Topic: PC Gaming

I just ordered a 2TB NVMe for my SteamDeck from AliExpress for $157.

Also ordered some disassembly tools such as a nice magnetic disassembly board with spudger and some other tools, a jig to hold the SteamDeck face down while working on it, and an offline NVMe to NVMe cloner from Sabrent. I know I can do it with my PC if I buy enclosures, or even my SteamDeck using Konsole in desktop mode, but eh... this'll make it way easier.

All in all, spent around $360. The drive, plus an extra hundred on disassembly stuff and another hundred on the cloner. Which doubled the expense, but I figure it's a nice investment so that, for the rest of my life, I have some nice tools for electronics disassembly and SSD cloning. And, even after ordering all that, it's still less expensive than buying a 1.5 TB micro SD like I got for my Switch- a $420 expense that would only increase total storage to 2 TB (of which 0.5 TB are SSD), whereas this $360 expense will result in total storage of 3 TB (of which 2 TB are SSD), and some nifty tools for future use.

SteamDeck Repair Jig

@Jalex__64
It'll be more expensive, and run Windows. Which also means worse battery life unless it's significantly heavier.

Many devices have offered more power than Deck, but they just can't compete because even more power isn't what Deck consumers want most. What they want most is ease of use and decent battery life. The SteamOS provides ease of use Windows just can't compete with, and the lighter OS means better battery efficiency. So Windows handhelds with 25% larger battery still see 25% less playtime before dying. And any attempt to match battery life with an extra large battery results in the weight jumping 200 grams more, and SteamDeck is already at the threshold of being considered too heavy for comfortable handheld play. 820 gram systems like OneXplayer2 are just too much, like lifting a dumbell.

People will gladly pay for more power, but only if it doesn't mean giving up those other advantages. Which... at this point pretty much rules out any Windows handheld full stop, unless they find a way to match battery life, weight and ease of use for the same price, which is doubtful at the present moment.

@Jalex__64 @JaxonH
Watching the LTT video on it it seems it's using the Zen 5 architecture which isn't out yet but is presumably significantly more power efficient. Not actual testing yet because it's still pre-production but ASUS was claiming 50% more performance within the same 15W power usage of the Deck. But with the option to flex a bit and go for 2X the power of the Deck if you want. They didn't reveal the battery capacity other than to say it "should be competitive with the Steam Deck". For weight it's 608g, so it's about 10% lighter than the Steam Deck

The windows bit is interesting. I mean I'm sure it probably will ship with Windows because it's almost surely not shipping with Steam OS. But it's also a portable gaming PC with an AMD CPU/GPU. I don't see any reason why you couldn't install Steam OS on it if you wanted. Also I'm sure it'll be much more expensive than the Deck given ASUS won't be selling it at a loss. Especially given it has potentially 2X the power, similar battery life and a 120Hz 1080p screen with VRR. But.... you're also getting all those things

I've said it on here before, I honestly feel like the Steam Deck is the shot in the arm the industry needed. Definitely an important product. But what I'm interested in is the segment not any particular device. When the 2nd, 3rd, 4th iterations of these products start coming out? That's when I'm jumping on board. As you said, I don't really want more power here. But smaller devices, more efficient SoCs, better screens? Sign me up

And this product from ASUS definitely looks like a step in the right direction

@Colonel_Mustache when you think about it, the switch is actually a mobile chipset with active cooling, so there's no need for that much space. And then you have the steam deck, which is basically like cramming entire laptop components into that form factor xD

@skywake
Problem with installing SteamOS is, it doesn't have the shortcut buttons built into it. I watched a video on putting SteamOS on another handheld and it just didn't work as smoothly as Deck which was built for it. Any handheld I get with Windows, I'd just keep Windows on it, even though Windows really isn't ideal for a handheld. I hate how you have to set power management rules and stuff.

I guess we'll see when it releases.

ThePhawx just put out a great video on the Asus

@JaxonH
Not going to bother watching that video but I think I have an idea where they might be going. To be clear, I don't think this Asus device is end-game and its price isn't going to be Steam Deck competitive. And I'm certainly not about to pick one up despite my post on the previous page being fairly bullish. The device I want in the next few years is still the "Switch 2" in combination with an upgraded desktop GPU

But what I am excited about is the direction we are heading in terms of the tech and also the fact that a PC hardware brand as big as Asus is taking it seriously. Specific products will come and go, that's pretty much guaranteed. What isn't guaranteed is how seriously this market is taken. Whether it remains this niche special-order product like it was before the Steam Deck or whether it expands. Asus jumping into this space, that's a big step in the right direction

Similar deal with the hardware itself. We're continuing to get more and more power efficient silicon from AMD. Zen 5 looks like it's going to be a pretty significant improvement in that respect (this Asus product is far from first time we've heard this). More power efficient? It can mean more power with a similar footprint but it can also mean the same amount of power for a significantly smaller footprint. I for one look forward to the day when we can get a Steam-Deck tier device that's the size of the Switch Lite. And the rate we're going I don't think we'll have to wait that long

Last bit that has me hyped? No secret I love a high framerate screen with VRR. I think VRR is the missing piece of the puzzle here, especially if they're go in the "make the form factor smaller" direction. Would I like to also see OLED? Why yes, yes I would. Probably doesn't need to bother with 1080p at that size though, that's one thing I wasn't that impressed about. I hope manufacturers chase power efficiency, size, storage speed, low noise and smoothness over resolution here..... and despite pushing the resolution to 1080p it seems like Asus is pushing most of these things in the right direction

@skywake
Video points out a few things- general excitement even more handhelds could be entering the market, but also skepticism toward the claims of 2x power. Since his whole channel is devoted to PC handhelds dating all the way back to the original GPD Win, he knows the subject better than anyone.

Basically says, the 2x claim isn't real because of other bottlenecks (and is only applicable at 35W which would be like, 30 min battery life), though he could feasibly see a 1.5x performance delta at 15W, however, the heavier overhead of Windows would put it more in the 25-35% advantage range, and with its tiny battery, likely wouldn't last any longer than Steamdeck. Basically the gains would be overall notable, but not nearly as much as claimed.

But the real analysis is questioning why they went with a higher resolution, 120 Hz screen, when no game will be able to run at 120 fps, and only indies or older titles would be able to go above 720p, in which case most players would typically opt for longer battery life at 720p anyways. It seems they took the gaming PC approach of "higher numbers better" which is perfectly valid for desktop gaming but, for a handheld doesn't make much sense. It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of typical use case and what the focus should be in a PC handheld (just slapping higher spec components in doesn't offer the same advantage in portable gaming vs TV gaming).

There's also no clarification of whether it would have rumble, or gyro, and he questions whether the device will even launch. Since apparently Best Buy and Asus is conducting a survey asking ppl to register interest, they may not even go forward with launching if enough ppl aren't interested. Kinda like that Alienware Switch like device that was shown with a prototype, but then never launched.

Ultimately, he's cautiously optimistic, but also says temper expectations. If they have rumble and gyro, and if they can at least hit the same battery life and at a competitive price point (ie closer to SteamDeck and not like all the other $800-1200 handhelds), and if they actually launch it, it's something to keep an eye on.

All that said, ya, the handheld space continues to march on and that's a good thing. It will continue to so so, especiallu with GPD and AyaNeo and OneXplayer leading the charge for Windows, with new companies entering the space. For now though, I don't think I could switch to a Windows device after becoming acclimated to SteamDeck. Plan for now is to hold off until Deck 2. But, if a Windows handheld were to release that had rumble, gyro, better battery life and at a comparable price point (because I don't really need more power for graphics, I need more efficiency for battery), I'm willing to be sold on another device.

@JaxonH
Yeah, the performance gains I'd take with a bucket of salt though I think the "because of other bottlenecks" thing kinda misunderstands what a bottleneck is. Everything and anything can be a bottleneck but everything is bottlenecked by something. Remember the Steam Deck is a Zen 2 CPU while this is Zen 5. 2->3 was around a 20% IPC lift, 3->4 was around a 10% IPC lift, leaks so far suggest Zen 4->5 is around a 25% IPC lift. So that's a 65% boost in instructions per clock.

A slight bump in clock speed or core count? A heavily CPU bound game could see 2X gains, I don't think that's much of a stretch at all. Would all titles see a 2X gain if the CPU could hit 2X the performance? Well no. Because some titles will be bottlenecked by the GPU, the RAM speed, the storage speed and so on.

Anecdotally I recently optimised some code for work. Code that was at various points either bottlenecked by the CPU or disk, so it was bottlenecked by both. Most of my gains were from making it multi-threaded and making the CPU load not have to wait as much for the disk. I have a fairly fast NVMe SSD and a fairly decent CPU with 12 threads on my desktop, I saw 1000x performance gains and was ultimately CPU bound. Some clients running this will have dual core servers and probably mechanical hard drives.... hard to tell how big their gains will be because with a slow disk they might still be bottlenecked by the disk.....

Same deal here. If you run a heavily CPU bound game and turn down all of the graphical settings to the GPU is barely being hit? I mean sure, I can see 2X performance improvements happening here. But there are also plenty of titles that would be GPU bound on something like a Steam Deck. Especially if you crank the settings and especially with heavily optimised titles that aren't letting the GPU sit idle

On the screen? Again, I tend to agree about 1080p but I don't agree about 120Hz. A 120Hz display, especially one with VRR, is something that's a significant step forward. This needs to happen. Not for the ability to run games at 120fps but more for the the VRR side of it. We've been sitting at this relatively arbitrary value of a fixed 60Hz for displays since TVs became a thing. Time we move on from it

And on efficiency, newer architecture => more power & more efficiency. I also want more efficiency and that's precisely why I see what Asus has announced here as a positive step. If you can have a significant jump in power for the same power draw? You can have the same device clocked lower or with less cores and get the same power for less power draw. I'm waiting for the lower powered one. Hopefully with a 120Hz, 720p OLED with VRR

@skywake
I'm all about VRR, but I don't see the 120 Hz as being inextricably linked to that. You could have VRR at 60 Hz, especially since most games need help holding a stable 30fps (RE4 Remake with the right settings can mostly hold 30, but still has drops in areas). I see the 120 hz as paying for something that will never be used in any circumstance. And at least for me, the same is true for the 1080p screen. I would never opt to run a game at 1080p when I could just run at 720p with more battery life. So it seems like they're stacking improvements in the wrong areas. Rather than 1080p 120 hz with say, a 40 Ahr battery, why not just do 800p 60 hz (keeping VRR), with a 50 A hr battery? Put extra value where it matters most.

ThePhawx did explain that 720p is not viable because Windows needs at least 768p to ensure OK/Cancel isn't cut off for opened windows (which he explains is why SteamDeck opted for 800p, in case ppl install Windows on their Deck), so perhaps the 1080p screen was chosen for that reason. And... OK. I can understand that.

Not that these things will necessarily be a problem, provided the price is competitive. I don't mind having a 120 hz 1080p screen as long as it doesn't jack up the price.

Playing RE4 Remake on Steamdeck with flawless gyro aiming mapped through Steam to mouse.

@Colonel_Mustache
I know some people love them, but honestly I just use analog sticks with gyro, same as you'd have on Switch. Then I map LB and RB to back buttons L4 and R4, with A/B mapped to L5/R5, or X/Y substituted depending on the game.

For the touch pads, I use for on screen radial menus where applicable, or as extra buttons (such as in Metroid Prime 2 Echoes- I use left TouchPad up, right, down, left for visors and right TouchPad up, right, down, left for beams).

I'm glad they're there though. Cause there's a number of games where I need more buttons to map stuff, and while yes, you can always assign an activator or action set so that holding one button makes other buttons do different stuff, it's often easier to just assign to a 4-way d-pad on TouchPads.

Everspace 2 is out today, and I really wish I liked dogfighting games. Hearing all the stuff about how they borrowed heavily from the ARPG and looter shooter genres gets me really excited, because despite the memes, those games don't come around as often as you think, especially if you aren't latched into one of the big ones like Destiny. It also feels like we've had a bunch of looter/ARPG whiffs over the last couple of years. But man, I tried the Everspace demo and just... not for me.

Been kind of a weird year for gaming for me which is why I haven't been too active on the forums. I thought the year started off really strong. I had some stuff to wrap up from last year, and then new releases like Engage but there just hasn't been that much I've really been all that into, otherwise.

I absolutely emotionally bankrupted myself replaying the Last of Us (and thank God I didn't wait for the PC Port) and playing through the Last of Us Part 1 and just spent a lot of time bouncing off of a lot of titles. Like I'm a chunk of the way through the new Resident Evil remake for example which I am playing on PC, and I enjoy it when I play it, but I just don't have much motivation for it when I'm not. Like I can't remember the last time a game grabbed me where I just couldn't wait to play it and every moment I wasn't playing it, I was thinking about it.

I played like 30 hours of that new WWE game on PC and had buckets of fun, but 30 hours was long enough to leave me feeling well and truly burnt out on it.

About the only gaming I am doing right now is playing Marvel Snap on my phone and working through the Life is Strange games on Steam Deck usually for an hour or two before bed.

I undervolted my SteamDeck and am seeing temps run 5 degrees cooler with battery life increased 15%!!! I'm running at just under 14W on RE4 Remake with battery life of 3 hrs 5 minutes! That's insane for a brand new AAA game that can barely scrape by with a stable 30 with settings on low (but at 720p- I never go under 720p).

It's so easy to do. I tried undervolting at -30, -30, -30 but my temps jumped 10 degrees and my battery life was showing a 35 min decrease, so I could tell it wasn't getting enough voltage and was having to push harder and draw more power. Plus when I powered off the black screen backlight stayed on. So that was my cue I'd gone too far.

Bumped the last two values up by 5, for -30, -25, -25, and viola! Problem solved! Tested RE4 Remake for 10-15 min and ya, Temps are lower, power draw is lower, battery life projection is higher.

This undervolting, combined with the VRAM and Swappiness mod which gives 10-15% better performance in most games, means I'm seeing the absolute best performance possible from the Deck with the absolute most battery life.

And I'm about to upgrade my SSD to 2TB also? Maaaan this system is gonna be decked out (pun most definitely intended)

@Colonel_Mustache
Can't go too low or you'll see instability, or, the system isn't getting enough power so it draws more, which completely negates using a lower voltage in the first place.

So there's a sweet spot, where it's lowered just enough that it's producing the same amount of work for less power, thus increasing battery life and lowering temps, which lowers fan speed and extends battery even more. Don't undervolt enough and it's too small to make a notable difference. Undervolt too much and, even if it's stable, it could lower amount of work being done thus requiring more Watts to be drawn, which can actually cause worse battery life than if you didn't undervolt to begin with.

I cheated a bit. Instead of doing it step by step, I set all three to -10, then tested, then set all three to -20, then tested, then set all three to -30, then tested and got instability, so I went to -30, -25, -25 and nailed it.

After that I tried undervolting an extra -5 on each, one by one, but in all instances I saw higher power draw and temps. So I went back to -30, -25, -25 and called it a day.

@Colonel_Mustache
Stock steam deck.

But to perform the undervolt you have to get a USB drive, format to FAT32 and download Smokeless from Gitbub (link in video). Unzip and drag contents onto USB drive.

Then power off Deck, insert into Deck, hold minus and power until boot menu appears and select the USB drive. From there you can change the voltage offsets.

Well, here it goes. Copying over to a 2TB NVMe now. When it's done, I'll swap em out and hope for the best.

I did it!

That was super easy with all the right tools.

2TB now!

@Colonel_Mustache
It took me 7-8 minutes at most to take out the 8 screws from the back shell, pop it off, remove the 3 screws from the cover, take that off, disconnect the battery, then take the final NVMe screw out to remove it.

Took another 7-8 minutes to re-assemble it all. Whole thing took 15 minutes. I had all the necessary tools, a magnetized board with marker for the screws, and an LED head light so I could see what I was doing.

The long part was copying everything over. Took 5 hrs to copy the 512 GB hard drive using a more simple method via Konsole in desktop mode. I didn't even need the offline cloner (though I did use it as a housing to connect the 2TB NVMe via USB port when copying).

@Colonel_Mustache
Cloning the drive really is the way to go. Otherwise you have to re-download everything, which can take days.

Not only that, but in the case of Steamdeck specifically, I had already set up a password in Konsole, installed CryoTools with the VRAM and Swappiness modification, and installed a dozen plug-ins, with PrimeHack (for which configuring the buttons alone took hours to figure out). Plus the save game for Metroid Prime 2 would not be backed up, so installing a fresh drive would have lost that, too.

Whereas if you just clone your drive, everything is done already. You don't even have to worry about extending the size of the partition afterward (since cloning from a smaller drive auto-sizes the partition to match the source). Steamdeck recognizes the unallocated space and auto-resizes when you boot it up. Such an easy, breezy process. Can't believe I waited this long to upgrade out of intimidation when it was so simple in the end.

Ok, so...

After moving my installs from microSD to SSD, I started having cloud save sync issues, with write errors for 5 specific games in my library. Tried everything, spent 2 hrs researching and trying various things- nothing fixed it.

Eventually decided my only recourse was a factory reset of the SteamDeck. Which of course means having to reset a password for Konsole in desktop mode, reinstalling CryoUtilities, reinstalling PrimeHack, remapping the controls which took me half a day last time because the default controller wasn't being detected... and re-download several TB of games.

And... that's exactly what I did. Immediately fixed the issue. Set up the password, installed CryoUtilities again, installed DeckyLoader again with all my plug-ins, installed PrimeHack again, and for some reason this time the controller detected and it worked out of the box with pre-mapped controls with gyro aiming! Such a relief cause I was not looking forward to dinking around with that again.

I'm currently redownloading all my games, about 2.5 TB worth, which can now all fit on my internal 2TB SSD + 1TB microSD. No need for extra spare microSD to swap in and out. I will have to do the EAC fix for Gears 5 to work, but aside from that everything should be golden by tomorrow when the downloads are done.

Except game settings. That will have to be redone all over again, game by game. Which kinda sucks. Then again, maybe the cloud saves will remember the settings. We'll see.

I'm just glad this factory reset wasn't nearly as much of a headache I thought it would be.

edit

2TB NVMe is down to $146 on AliExpress. That's an insanely low price

https://m.aliexpress.us/item/3256804526513364.html?