Maybe your gaming laptop doesn't have enough storage. Or you want an easy way to make your game library portable. An external SSD can fix both of these problems (and more) by providing an easy way to expand storage that you can take on the go.

But choosing an external SSD means sorting through a dizzying array of options, and making the wrong choice can leave you feeling overwhelmed. Lucky for you, we've done the testing and can offer some solid recommendations that are guaranteed to help, not hinder, your gaming setup.

Why you should trust us: We are PCWorld. Our reviewers have been putting computer hardware through its paces for decades. Our external drive reviews are thorough and rigorous, testing each product's limits — from performance benchmarks to regular usage. As consumers ourselves, we know what makes a product exceptional. To learn more about our testing process, scroll to the bottom of this article.

Updated on April 13, 2024: Check out our new pick for the best portable 20Gbps drive, the Sabrent Rocket Nano V2. It offers an attractive combination of small size, good looks (including a tough-looking shock-absorbing jacket) and performance. Read more in our summary below.

How We Test External SSD Game Performance

The biggest question you want to know is how much does using an external drive hurt game performance. To show us just how important this is, we used UL's new 3DMark storage benchmark. To create the benchmark, UL essentially records drive access patterns during several common gaming tasks to create a “trace.” These drive access traces are then played multiple times on the tested storage device to duplicate the pattern without actually loading the game.

To test this, 3DMark reproduces what happens when the Start menu is loaded. Battlefield V, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4And Overwatch. 3DMark storage also tests OBS, or Open Broadcast System, for recording. Overwatch Running at 1080p resolution at 60fps, installing. Outer worlds. From Epic Launcher, and saving a game Outer worlds.. For the final test, 3DMark is copying the Steam folder to the storage test. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive from an external SSD to the target drive.

We used a 12th-gen Intel Core i9-12900K running Windows 11 on an Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero motherboard. The board has native Thunderbolt 4 and USB 3.2 10Gbps ports. We added Silverstone ECU06 for USB 3.2 SuperSpeed ​​20Gbps support. After that we used a Vantec M.2 NVMe SSD to USB 3.2 Gen2x2 20G Type C Enclosure with Western Digital SN700 NVMe SSD to test USB 3.2 20Gbps and 10Gbps performance. We also installed the same SN700 into a PCIe 3.0 riser card to test its native performance. This gives you an idea of ​​how much damage you get installing inside a laptop or PC compared to using a USB port. For added contrast, we also ran 3DMark Storage on an older Plextor PX-512M7VG SATA SSD. Silverstone MS09 SATA enclosure that was plugged into a USB 3.2 10Gbps port. And since you want to know how slow a hard drive will be, we ran the same test on a Western Digital 14TB EasyStore hard drive plugged into a USB 3.2 10Gbps port. EasyStore is actually limited to USB 3.2 Super Speed ​​5Gbps.

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What should you do with the above results? Well, obviously if you can install an SSD inside your PC, you will get maximum performance out of it. But you should consider some context. If you're just looking at the big long red bar at the top of the chart, consider that the specific test is measuring what would happen if you copied a large folder of files to an SSD. For most people, it only happens once.

A more common scenario is waiting for a game to start. Running an internal NVMe drive will still be faster, but the difference closes a bit. Among the three popular USB interfaces: USB 20Gbps, USB 10Gbps, and SATA at USB 10Gbps, the fastest is USB 3.2 20Gbps. With a USB 3.2 20Gbps SSD, you can see Battlefield V Shave 25 percent of load time compared to a USB 3.2 10Gbps drive. Of course, performance also depends on the game. For example, both Call of Duty And Battlefield See 45 percent or more bandwidth on an internal SSD, but with less graphical intensity Overwatchit is close to 30 percent.

Another surprise is the performance of the SATA SSD vs NVMe SSD when the NVMe SSD is in a USB 3.2 10Gbps port. In game load, save, and install scenarios, they are pretty close. Once you move into a task where you're copying a large amount of files, an NVMe external SSD has a huge advantage over the slower SATA. CS: GO Results But then, how often do you do that?

Of course we can't leave this out without pointing out just the terrible hard drives. Will it get better with a faster hard drive? no chance. If you're storing games on an external drive you should use a SATA SSD at a minimum, so don't run games from your external hard drive unless you like waiting for everything.