What is the best way to run/install games onto an external HDD?

I would like to either install Windows on another partition on my 256GB SSD on the new rMBP and run games off an external, or install Windows on an external and games as well. What would be the most efficient (price wise) way to do this without having to sacrifice speed? I was thinking I could use an external thunderbolt hard drive, but it seems like they are all over $300 and over 1TB. I would only really need around 500GB with preferably 7200RPM speeds. Would USB 3.0 be fast enough or would I need to use thunderbolt? I prefer not to have to install 30GB games on the Windows partition on a small 256GB SSD, though I guess I could uninstall and reinstall them as I need (but does this wear down the SSD write speeds over time?) I couldn't get myself to pay another $600 to get a 512GB SSD logic board on the rMBP.
Thanks for any help. If there are alternative solutions for running games on an external feel free to recommend them.

If it is possible to install Windows on an external HDD without Bootcamp, then I'd be fine with that. The only problem I see with that is installing the necessary boot files, but it seems like it could be possible to do it manually. I've never done it before though.
Running programs off an external should be fine so long as they don't have to access Windows OS files directly (supposing Windows was installed on the internal SSD), no?

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