All hands on Steam Deck - Valve's handheld PC

I cancelled my 256gb pre-order.

It came up in 17 days.

I re-submitted a pre-order for the 64 gb one.

I couldn’t justify the extra cost, when the 256 gb Kingston SSD is like 55-60 bucks, and it is so easy to install. You can get a lot of SSD’s for 80 bucks that vary from 512 gb to 1tb, in varying states of used/refurbishedness.

Not to mention how well games apparently run fine on the sd card slot anyway.

I just pre-ordered the 64GB too for the same reasons you mention. I’ll put in a 512 SD card and not touch the SSD unless I have too.

When this was announced I had zero interest. My thought was I wouldn’t want to play PC games on a small screen. All of the positive reviews swayed me. Was thinking of getting a Switch, glad I didn’t.

Just be warned that many games, even if you install to the SD card, need to install the shader cache on the root drive. Not sure how well 64GB would do in this case.

It’s why I upgraded the SSD in my own 64GB Steam Deck. The shader cache takes up a lot of space very quickly, especially if you keep a lot of games installed or if you frequently uninstall games to install other ones (it doesn’t seem to delete shader cache and compatibility files automatically for games you uninstall?), and it was only $55 shipped for a brand-new OEM 512GB SSD.

I tried to cancel my order two days after I ok’ed it but they had not shipped it…but, nope, they still shipped it. So, gotta now return it…but when it shows up, going to be hard to return it…AUGH

Why did you cancel it?

Had one already that I gave to my kid. Played that one for a week and loved it but just dont have time to play so many games with taking care of my house, 4 dogs, live in bed-ridden mother in law, live in schizo sister in law, kid, wife, job, etc. I loved it to death but really need to lower my game playing time and I already play too much on my PS5 and XSS.

Well, there are needs and there are needs. Make sure you’re getting what you need. ;)

Yeah, get three Steam decks. Fun for the whole family!

Yeah, I plan on buying an SSD to upgrade then.

That would be incredibly cool with the right group and the right game. In college I once bought three used PSPs on Craigslist, loaded them up with Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, and gave them to my two brothers on a whim. We ended up playing about 200 hours of that game together that way (over maybe a month), and still talk about it all the time.

Thank you and Warp. I was aware of this. If its a problem, I’ll upgrade.

The pricing on the steam deck HDD’s is a bit crazy to me.

You can get the same SSD from Digikey’s marketplace (the same model as in the deck) for 60 bucks for the 256. The price difference is 120$ for the 64 gb vs 256. I would assume it is fair markup for those who don’t want to tinker, and they may have locked in a pricier bulk deal, but still… it is a LOT.

I didn’t realize how stupidly easy it would be to swap out the SSD, I mean, I have swapped nvme’s before on my big boy pc.

Kudos on Valve for making it so easy to work on.

Ebay has a lot of sellers with open box 256 gb ssd’s from WD, Samsung, Kioxia (Toshiba) that have been pulled from laptops/tablets and are “like new” for 20 bucks. I am going to buy a 256 gb WD SN530 for 20$. Also a 512 gb SD card, and I am going to be all set.

Of course I think I will also buy an ifixit kit, because I don’t have one, but i should get one.

Also, FYI, I reserved the 256gb on the 13th of Sept, was up on the 30th.

I reserved a 64 gb the 1st of october, and got the link to buy today. So, they are REALLY catching up with the 64gb and 256gb models.

Just watched a video on it and it’s the 2230 spec, meaning less easily found and not as cheap as I thought.

If you had a way to image from old to new that’s a decent path assuming you can find 512GB cheaply?

Or I guess once you have that you could image it with whatever you want, including Windows 11.

Every prebuilt computer I have bought has ridiculous mark up on drive space and memory, so I didn’t think Steam’s pricing here was out of line. Then again I am a Mac user, you don’t want to know how much Apple charges for those upgrades.

Answered my own question on that as well. With a USB key with space, you can just create a STEAMOS recovery image to boot off of, then boot into maintenance mode and select restore after changing out your M.2 drive:

Yeah, there are tons of guides.

I got a 256gb ssd for 20 bucks, and I bought the ifixit driver kit for 20 bucks. (I probably should have a nice small screwdriver anyway)

Looks like they’ve passed a million units shipped:

That’s not too shabby!

Getting the RPS recommended samsung pro microsd card (512gb) for 70 bucks. So total will be 490$ plus tax (and an hour of work) for a 256 gb steam deck with a 512gb storage SD card drive.