscribing.
Great content, keep it up! 🔝🔝🔝
Can I suggest you to revisit some SSHD like the Seagate Firecuda or similar?
The lighting here is perfect
This channels production value is honestly seriously underrated!
about a month ago, i snagged a deal on a used 2.5" external hdd since my internal drives were filling up. sadly, it didn't work well (drive would hang, usb disconnect and prevent my pc from booting). i ended up ditching the case/adapter and just using it with sata internally. might try external if i need more storage in the future
Just a quick question, some systems, like the one i just got, scar 17 g733 came in 1+1TB Raid 0 config...
Does Raid 0 really matter in a gaming rig? Though it does show significant speeds (r/w)on benchmarking tools, how does it really compare on actual load and update times?
(just asking coz i really don't have anything else to compare it to, and am looking forward to your insight coz i am preparing to upgrade to a 2+2TB either in the same config or a non-Raid)
Btw, great comparison, thanks for sharing! 👍🏻🤟🏻
This video especially helped, in the right time, since I had debate beetwen Crucial MX500, and Crucial P5 NVMe. Since at my local store Crucial MX500 2TB version is 170$ cheaper, I'l get that (+ I don't wanna go back to noisy hard drives). Btw what Cpu, Gpu, and RAM combo is minimum for gaming (Scum, Gta5, Battlefield 5...), and casual 3D modeling (Maya, Autocad, Adobe...). For both sides (Intel or AMD), and to be able to use it for next 2 year's ? Thank you. :)
Thanks
This video was a crucial part of my day **winks**
The Western Digital Black & Blue beg to be noticed. ;)
@@HardwareCanucks I guess they are feeling a bit blue now
If anything you’d think WD would be a bit red from embarrassment.
Good video, I'm upgrading my laptops 256gb nvme drive to a 1tb or 2tb model and wanted to use the 256gb in an enclosure. Glad to see it's worth it.
Great work, Hardware Canucks!
Hey guys! :D I hope you stay safe and have a nice day, God bless you!
I usually put smaller/indy games on the hdd but then also some games I barely ever touch. figured id do a test run on my new system with Need for Speed from the external drive and notice that the read on that drive was almost always capped at a 100% and I was experiencing some stutters or bad frame times.
Finally, a real world comparison of drives.
You guys released this video on just the perfect time for me! I was _this_ close to ordering an external SSD to run games off of.
Just get a external M.2 drive enclosure. It's cheaper in the long run because you'll be able to upgrade drive size (1TB - 2TB) much cheaper using "Internal" M.2 drives instead of constantly having to buy a bigger dedicated external drive. This video shows that load times aren't that far off compared to internal drives. The only real difference will be if you use NVME {10GB} or SATA {5GB}) and even then unless it's a massive file, you probably won't be able to tell a difference.
What’s the issue
I don’t get it
how would you go on about building your own external ssd for games and etc. which ssd and enclosure would you use ? Would love your take on it. with the times we are in laptops are getting more popular but most of them come with a single drive bay
Thank you so much for this awesome video. My wife just got me a 4TB potable SSD woot woot
4:37 and 12:41 more details PLEASE! Why is that? How is it different from using 2 adjacent USB ports on the back panel IO?
What about USB ports on hubs or on monitors (acting as hubs)? Same deal?
I grew up on 8 bit gaming. Load times don't bother me at all. I use a M.2 Type C external drive (1TB AData Sata M.2) steam drive with my laptop.
my question is. is there any difference in latency for usb mouse and keyboard in the different usb types? like is it better to plug mouse and keyboard in usb 3.0 over 2.0?
Great vid
thanks :)
crucial x8 is great wow im gonna buy it
I have 1.5TB in NVME and 6TB HDD so all the games I don’t play often go on the HDD. With the introduction of Direct Storage this or next year could require high speed SSDs for some new games.
Exactly. DirectStorage will be a big thing.
@@HardwareCanucks Which also means that USB won't cut it at that time... but NVMe (for internal), or Thunderbolt 3/4 (for external) will.
It would be interesting to see you run the tests you did with an Optane drive.
Do you have to format your external SSD to NTFS before? Or will exFAT work just fine? I have a Sandisk Extreme external SSD
Hi Ibra, this is really informative! Just quick question regarding reliability of the external ssd connected to usb port all the time. Is this safe?
probably
Very nice
thank you! i will buy one of the ssd soon and update this comment to see if it works :)
Wished you also tested these drives with content creator apps
Haha every steam update I've done I always thought my internet was just cutting out when the network bar disappeared. Guess it was just my game drive.
Has anyone experienced the decreased performance for the Crucial X8 when its temp increases or when you try writing a lot of data? I've seen reports of these and am now hesitating to get it because of these.
Did you ever end up getting an External SSD?
Just use something like an Mx500 as a primocache L2 storage for a 5400rpm spinner.. it'll run as fast as the Mx after 2 runs but will self manage the cache so you don't have to constantly move game files around..
6tb + 256gb cache will do for 80-90% of normal gaming scenarios out there
Its like 250 for 2 2tb sata drives.
It's funny I just read of hard drive space because of games and was weighing the options I think I will go with m.2 gen 4.
What’s most confusing external ssds are actually more expensive than internal. For hard drives it’s the exact opposite
I use a laptop and have a Samsung T7 Portable and I've been having FPS issues with it. I tried different games and they definitely ran smoother on the internal SSD. What do you think could be the problem? Thank you.
I currently use 3sata ssd as external
Way cheaper and still reasonable for an itx pc
the test at 9:12 all the drives are external right? for eg. the sata ssd mx500 is sitting outside of the system and connected through a usb cable..?
Great Video....But this is so confusing! Too many decisions.
How much free space did you have on the hard drives? Was the game install the only thing on the drive? If you have a platter full of files, the seek times may be higher for in-game loading possibly.
Been playing with 2TB External HDD Firecuda Seagate brand.. its a big HELP!!! Its like cheat mode. =D