Best external SSD for gaming 2024: Portable performance drives

Image: Western Digital

Possibly your video gaming laptop computer does not have sufficient storage. Or you just desire a simple method to make your video game library portable. An external SSD can repair both of these problems (and more) by offering a simple method to broaden storage that you can handle the go.

Picking an external SSD suggests arranging through an excessive range of choices, and making a bad option can leave you feeling tough done by. Fortunate for you, we’ve done the screening and can use some foolproof suggestions that are ensured to assist, and not prevent, your video gaming setup.

Why you need to trust us: We are PCWorld. Our customers have actually been putting hardware through its speeds for years. Our external drive assessments are extensive and strenuous, checking the limitations of every item– from efficiency standards to the usefulness of routine usage. As customers ourselves, we understand what makes an item remarkable. For more about our screening procedure, scroll to the bottom of this post.

Upgraded 12/28/2023: To consist of the OWC Express 1M2 as our brand-new option for finest USB4/Thunderbolt combination. You can learn more about this ultra quick and flexible choice in our summary listed below.

How we check external SSD video game efficiency

The most significant concern you wish to know is, just how much does utilizing an external drive hurt video game efficiency. To offer us a concept of just how much it matters, we utilized UL’s brand-new 3DMark Storage Benchmark. To produce the standard, UL basically tapes the drive gain access to patterns throughout numerous typical video gaming jobs to make “traces.” These drive-access traces are then work on the checked storage gadget numerous times to replicate the patterns without needing to in fact fill the video game.

For its test, 3DMark recreates what occurs packing to the start menus of Battleground V Call of Duty: Black Ops 4and Overwatch3DMark Storage likewise checks utilizing OBS, or Open Broadcast System, to tape-record Overwatch being dipped into 1080p resolution at 60fps, setting up The Outer Worlds from the Epic launcher, and conserving a video game in The Outer WorldsFor the last test, 3DMark Storage checks copying the Steam folder for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive from an external SSD to the target drive.

We utilized a 12th-gen Intel Core i9-12900K running Windows 11 on an Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero motherboard. The board includes native Thunderbolt 4 and USB 3.2 10Gbps ports. We included a Silverstone ECU06 for USB 3.2 SuperSpeed 20Gbps assistance. We then utilized a Vantec M. 2 NVMe SSD to USB 3.2 Gen2x2 20G Type C enclosure with a Western Digital SN700 NVMe SSD to evaluate USB 3.2 20Gbps and 10Gbps efficiency. We likewise set up the exact same SN700 into a PCIe 3.0 riser card to evaluate its native efficiency. This provides you a concept of just how much you lose going from being set up inside the laptop computer or PC compared to utilizing a USB port. For included contrast, we likewise ran 3DMark Storage on an older Plextor PX-512M7VG SATA SSD within a Silverstone MS09 SATA enclosure that was plugged into a USB 3.2 10Gbps port. And due to the fact that you need to know how sluggish a hard disk would be, we likewise ran the exact same test on a Western Digital 14TB EasyStore disk drive plugged into a USB 3.2 10Gbps port. The EasyStore is really restricted to USB 3.2 SuperSpeed 5Gbps.

What should you make from the above outcomes? Well, plainly if you can set up an SSD within your PC, you’ll get the most efficiency out of it. You must think about some of the context. If you’re just taking a look at the huge long red bar at the top of the chart, think about that the specific test is determining what would take place if you copied a big folder of files to the SSD. For the majority of people, that’s just done from time to time.

The more typical circumstance is waiting on a video game to launch. Running an internal NVMe drive will still be quicker, however the space closes a little. In between the 3 popular USB user interfaces: USB 20Gbps, USB 10Gbps, and SATA on USB 10Gbps, the fastest is USB 3.2 20Gbps. With a USB 3.2 20Gbps SSD, you may see Battleground V shave 25 percent of the load time versus a USB 3.2 10Gbps drive. Obviously, efficiency is likewise video game reliant. Both Call of Duty and Battleground see 45 percent or two higher bandwidth on the internal SSD, however with the less graphically extreme Overwatchit’s closer to 30 percent.

The other surprise is the efficiency of the SATA SSD versus the NVMe SSD when the NVMe SSD remains in a USB 3.2 10Gbps port. In video game loads, conserves, and set up situations, they’re relatively close. The NVMe external SSD does open to big lead over the slower SATA when you transfer to a job where you’re copying a substantial quantity of files– such as the CS: GO outcomes. Once again, how frequently do you do that?

Naturally we can’t leave this without explaining simply dreadful hard disk drives are. Would it be more enhanced with a much faster hard disk? Unlikely. The extremely minimum you ought to utilize if saving video games on an external drive is a SATA SSD, so do not run a video game from your external hard disk unless you like to wait on whatever.