Several major current titles publish install requirements of 70-161GB on their own store pages - a single large game can now consume an eighth or more of a 1TB drive. Every cited source across this cluster agrees on the same pattern: capacity is the dimension a gamer actually notices, while PCIe generation past Gen4 largely is not. This page prices that reality live, capacity by capacity.
Updated · publisher figures checked 16 September 2026
Framed as approximate throughout - install sizes change with patches, texture packs and day-one updates, so treat every figure below as roughly where a title sat when we checked, not a permanent number.
"Additional Notes: SSD with 161 GB available space at launch"
Activision's own stated requirement for the unified Call of Duty app (Modern Warfare, Black Ops, Warzone) - the "at launch" qualifier is Activision's own wording, implying the figure grows post-launch.
Read the source →"Storage: 150 GB available space. Additional Notes: SSD required"
Larian's own stated requirement, both minimum and recommended tiers.
Read the source →"Storage: 125 GB available space"
Rockstar's own stated minimum and recommended storage requirement for Grand Theft Auto V (Legacy) on its Steam store page.
Read the source →"Storage: 125 GB available space. Additional Notes: SSD Required"
Bethesda's own stated requirement, both minimum and recommended tiers.
Read the source →"Storage: 70 GB available space. Additional Notes: SSD required."
CD Projekt Red's own stated requirement, both minimum and recommended tiers, noting an SSD (not just capacity) as a stated requirement.
Read the source →Three of these five publishers (Cyberpunk 2077, Starfield, Baldur's Gate 3) state "SSD required" as its own line, separate from the capacity figure - a requirement we report as stated rather than explain, since none of the sourced pages give their own reasoning for it.
Cheapest in-stock Gen4 and Gen5 pricing at each capacity, computed live - use this against the install-size figures above to price your own library's real requirement rather than a generic recommendation.
| Capacity | Cheapest Gen4 | Gen4 $/GB | Cheapest Gen5 | Gen5 $/GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1TB | Fikwot - $152.99 | $0.153 | Samsung - $229.76 | $0.230 |
| 2TB | Corsair - $219.50 | $0.110 | Crucial - $369.95 | $0.185 |
| 4TB | Fikwot - $476.98 | $0.119 | WD - $699.99 | $0.175 |
| 8TB | WD - $1337.65 | $0.167 | Samsung - $1928.00 | $0.241 |
Read the two sections above together and a pattern emerges that is not ours to claim credit for - it is what the sources cited across this cluster describe directly. The Verge's and PCWorld's game-load testing (see our Gen4-vs-Gen5 page) found the jump from Gen4 to Gen5 producing load-time differences under a second in nearly every case tested. Meanwhile, publisher-stated install sizes above keep climbing well past what a modest drive absorbed comfortably a few years back. The dimension that keeps changing the buying decision, on this evidence, is how much a library needs - not which generation moves it there a fraction of a second faster.
Every install-size figure cited above comes from the publisher's own current Steam store system-requirements listing - the same page a buyer sees before purchasing. These are not figures we measured, and they are not fixed: a title's install size at launch is frequently smaller than its install size a year and several content updates later, which is part of why we frame every number here as approximate rather than durable. A drive sized comfortably for a library today can feel tighter in a year without a single new game being added, purely from existing titles growing.
Three of the five publisher requirements we cite state "SSD required" as a distinct line from the capacity figure. We report that requirement as stated because it is what the publisher documents, without asserting a reason for it - a publisher's system requirements page is the authority on what that publisher requires, the same standard this cluster applies to every platform-holder fact it states.
A single large install is rarely the whole story - most buyers hold a rotating library of several titles, only some of which get played in any given month. The live ladder above lets you price the actual trade-off directly: a 2TB drive at today's cheapest Gen4 rate costs a specific, computable amount more than a 1TB drive, and whether that difference is worth it depends on how many of the publisher-sized titles above you expect to keep installed simultaneously, not on a generic recommendation this page could give you instead.
The practical failure mode worth naming: buying the smallest capacity that fits today's library exactly, then discovering next month's major release does not fit without uninstalling something first. Every one of the publisher figures cited above describes a single title, and a library is rarely just one title for long. Pricing one tier up from what your current library needs, using the live ladder above, is a cheap way to buy back the friction of managing installs around a drive that was sized too tightly from the start.
A generic capacity recommendation would need to average across libraries that don't resemble each other - a buyer with three or four actively-played titles has a completely different requirement from one maintaining a rotating library of twenty. Rather than collapse that range into one number, this page gives you the two real inputs - what titles actually require, per their publishers, and what capacity costs right now, per our own live data - and leaves the multiplication to you.
Gen4 vs Gen5, the full case · Thermals and heatsinks · Back to the gaming SSD hub
It varies a lot by title, but several major current games publish requirements in the 70-161GB range on their own Steam store pages - see the cited figures above. These are publisher-stated requirements, framed here as approximate since install sizes can change with patches and DLC.
It depends entirely on your library size - one or two of the largest current titles (125-161GB per the cited publisher figures) can consume 15-20% of a 1TB drive each. Buyers who install and uninstall selectively can make 1TB work; buyers who keep a large rotating library typically find 2TB more comfortable. We don't have a library-size figure of our own to give you - only the per-title numbers above and the live $/TB ladder to price your own math against.
Several publisher requirements we cite (Cyberpunk 2077, Starfield, Baldur's Gate 3) state "SSD required" as its own line, separate from the storage-space figure. We have not sourced the publishers' own stated reason for that requirement, so we're not asserting one - the requirement itself is what's documented.
No - capacity and generation are independent purchase decisions. Our live ladder below shows Gen4 and Gen5 pricing side by side at every capacity specifically so you can separate the two: buy the capacity your library needs, then decide on generation using the evidence on our Gen4-vs-Gen5 page.
That's a live price question, not a fixed answer - the $/TB ladder below shows today's cheapest per-capacity rate for both generations, and a second drive is always an option a desktop with a spare M.2 slot can price against upgrading the first one. We don't generalize a rule because the cheaper path changes with stock.
That's the pattern in every source we cite across this cluster, not a claim of our own: The Verge's and PCWorld's game-load testing found Gen5 barely distinguishable from Gen4, while publisher-stated install sizes keep climbing well past what fit comfortably a few years ago. See our Gen4-vs-Gen5 page for the full cited case.