How Much Storage Does Your PC Need? Full Guide

Introduction

If you are deciding to buy a computer for either work or gaming and you don’t know how much storage do you actually need?

You are in the right place!

Today I will answer a question that is often asked on the internet. How much storage do you really need? Keep Reading and Find Out!

if you want to find out how much do your PC weigh, you can read that article here.

How much storage an office PC should have?

Office Computers aren’t that storage-consuming since all files aren’t that large. The average Office Pc has 750 GB Hard Drive and 120 Gb SSD which is enough for most programs and files. For best performance, use a larger SSD so you can move and load your files more quicker.

Most Office computers don’t have demanding programs and large files. Mostly all programs that are on office computers are either Microsoft programs like Powerpoint, Excel, and Word or Adobe programs like Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects. Since there are different jobs, your hard drive space depends on what type of programs you are using and how often are you deleting your old files.

As I said before, for most users 750 GB Hdd would be enough, but there are often cases when you or your employees need much more than that.

If you want to be sure that you have enough storage on your Office Pc, go for either a 1TB or 2TB Hard Drive and try to pair it with a Solid State Drive (SSD) for faster load.

Here are the best 750 GB HDD and 120 GB SSD that you should consider buying for your office PC since they aren’t that expensive and they are made by a Brand with good product History.

How much storage should Gaming Pc have?

Since AAA games can take from 4Gb of your storage all the way to 150 Gb, and considering that average gamers have 2-10 games, 1TB Hard Drive and 500 GB SSD for OS and all programs would be enough for most gamers. The 2 TB HDD is better for gamers with large game libraries.

Video Games Industry grows every year more and more, and because of that, newer and more demanding games require more storage space since they have better technology behind them, better graphics, and a larger world that you can expand.

A few years ago, you could easily stick with 320 GB or 500 Gb and be just fine for gaming, but now the situation has changed. The games like Warzone and Red Dead Redemption 2 completely changed the game, at least for the famous AAA games.

You can see How much space each of these 20 popular games requires In the table below.

Table of Storage requirement – 20 popular games

As you can see in the table below, Newer games require more Hard Drive storage.

Have in mind that games that have an open world with decent graphics will most likely be the ones that require the most storage. You can see that this is the case in Red Dead Redemption, Warzone, Forza Horizon 5, and GTA 5…

Games that are older and have worse or simpler graphics like Valorant, Csgo, and Lol are games that require the least amount of space.

How much storage a Video Editing Pc should have?

Video Editing requires a lot of storage due to large files and their quality. One hour of 4k footage can take you from 25 GB to 75 GB of your storage. Considering that most users don’t work with Pro cameras, the minimum space that you should have is 1TB while the 2TB and larger HDD are probably better.

The amount of storage for video editing depends on a lot of factors.

Light editing doesn’t require that much space since most videos are in 1080p resolution and arent that long.

The 1 hour of 1080p footage in 60 fps can take you from 10 Gb to 15 Gb of storage since the 1 minute is up to 210 Mb.

4k videos in 30 fps can be up to 380 MB for 1 minute of footage, which is about 22Gb of storage.

Have in mind that If you are using the Pro or Cinema Cameras, their footage can be much larger than we expect.

As I said, If you are a light editor, 1Tb is probably enough for you, since you can buy another Hard Drive whenever you want in the future.

If you are doing some heavier editing, 2Tb and more is probably your way to go.

What is the minimum storage you should have?

The minimum storage that you should consider going for now when files, games, images, music and videos are larger than ever because of their quality and length, the bare minimum is 320 Gb Hard Drive for both the programs and OS. Everything under 320 GB is too low.

If you want to calculate how much storage you need, try that by first counting the Operating system and basic Programs that you will need, then calculate the video games that you will play, more demanding programs and you should have a number that you should have in mind when buying an HDD.

Add an additional 100-200 Gb on that number so you don’t have storage problems in the future and you will have a number of GB that you should aim for.

How much storage is overkill?

Overkill for storage depends on what type of user you are. For most users, everything more than 3TB is overkill since most users use their PCs for gaming, office, and light video editing. For users that are working with larger files, overkill would be everything above 10Tb.

The best way is to calculate how much storage you need, then decide which Hard Drive you will buy. Don’t spend a lot of money on storage that you won’t use ever because its overkill for your needs. have in mind that you can always buy another Hard Drive or SSD and plug it into your PC, especially now when most motherboards have more than 4-6 SATA 3 connectors.

Also, you can buy an external Hard Drive that you can use by simply connecting it to your USB input on your PC’s front panel or back panel. For best performance, use USB 3.0 because it is much faster than USB 2.0

Is 1Tb storage enough for gaming?

When we talk about gaming, 1TB of Storage space is enough for most users, at least for now. Since the newer games are as time passes larger and larger, soon enough you will need 2Tb of storage to keep more than 10 video games installed.

Is 2Tb storage enough for gaming?

2Tb is for most people more than enough for a gaming PC. If you don’t want to have a big game library downloaded and you are playing only 5-6 games, 2Tb will be enough even for keeping the programs and OS with games.