Ext4 or btrfs...

...for an old-ish desktop with an HDD?

I've bought an old-ish (~5 years) desktop for my 12 y/o nephew, who happens to be quite tech-inclined. Since he's also a gamer, I've thought that a rolling release distro would fit his needs, but in that case something like the built-in snapshots from Opensuse TW would come in handy - but I'm afraid that a btrfs distro might wear out the HDD (i.e. spinning rust) a bit too fast.

Or perhaps I could use something like non-LTS Ubuntu, which feature reasonably recent packages and still use the good ol', tried and true ext4. What is your advice, fellow penguins?