The latest generation of AAA games take up more storage space than ever before, and that means bigger game library drives need to become the norm. With individual games starting to pass the 200GB mark, having a single 512GB SSD as your main drive in your gaming PC is no longer enough. Even with prices for SSDs rising due to Flash shortages, everyone should be gaming on at least 1TB or more.
If you like to play the latest AAA games, you’ll probably have noticed your SSD(s) have become much fuller in recent years. That’s because game install sizes have ballooned, and it means that gaming on smaller SSDs is becoming increasingly difficult. It’s not that you can’t play games on a 512GB SSD – they’re just as great at loading games quickly – but that you’ll need to uninstall something just to play something new.
With some of the biggest games now taking up hundreds of gigabytes of space all by themselves – even before you download updates and DLC – gamers on systems with smaller SSDs are finding themselves stuck with just a few games installed at a time. This can be incredibly frustrating if you have lots of games you want to play or just like your whole library available should something strike your fancy.
The Biggest Games Today
A decade ago, it was uncommon to have games with install-sizes around 100 GB. Now if a new AAA game launches with anything less than 100 GB, it’s a unicorn! Today, the latest big AAA games almost always require more than 100 GB of install space– and for some, it’s substantially more.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 launched in 2025 and demands 100 GB before updates, just for itself. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, that’s 120 GB. Starfield? That’s 140 GB of space. The first part of The Last of Us Remastered was 100 GB, but the second is 150 GB. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is 160 GB, Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, 175 GB, God of War: Ragnarok is 190 GB.
The largest individual game is probably DCS World. It’s not the latest game, having launched in 2018, but it demands 200 GB to install the base game, and with all of its extras you end up adding hundreds more. Some gamers report install-sizes as big as 500 GB.
Other games like Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, and Ark: Survival Evolved can easily run into the hundreds of gigabytes too, with all the extra models and textures – and especially so if you dabble with mods and fan content.
How Much SSD Space do you Really Need?
If you wanted to install all of the latest AAA games from the past year or so at the same time, you’d be looking at 10s of terabytes at once – and you might need to chat to the folks in the HomeDataCenter subreddit. But for most gamers who want to play a few of the latest games and not completely fill up their SSD, you still want a good few terabytes of space.
If you’re looking to play AAA games, having at least one 2 TB SSD is a good plan. For more tips on selecting the right drive, check out our guide on how to pick the best SSD for your PC. That gives you enough space for your operating system and all its updates, all the background apps and services you might need, and 5+ major AAA games with space to spare for a few indie and older games.
If you have a particularly large game library, though, and want to ensure you don’t run out of space for many years to come, a 4 TB drive wouldn’t hurt. If you want to ensure that the next time you upgrade your game drive it’ll be for performance rather than capacity, there are always 8 TB SSDs too.
Make Sure you Have Enough (and a bit more)
Whatever kind of gaming habits you have and whatever kind of game library you want to install, make sure you have enough– and a little bit more. If you completely fill your SSD, you’ll notice a big drop-off in performance – keeping 10-20% of your drive free is the best way to operate modern SSDs for maximum performance and longevity.
Whatever size drive you’re keen on, though, Biwin SSDs like the Black Opal X570 Pro are available in a range of capacities up to 8TB, ensuring there’s always a drive that’s right for you and your needs.
