This is a PSA: Please stop abusing your SSD. Mistreating it is easier to do than it might seem. We all do it to some extent, but if you do it too much, it’ll eventually backfire.
SSD problems may lead to nothing, but they may also render your PC borderline impossible to use. Here’s how you might be neglecting yours, and how to fix it.
SSDs are reliable, but not immortal
It’s all too easy to reduce their lifespan or run into problems
NAND flash has a finite number of program/erase (P/E) cycles. Your SSD wears out little by little each time you write data to it. Most of us will replace our SSDs long before they reach the end of their lifespan (and even that doesn’t mean they’d instantly die), but mistreating SSDs can cut that time short.
Like any PC component, SSDs can just die for any reason, and it might not be your fault. But if you avoid some of the things I’ll talk about below, your drive will have a much greater chance of working well even many years from now.
Don’t fill your SSD all the way up to full
It’ll be borderline unusable
SSDs work best when you don’t push them to full capacity. The closer your drive inches to being full, the more your PC’s gaming performance (and overall performance) will take a hit.
The first signs of an SSD that’s struggling due to a lack of space include:
- Texture pop-in. This can also be a symptom of problems with RAM.
- Slow loading screens.
- Problems with loading game worlds, ground clutter, etc.
Although many people write this off as a common SSD myth, it’s a fact that’s been repeated by some of the most recognizable storage brands in the world. Most sources recommend keeping your SSD at under 80% for optimal performance.
The solution here is simple: either get a second drive for storage purposes or uninstall some games you hardly ever play. That alone just freed up 400GB for me as I did a little bit of housekeeping in preparation for this article.
Keep your PC temperatures at bay
And pay some extra attention to the SSD itself
If your PC overheats, all components suffer, including the SSD.
NVMe SSDs, especially fast PCIe Gen 4 and Gen 5 drives, can run very hot under sustained load. To protect your drive, the SSD’s controller will thermal throttle, cutting speeds drastically when temps exceed a certain threshold.
You don’t actually have to go over the maximum recommended temperature, either. Letting your SSD run hot for long periods can still increase wear and tear.
Other than maintaining excellent airflow inside your case, with enough intake and exhaust fans and proper CPU cooling, you may need a heatsink for your SSD. Faster models often come with one.
No heatsink directly on the SSD? Your motherboard might help. Many have an M.2 slot with a built-in heatsink, so that should be your go-to if your SSD doesn’t have one. Drop your newer PCIe Gen 5 and Gen 4 drives in that slot, and leave the one without the heatsink for secondary storage.
You can also buy a separate heatsink for your SSD, but check for compatibility.
Don’t push your gaming SSD too hard
That’s not the right drive for pure storage
If you’re using your gaming SSD for everything else, you’re bound to run into performance drops at some point.
It’s not just about the fact that it’ll fill up quickly. It comes down to running too many operations at once. When every single thing on your PC is on one drive, the game you’re playing is fighting for the same drive with various OS operations, files, and other apps, like Discord or the browser.
From a hardware point of view, your SSD doesn’t care which request is more important to you at any given time. All it sees is a pile of read/write requests, and the more of those it has to handle at once, the slower it is to execute them.
Mind you, this is less of a problem if you’re running a fast PCIe Gen 4 or 5 SSD. Modern NVMe drives can juggle multiple workloads with ease, but separating your heaviest tasks across multiple drives still helps prevent slowdowns. At the very least, it saves you from major data loss if your one SSD dies.
The solution here is to avoid having just one SSD for the operating system, files, and gaming. In an ideal world, you’d have one SSD for executing resource-heavy workloads and a second drive for the OS.
Make sure you have enough RAM
Don’t force your SSD to work overtime
Your PC loves RAM because it’s incredibly fast. If your PC doesn’t have enough of it to support everything you’re doing, such as gaming, watching videos, or working on several things at once, it needs to dip into something called the pagefile. Think of it as backup memory that lives on your SSD.
When you don’t have enough physical RAM, the PC begins offloading data to the SSD to keep everything running. SSDs are normally non-volatile storage, and RAM is volatile (temporary) — but when there’s not enough RAM, the SSD substitutes as a much slower form of temporary memory.
This process is a lot slower, and it’s not as rare as it might seem. Some games use up a lot of RAM, and if you play heavily modded titles, such as Minecraft or The Sims, even 32GB can be pushed surprisingly hard.
Heavy paging is not ideal, both for your PC and for the SSD itself. To prevent it, get enough RAM to prevent your SSD from having to pick up the slack.
Unfortunately, the ongoing RAM-pocalypse makes it hard to pick up more RAM, so in lieu of that, try to avoid multitasking if your PC is struggling. Closing background apps can help, too.
SSD problems are easy to ignore, but only for a while
Your SSD might be struggling without you immediately knowing
SSD issues range from catastrophic events to little nuisances. Worst of all, you might not immediately know it’s the SSD when one of those problems pops up.
Things like crashes or extremely slow boot times are easily traced back to the SSD. But more subtle problems, such as texture pop-in or slow loading screens in games, could be caused by just about anything. It could even be the game itself, and nothing to do with your hardware.
If you treat your SSD right, you’ll be able to rule out a lot of causes early on if and when those problems eventually happen. Avoiding all of the above is a good start to keeping your SSD healthy, and your gaming PC happy, for years to come.
