How Many Gigs Does Unreal Engine 5 Really Take Up?

As an indie developer and Unreal Engine enthusiast, this is one of the most common questions I see from new users. They download Epic‘s powerhouse game engine expecting a lightweight program, not a 40+ GB behemoth!

So why does UE5 demand so much drive space? And how can you slim down that chunky install for your next project? Let‘s dig in…

The Straight Answer

Unreal Engine 5 takes up between 30 and 40GB for a minimal install with starter content and documentation.

You‘ll want at least 50GB free for smaller projects as builds, intermediate files, and source control quickly eat space. Bigger open world titles might require 500GB to 1TB once all textures, meshes, audio clips are accounted for!

Now thirty gigs is massive for what‘s essentially an "empty" game engine. But all that space delivers an incredible editor and toolkit that‘s ready to realize your creative vision.

Why So Big Though?

Good question young Padawan! The sheer breadth of features and top-notch production pipeline come at a cost. Those fancy nanite meshes, film-quality visuals and massive simulated worlds have to live somewhere!

Behind the realtime rendering, polished UI and node-based Blueprints lies a beast of an engine. One architected to handle next-gen AAA requirements across multiple platforms.

With full C++ and source access combined with visual scripting, you pay for extreme flexibility in realizing 3D experiences. There‘s no compromise either – all features are included out of the box without headaches like Unity‘s tiered pricing.

While 30GB might seem indulgent for learning or small projects, remember that professional dev teams think nothing of multi-Terabyte repo sizes. If you plan to push UE5 to the limits, buckle up that hard drive!

What‘s Actually Taking Up Room?

From a fresh install, here‘s a breakdown of space usage:

• 15GB – Core engine libraries, headers and binaries
• 5GB – Built in content like starter maps, Blueprints, materials
• ~5GB – Target platform support e.g Android, console SDKs
• 5-10GB – Documentation, example content and projects

The base engine itself is surprisingly compact given its capabilities. The bulk comes from production-ready assets that showcase features while providing real project examples.

I advise keeping these for reference as you would download free game assets from the UE Marketplace or other sites. They nicely complement tutorials if you absorb content by reverse engineering.

Managing Disk Space

While not excessive for hobbyists, 50GB can become problematic on budget laptops or small capacity SSDs. Veterans might also rather allocate precious GBs to projects over engine internals.

Here‘s my best advice for keeping your UE5 install lean if needed:

• Only enable target platforms you use – Consoles, mobile VR add gigs each
• Omit supplemental content – Extra maps, assets, examples
• Delete outdated documentation – Versioned release notes rapidly accumulate
• Clean intermediate folders regularly – Local builds can quickly spike

Following these tips I‘ve seen veteran developers slim even advanced installations down to ~20GB. But know that stripping functionality comes with development costs later when you suddenly need to target a new platform!

Typical Asset Sizes

Given UE5‘s multiplayer-ready scale, environments and textures balloon quickly:

You‘ll easily exceed 50GB once you populate grey-box levels with production ready objects and VFX. Budget ~100GB minimum for polished small scope projects.

If building an open world be prepared for assets ranging from hundreds of gigabytes to terabytes! Installing UE5 is just the start – substantial storage is needed for games matching its capabilities.

Impact On Performance

Given their size, properly loading tons of high resolution textures, models and audio clips is crucial for performant games. Slow hard drives severely bottleneck throughput.

SSDs help tremendously by reducing level load times from minutes to seconds. For streamlined iteration invest in the largest NVMe drive affordable. You‘ll build lighting and recompile shaders faster along with enjoying much smoother editing.

To keep FPS high, pay attention to poly counts, draw calls and texture resolution. Nanite and Lumen mask slowdowns but still respect standard optimization rules. Code clean up saves on RAM and VRAM!

For a detailed UE5 performance guide check out my recent blog here: How to Optimize Games for 60 FPS in Unreal Engine 5.

Recommended Specs

We‘ve established UE5‘s hunger for resources – what budget boxes can feed the beast? Here‘s suggestions for entry level to high-end configurations:

Entry 1080p Development

PCPartPicker Part List

With a speedy six core Ryzen, 16 gigs of RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD you‘ll handle reasonable scene sizes fine at 1080p. I‘d still suggest 32GB RAM for more complex projects.

Enthusiast 4K Development

PCPartPicker Part List

Here 8 cores, 32 gigs of fast RAM and 4TB of NVMe storage will crush editing, compiling and previewing complex scenes in 4K. No need to fear millions of polygons with a 12GB 3080 Ti!

Go bigger on the CPU, GPU and RAM for future proofing. Component shortages won‘t last forever right??

Wrapping Up

While far from petite, Unreal Engine 5‘s hefty install footprint enables unrivaled realtime experiences out of the box. Treat it as an all-you-can eat AAA buffet!

With the right high capacity NVMe drive and performance machine, you‘ll limit any frustration from excess temporary files or sluggish iteration.

Hopefully this peek under the hood gives perspective on where those gigabytes reside. Now get creating awesome games!

Let me know if you have any other questions in the comments below. And don‘t forget to subscribe for more UE5 content soon!