• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.
  • The forums have been upgraded with support for dark mode. By default it will follow the setting on your system/browser. You may override it by scrolling to the end of the page and clicking the gears icon.

SSD vs. RAM for Gaming

M

multch

New Member
Joined
Aug 22, 2016
Messages
1 (0.00/day)
I'm looking to get a new laptop for (you guessed it) gaming. I have a price limit and need some advice. The laptop I want has many options and I'm wondering whether to get a 1T ssd and 32 GB ram or 512 GB ssd and 64 GB ram. I'm leaning toward the 1T ssd but I'll be using this laptop for years and will be playing the latest and greatest games.
 
32GB RAM should be more then enough for the foreseeable future. Grab the bigger SSD.
 
Ram and ssd sizes won't matter if you have a junk cpu or gpu in it.
 
And if that RAM runs out on you you can upgrade. By then it'll be cheaper and you can save up a bundle until then.
 
So much more to consider
 
Most games run well on 8 GB of RAM. It must be a horribly unoptimized game to need over 32 GB to run well. Even in the next few years. Your CPU and/or GPU will become absolute before you need so much RAM to run games. If you use some memory hungry software like most of the Adobe Creative Suite then I would recommend more RAM.
 
I'd say - forget about both.
If it is a gaming laptop, then buying the topmost variant (best CPU/GPU) with least options would be the best course of action, because initial "upgrades" always cost more, and in most cases you have very small selection of options.
For example (it is a bad example but you'll understand):
an Alienware 17" laptop starts at $1499 (w/ 8GB RAM and FHD display), while an exact same model with 16GB RAM and an additional 128GB M.2 SSD costs $250 more! It's only $140-150 worth of hardware!!!
Once you start adding up options - this becomes even more ridiculous. A 32GB RAM upgrade will hit your pocket for an additional $300 ($130-140 actual value)
Brands like Sager are a bit more generous in their pricing policies, but at the end even small overhead from every bit adds up to a hefty sum.

Basically what I'm trying to say is this: buy a base model you like, and then do upgrades gradually on your own. Next year you could probably replace a HDD with 1TB SATA-III SSD for less than $100 (if trend continues)
 
Last edited:
+1 @Toothless @alucasa

Check what cpu and gpu has it,then ram and ssd if u play games.

SSD is good for workplay,fast browsing,big files work/transfer..in games not so important.
 
I prefer horsepower over SSD and RAM.. that's why my dad has 2GB system ram and a GTX 580 at 1680x1050 with a beast overclocked Phenom II... he only plays strat games so no need for more RAM and not connected to the net. He would have 4GB but 1 stick bust.
 
Yeah, 16GB of RAM and a 64GB for OS and a HDD for games and such is what you need cause SSDs are too much $$$ right now
 
Lots of answers here, but the O.P. sounds like a troll post.
What is the budget, what games, what options does the O.P. want etc.
 
rk3066 said:
Yeah, 16GB of RAM and a 64GB for OS and a HDD for games and such is what you need cause SSDs are too much $$$ right now
Click to expand...
If this were a desktop I'd agree with you, however it's a laptop so I'm assuming one drive, and factoring in that HDDs are harder on battery life than SSDs. I'd also assume since we're talking about 1TB SSD and 32GB RAM, the rest of the laptop ought to be beefy but... maybe there are better options to explore.
 
Ok well for a laptop then ssd all the way
 
multch said:
I'm looking to get a new laptop for (you guessed it) gaming. I have a price limit and need some advice. The laptop I want has many options and I'm wondering whether to get a 1T ssd and 32 GB ram or 512 GB ssd and 64 GB ram. I'm leaning toward the 1T ssd but I'll be using this laptop for years and will be playing the latest and greatest games.
Click to expand...

16 GB RAM is plenty for gaming. 32 GB of RAM is overkill. Better to put the money into other options. Because you are asking if 64 GB RAM for a gaming laptop is a good idea I am wondering how balanced the rest of the options you are considering for this laptop are. Would you list the site you are looking at and let us have a look at what you are thinking you want for GPU and CPU.
 
When it comes to any notebook, I say buy all that you think will need now. PCs (because they comply with the ATX Form Factor standards) are easy to upgrade years down the road. Notebooks are proprietary. This means compatible upgrades (like RAM) are limited from the start and may be even harder to find and much more expensive even in the near future.

I also agree that 16GB is plenty. 32GB is overkill, and 64GB is way overkill. But definitely go with decent size SSD.

That said, IMO, there is no such thing as good a gaming notebook - that's just marketing fluff. Makers can pack the horsepower into a tiny notebook case but not the cooling. And even decent PC cases (with lots of large fans and space for monster CPU coolers) are challenged to keep the innards cooled. Plus, PCs can easily be opened up to expose all the innards for thorough cleaning of heat trapping dust. So my advice is to only get a notebook if you must have portability.
 
multch said:
I'm looking to get a new laptop for (you guessed it) gaming. I have a price limit and need some advice. The laptop I want has many options and I'm wondering whether to get a 1T ssd and 32 GB ram or 512 GB ssd and 64 GB ram. I'm leaning toward the 1T ssd but I'll be using this laptop for years and will be playing the latest and greatest games.
Click to expand...

What gaming laptop are you planning to buy?
What CPU and what graphics card?
 
To be honest, even 16GB is somewhat an overkill even today where 8GB is sufficient for pretty much anything but most extreme cases. I've had 12GB (and later 18GB, again just because I could) with X58 platform years ago and sold it like half a year ago and I've never ever ran into RAM issues. Only thing that could ever tax that was 7zip with huge dictionary. With other apps or even most demanding games, never an issue.

So, do it like this...

Buy a 2x8GB RAM kit (for dual channel) and bigger 1TB SSD. 16GB is plenty, but if you'll ever run into RAM issues in the future, just buy extra 2x 8GB RAM kit. Don't go with 4x4GB as that will limit your upgrade capability and you'll be forced to sell existing RAM to buy a bigger one.

Going full SSD will be your biggest and best long term upgrade. Far more useful than 32GB of RAM that you won't even need for several years to come.
 
Ok those 1TB SSDs aren't cheap. Just go with a 64GB SSD for OS then a 2TB HDD for storage (games and what not)
 
RejZoR said:
To be honest, even 16GB is somewhat an overkill even today where 8GB is sufficient for pretty much anything but most extreme cases.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I think 8GB is generally considered the "sweet spot". Less RAM and performance drops. More RAM and performance gains will be marginal - if noticeable at all - at least for most users and most tasks.
 
I'd still go at least 16GB to be a bit more future proof without fiddling with different pairs of RAM kits, but 32GB really isn't necessary unless you have money and you just don't care.
 
That's exactly what I did on this computer I put together for W10. Even though a PC with a popular Gigabyte Z170 board and common Corsair DDR4 3000MHz RAM, and the fact RAM compatibility (in terms of buying "matched" RAM) is not as critical as it was a few years ago, I did not want to deal with worrying about Corsair having the same model number RAM still in production in 2 or 3 years.

Now admittedly, this system is not used for gaming so me going with 16GB is overkill (okay - possibly ego driven for a little bit of bragging rights, maybe ;)). But I cannot predict exactly what I will be using this system for in 2 or 3 years either. That's another reason why I put a 550W PSU in there even though 450W would have been plenty.
 
RejZoR said:
Buy a 2x8GB RAM kit (for dual channel) and bigger 1TB SSD. 16GB is plenty, but if you'll ever run into RAM issues in the future, just buy extra 2x 8GB RAM kit.
Click to expand...
Laptops usually have only 2 DIMM slots. My next laptop will have 16 GB of RAM which should be enough to turn off page file (and save SSD some life) and not worry that my PC will run out of memory like it does now with 8 GB.

rk3066 said:
. Just go with a 64GB SSD for OS then a 2TB HDD for storage (games and what not)
Click to expand...
There is not a lot of 2.5" 2 TB HDDs, it is better to just buy 1 TB 2.5". If you value battery life you should really buy 1 TB SSD because SSD+HDD combination is not really neat in laptops and given he/she is considering 64 GB RAM money is not that big of a problem.

Bill_Bright said:
Now admittedly, this system is not used for gaming so me going with 16GB is overkill
Click to expand...
You can always use that RAM for something, RAM disk is always useful.
 
Agree that even 16gb is probably overkill, for gaming and everyday computing at least.

I did manage to use 10gb ram with Blender but that's not gaming.
 
Bollocks, how did I miss the "laptop" part. In that case, by all means go with bigger SSD. As for RAM, 16GB or more will be more than enough for anything you'll ever need on laptop. It'll get outdated before you'll need that much RAM anyway. But drive space, that you will need. 1TB is better than 512GB, that's for sure. Besides, if 1TB will be enough, you can just transplant it to the next system as you upgrade, saving you the cost of new SSD next time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top