Summary
- 512GB is not enough, as it fills up quickly with modern games and apps.
- 2TB is the sweet spot for most gamers, as 1TB may not be enough and 4TB is too expensive.
- Most gaming laptops have a secondary M.2 slot that makes upgrading storage later easy.
If you’re shopping for a gaming laptop, don’t overlook storage. With games taking up more space than ever, it’s one of the most important specs to consider. NVMe drives are fast but pricey, and skimping here can quickly blow your budget. So, how much storage do you really need?
512GB is NOT enough
First and foremost, a 512GB SSD isn’t actually 512GB—it only has about 476GB of usable storage after formatting. That’s because manufacturers use decimal units when labeling storage, while computers use binary.
You probably already know this if you’re into computers, but the difference in labeling can still be confusing when shopping for storage. I even forgot about it myself and was a bit disappointed when my 2TB NVMe showed “only” 1.81TB.
Modern games take up a lot of space, and it doesn’t make much sense to buy a capable laptop and then not have any space to store your games.
A single AAA game can easily take up 100 to 150GB. Throw in your OS, some essential programs, and a few files on top of that, and you’re looking at only enough room for a single game and maybe a couple of indie titles before you’re at or above 80% capacity (which you should consider the maximum, anyway).
With constant uninstalling, downloading, and reinstalling, things get old fast. And that’s assuming games don’t keep growing in size—which all trends suggest they will.
Really, the only time a 512GB SSD can make sense in a gaming laptop is if you only play esports and lighter titles and don’t store any larger files on the laptop.
Stop buying PCIe 5.0 SSDs for your gaming PC
Doubling what you spend probably won’t double your performance.
2TB is the sweet spot right now
Whether you’re buying a gaming laptop or a desktop PC, your storage needs will be similar if you plan to play the latest games, and many will agree that 2TB is a pretty good sweet spot right now. This will give you plenty of space to install several of the latest AAA games, along with as many indies and older titles as you wish, while still leaving some room for the SSD to breathe.
Of course, 4TB is even better, but at that point, you’re spending serious money on storage that you could’ve allocated toward a better GPU, CPU, or display instead.
My colleague Monica did an excellent job explaining why 1TB SSDs aren’t a great deal, especially if you want to leave some free space to help the drive perform optimally. In the case of gaming PCs where you’re buying the NVMe separately, I fully agree.
For laptops, 2TB is still the sweet spot, but you could argue that 1TB is enough if you’re only planning on playing two or three games at a time, or if the laptop has upgradeable storage—more on that in a moment.
This is mostly because you’ll most likely end up paying a premium when ordering the laptop directly from the manufacturer.
The good thing is that it may also come with extra RAM at a surprisingly reasonable price, given the recent DRAM price hikes. So you might as well buy all the RAM and storage you need now while prices are still somewhat reasonable.
Many gaming laptops have upgradeable storage
If you don’t think it through and order a gaming laptop with insufficient storage, it’s not the end of the world. Unlike typical laptops and ultrabooks, the vast majority of gaming laptops actually have upgradeable storage.
In fact, most of them have more than one M.2 slot precisely because games take up so much space. This means you can buy the cheaper model with 1TB of storage today, and if you find that you need more space for your games a couple of years down the line, you can add another 1TB or 2TB drive in the secondary slot.
Even one of the thinnest gaming laptops on the market, the Razer Blade 16, has two M.2 slots that can each be slotted with up to 4TB. The only caveat is that they have to be single-sided (the chips are all on one side to allow for a thinner drive).
You’ll be hard-pressed to find a modern gaming laptop that doesn’t have upgradeable storage (though I’m sure you’ll find one if you look hard enough).
Some ultra-thin and convertible 2-in-1s may have upgradeable storage, but they only have a single M.2 slot.
This makes it harder to justify upgrading storage instead of just spending more from the get-go, as upgrading also means reinstalling the OS and everything else on the laptop, as well as finding a home for the old NVMe.
Examples of gaming laptops with a single M.2 slot include the smaller Razer Blade 14, Acer Predator Triton 14 AI, and the ASUS ROG Flow Z13.
Unfortunately, while a brand might boast two or more M.2 slots in its laptops, it rarely goes out of its way to tell you when a laptop only has one M.2 slot. So keep your eyes peeled and check reviews before pulling the trigger—it’s a pricey mistake to make.
- Storage capacity
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2TB
- Hardware Interface
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PCIE x 4
The WD_Black 2TB SSD is great for gaming. It offers read speeds of up to 7,300 mb/s and features an optional heatsink. The drive includes the wd_black dashboard software for monitoring health and customizing RGB lighting on compatible models.
Don’t forget about storage beyond games as well
While games are the primary consumer of storage, don’t forget that you need room for everything else, too. Your OS, files, and productivity tools all take up space. If your workflow involves large files or if you like clipping gameplay recordings, you’ll fill up even a couple of terabytes in no time.
And if you’re buying a gaming laptop, there’s a non-zero chance that it’s your primary machine rather than a secondary device to a gaming desktop. I’ll even go out on a limb and presume that you probably don’t have a NAS either, which means your laptop is one of the few devices you use for storage aside from your phone.
While you could get an external SSD to store less frequently accessed files like videos, photos, and music while keeping the faster internal NVMe for gaming, it’s significantly more convenient to have all your files in one place. Plus, you’d be paying for that external drive anyway, so you might as well put that storage inside the laptop instead.
Stop overspending on laptop storage, here’s the smart alternative
Storage is a spec you should never, ever ignore.