Gaming on a Budget : Buying/Building a PC - Part 4 - Storage Solutions, Optical and Physical

In previous parts of this Gaming on a Budget Guide about Buying/Building a PC. We've talked about what CPU options there are, choosing the right Motherboard and RAM. as well as looking for the right CASE and PSU. In this part I'm going to talk about the Storage Solutions for your PC, as you'd need somewhere to store your games and a way to install them.

Optical Storage

First things first, no you do not need a Bluray ROM/RW drive, the majority of Games are still released on DVD and most probably you are going to end up downloading the game anyhow via services like STEAM or HumbleBundle. If you want to watch Blurays I suggest buying a dedicated player as they work out a lot cheaper. You may write the odd CD/DVD from time to time, but most of the time your Optical Drive is just going to be used to install your OS of choice. Be it Windows or Linux on your rig.

That being said here are some DVD RW drives that won't break the bank the LG GH24NSB0 Internal DVD Writer and the Liteon - iHAS324

Solid State Drives

Solid State Drives or SSD's are the bees knees if you are looking for Super Fast Read and Write Speeds, making your PC boot in seconds and cutting down your games loading times considerably. But they can also be extremely expensive. That being said if a SSD is something you want in your rig I'd suggest a size of about  120gb. As this is big enough to easily store your OS and a few games without it going into crazy price range.

Some Value for money SSDs are the Transcend SSD370, the OCZ Arc 100 2.5' SSD - 120GB and the Crucial MX100 128GB 2.5 inch SSD. Keep in mind though that an SSD isn't a MUST HAVE part of a gaming rig.

Hard Drives

Hard Drive pricing these days are quite good. It's also the cheapest way to get more storage space currently. 

The minimum hard drive size I'd suggest buying these days is 1Tb as the price difference between a 500Gb drive and 1Tb is tiny. You'll also notice that there are different spin speed drives. The most common being 5400RPM and 7200RPM. I suggest going for the 7200RPM drives, especially for your games and Operating system if you don't have an SSD. As the higher speed does help a lot. The 5400RPM drives are better suited for Music, Movies and Pictures.

That being said here are some hard drives to consider. All of which have a 2 year warranty. Toshiba Hard Drive Desktop 3.5 inch - 1TB, Seagate Desktop 1TB HDD and the WD Blue 1TB 3.5 inch SATAIII Hard Drive. Your mileage may vary with personal experiences on the reliability on any of the hard drive brands. Personally I've had drives from all brands fail on me, and drives from all brands that are still working for over 5 years. Just make sure to always keep important data Backed Up.

In the Next part of this Guide I'm going to take a look at possible Monitor options for value minded gamers. Things may change in the future as prices fluctuate and technologies change but I hope this guide has thus far been useful to you. 

If you are looking for other Gaming on a Budget related posts check out :

 * Graphics Cards for Under R2500 * Gaming Mice Under R400 * Gaming on a Budget : Where to Begin?