Installing An SSD Into PS4 - Will This Improve Install Times?

[FN-GM]

I have an original PS4 and it’s installed with its original drive. I don’t play on it very often, because of this, when I do I usually get forced to install updates. It takes an absolute age, sometimes longer than the 30 mins I have spare to play it in the first place!

 

I have read mixed reviews about installing an SSD into it. People report games loading quicker, but there isn’t much about games installing / updating quicker. Someone on another forum said an SSD won’t improve this.

 

I am wondering if anyone here has done the upgrade, did installations and upgrades sped up please? Logic dictates that it would help but there might be something I have missed.

 

Thanks

[willtech]

I have an original PS4 and it’s installed with its original drive. I don’t play on it very often, because of this, when I do I usually get forced to install updates. It takes an absolute age, sometimes longer than the 30 mins I have spare to play it in the first place!

 

I have read mixed reviews about installing an SSD into it. People report games loading quicker, but there isn’t much about games installing / updating quicker. Someone on another forum said an SSD won’t improve this.

 

I am wondering if anyone here has done the upgrade, did installations and upgrades sped up please? Logic dictates that it would help but there might be something I have missed.

 

Thanks

 

I have installed one on my PS4 it improves loading times for games, updates are around the same.

[FN-GM]

Thanks for the reply - although not wanted to hear. I don’t have an issue with the game load times, just the updates.

 

Thanks again - it’s much appreciated!

[Jamman960]

I imagine your connection speed would be the bottleneck rather than disk speed, I’d expect the hardware itself to be able to get extra speed out of an ssd.

[FN-GM]

I imagine your connection speed would be the bottleneck rather than disk speed,

 

The download itself is ok. It’s the PS4 installing the data that’s taking up the time (according to what I am seeing on screen).

[Oaktech]

Can echo this. I'm not a gamer myself, but I've been inside the BM's Son's PS4 several times now. I had it for a replacement of the the stock 5400 500GB HGST drive as it was obviously failing, replacing it with 7200 500GB and then a couple of years later upgrading it to a 2TB SSD I can confirm games load noticeably faster, actual system updates - next to no difference. I'm pretty convinced that the the actual computing hardware in a PS4 is at best average - it's all GPU!

[FN-GM]

Thanks for the confirmation!

 

I wouldn't be too bad if I could skip the update, but doing that removes the ability to play online.

 

Never mind! I can't see myself getting a PS5 so life won't change.

[LeMarchand]

Is the PS5 any better in that regard? Both my PS3 and PS4 (Pro) take an age to install most things. I have noticed on the PS4 that a few app updates of stuff like Prime have seemed to happen in the background recently, so maybe they've improved things? That said, I recently discovered that the PS4 is a bit of a power hog so I'll be sticking to other ways to access that sort of app!

[Theblacksheep]

Is the PS5 any better in that regard? Both my PS3 and PS4 (Pro) take an age to install most things. I have noticed on the PS4 that a few app updates of stuff like Prime have seemed to happen in the background recently, so maybe they've improved things? That said, I recently discovered that the PS4 is a bit of a power hog so I'll be sticking to other ways to access that sort of app!

 

PS5 has a minimum Nvme4 and 5500 MB/s sequential read speed for it's expansion slot.

 

They also changed the way files are stored to optimise for disk speed, so it's a big upgrade on the 4, even if you just use it to play 4 games.

[CHiLL]

It's most likely the PS4's CPU being the bottleneck for updates and install times. It's traditional for installs and games to come in a compressed format, which the console needs to unpack and install, which is a massive hit on the CPU. This is due to limiting factors like install media size limits. Though this is likely to change in the near future, as the new generation consoles and PC (with the right hardware) now support direct storage. Direct storage allows uncompressed data to be sent directly to the GPU, bypassing the CPU. While this mainly will improve things like in-game loading, like loading assets, maps, textures etc (think like the lift used as a loading screen in Mass Effect being the old way and it'll be more like the Just-On-Time method that car assembly lines use) and physical media becoming less common as an install method...it's likely that we'll see massive installers for games without the need for decompression.