All hands on Steam Deck - Valve's handheld PC

Eager to hear how this goes. Would love it if you could post an update (and links to the items you purchased).

I saved almost $200 by getting the 64GB model and installing an OEM 512GB SSD myself versus buying the 512GB model. (I didn’t buy an iFixit kit or any other fancy stuff, since I already owned an electronics repair driver set, and I got a USB-C dock back when I got my Steam Deck and was already using it regularly outside of needing to install SteamOS on the new drive.) The “hassle” was largely nonexistent - the biggest problem I had in the whole process was needing to discharge the battery before getting to work, which I did by…playing games, on a game system.

20 years ago I would have been right there with you guys. Now I don’t want to mess with that stuff. I built my last computer, something I have done many times over the years, and hated every step of it. I wish I was more like you guys, but I am lazy.

@JonRowe is installing a 256GB SSD. Price difference between 64GB and 256GB model is $130. It’s possible to get a 256GB 2230 NVMe drive for about $30. So savings is about $100. Kind of wish I’d done it now.

You might not even need to mess about with it, I installed a decent MicroSD card (512 GB, 99€), and I can’t really tell the difference between playing on the SSD or MicroSD.

And I’m sure even that shaders get installed on the SSD, it can be dealt with. Too bad I didn’t know any of this back when I pre-ordered, so, I didn’t get the cheapest one.

Yeah, I got a 256gb drive for 20$.

The smaller size ones are dirt cheap. I got a “like new” used drive. I would have bought the SD card anyway.

The toolkit was purchased just because I don’t have any nice precision screwdrivers.

I would say it saved about 100 bucks. If I went with an OEM new Kingston drive, (same as Valve uses) it would have saved 60$, as those are about 60$ on digikey.

Huge props to Valve on making the deck super easy to repair and upgrade.

With the exception of the one component that is guaranteed to have an expected remaining lifespan shorter than that of even most people on this board… the battery :/

I’m sure there are reasons they made it so frigging impossible to get to, but dang. Linus of the titular Tech Tips nearly started a fire getting it out. (And nearly broke a few other things getting to it.)

My Steam Deck was rendered unusable at one point because of shader cache and compatibility files filling up the 64GB internal storage completely. I was only using a 256GB microSD card at the time, as well.

As I said before, I’m pretty sure the Steam Deck doesn’t remove those files when you uninstall games, so if you install and uninstall games frequently, that internal storage fills up fast. (And that isn’t even getting into non-Steam software that only functions on the internal storage.)

Can they be deleted?

Yes, but it was significantly more of an ordeal than installing the 512GB SSD.

The queue is dead.

Long live the queue?

Follow up:

120$ canadian for a dock & a reserve queue. Too pricy for me.

Is there a good reason to buy this over the much cheaper third party ones?

@Gigglemoo I had to return the 0603 Jsaux dock because just having it plugged in (even with the SteamDeck powered off) interfered with my soundbar’s HDMI-CEC functionality and it drove me crazy not being able to control the volume with a single remote…

I was going to buy the official one to see if it fixed this behavior, but now that I see the price, I’m going to pass as well.

I just bought a JSAUX dock for $44 Canadian on Amazon Prime and it works great. The Deck charges while I play on the big screen too.

The dock is way too expensive.

Now that there’s no queue, my decision not to buy a Steam Deck is gonna get put to the test.

I kind of figured this had to be coming. When I cancelled my 256 and switched to a 64 gb, my reservation came up in 2 days.

Sure, buy a Hootoo if you want a cheap one that works fine. If you want fit and finish buy the original one. Valve themselves are encouraging 3rd party sales