Can I play PC games from a WD EX2 connected via a 50 feet network cable to laptop?

arnprasad

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Hi..the only computer in my house that has a decent graphics card is my dell 5575 that has nvidia 1050.

I have all my media files on my WD EX2 (https://www.amazon.in/WD-Diskless-Network-Attached-Storage/dp/B01AWH05KK) .

My laptop has limited storage since its SSD.

Hence cannot have too many 30-80 GB games on it. My WD EX2 has >1 TB of free space. Its location is ground floor and I currently access it on first floor by a cheap network cable.

If I download these games onto the WD - can I play it on my laptop? I am guessing even cheap network cables are faster than say USB3 connected to external hard drives?

my other option is to buy a WD 1.5 TB for around 3500 and save my games and connect that to my laptop.(https://www.amazon.in/Elements-Port...1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1574783799&sr=1-1) - but trying to avoid it since this is for my kids and hence casual gaming once in a while
 
You can try. May depend on the game. Have seen cases where people use 10gbps network connections for this. Not sure if a normal LAN would work
 
I suspect it would depend more on your system RAM and GPU's VRAM. If they are big enough then besides slow initial load time, it should work OK.
 
Hi..the only computer in my house that has a decent graphics card is my dell 5575 that has nvidia 1050.

I have all my media files on my WD EX2 (https://www.amazon.in/WD-Diskless-Network-Attached-Storage/dp/B01AWH05KK) .

My laptop has limited storage since its SSD.

Hence cannot have too many 30-80 GB games on it. My WD EX2 has >1 TB of free space. Its location is ground floor and I currently access it on first floor by a cheap network cable.

If I download these games onto the WD - can I play it on my laptop? I am guessing even cheap network cables are faster than say USB3 connected to external hard drives?

my other option is to buy a WD 1.5 TB for around 3500 and save my games and connect that to my laptop.(https://www.amazon.in/Elements-Port...1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1574783799&sr=1-1) - but trying to avoid it since this is for my kids and hence casual gaming once in a while
No. You can't. You can, but load times will be horrible. A better option will be to keep the installation folders on your network drive and copy only the specific games that you wish to play, if you don't want to purchase a hard drive.
 
Thank you...during the black friday sale managed to get a 99 dollar XFX RX 570 4GB...so now my desktop too should rock 1080p games for kids. But I will save your advice..am sure will be useful someday!

Also currently I dont have any games subscription service and hence games are downloaded from pirate sites. But after i get the graphics card installed..will get xbox service and since they will play at max two games at a time...no need to download and save many games - which was my predicament earlier
 
No. You can't. You can, but load times will be horrible. A better option will be to keep the installation folders on your network drive and copy only the specific games that you wish to play, if you don't want to purchase a hard drive.
Hi..can you explain this in simple english please. Say I got a 80GB game. So I will save it on my Z drive which is my WD. So when I start install the game, it will show me the path - I am guessing even if the game itself is on Z drive, it will by default show C drive? is it here that I do some changes? If so what are these changes please..explain step by step. My understanding is if I go with default folder during installation..my C drive gets hit with the 80GB? which is what I want to avoid...I got three computers..two desktops and one laptop and all three have limited space... Also everytime I logon to Windows..I have to go to Windows explorer and click on the Z drive and activate it as by default the Z drive is not activated. I hope in this situation also, I can install and play games on the WD (meaning I want a large chunk of the 30/40/80 GB post installation to be on Z drive)
 
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