Tag: Upgrading

My Upgrade experience with Steam Deck

Paul1 Reply

Steam Deck

Upgrading the 399$ Steam deck!

I won’t say that anyone can do this if you don’t know how to do it in the first place.  It however was realatively quick and easy.  So let’s start from the beginning, I did  talk about which storage hard drive cards would work with the Steam Deck, they call them NVME’s.   I got mine off of Amazon and it works really well,  I installed it in under 20 minutes.  The problem I had was having to redownload all my Games.  That took like 3 hours with it be connected to the dock, and that is no small feet.  I play Elden Rings, Spider-Man Remaster, Halo, Subnautica, Subnautica Below Zero and also Half-Life series.   Althought that was over 180 gigabytes, that is still really fast in my opinion, unlike downloading over wifi, connecting to a wired connection will always by my way to install games on the Steam Deck.

Some Caveats

Let’s talk about some of these small warnings.   If you haven’t backed up anything on the SSD than you will most likely loose them.  You can easily move files that you want to save to your sdcard, which also is very helpful in keeping backups.  You’ll also want to make sure to remove the sdcard before you try to open up the Steam Deck, or you will break the Sdcard.  I’ve done that at least one and it isn’t a fun experience buying a new one.   You’ll also want to install the recovery disk onto a USB-C drive if all possible unless you have a dock and then you can use the dock to reinstall the Steam OS.   The app that comes with installing the Steam OS didn’t require much from me other than making sure I knew it would delete all files on the NVME.  It was a new one so I wasn’t worried about loosing any data.  Also if you moved any files from the SDcard, unless I missed a step, you’ll most likely need to reformat the SD card to move files back to the SDcard.   I honestly think I missed a step because I should of been able to verify my integratity of the files and not have to download all these big games back, it however didn’t cause me too much grief.

Some Take Away

Knowing that if I had to replace the SSD it wouldn’t be much problems.   I did buy a 256gb NVME just because I found some for 30$ on amazon.  You can however install 1tb or 2tb when they become more availabe and cheaper.      It was way cheaper than buying a 512 on the Steam Deck website and I still can replace any part I might need to in the coming years.   One day I’ll buy a newer model of the Steam Deck with better hardware or updated hardware.   It however is going to be an interesting time to see what they come up with on the Steam Deck.  I simply love it and even use it at a desktop whenever I need to.  It will be a great international Travel accessorie instead of taking my laptop to browse the web or do what I might need to do on the go.   I’m in the process of looking for a good Mouse and keyboard setup that might be small and portable so I can do what I might need to do on the go.   Very Powerful and great little gaming device.  Have you upgraded yoru Steam Deck yet, if so what did you do with yours more storage or change the display to a better dislpay?  i’d like to hear what you might did to yours and let’s compare notes.

 

Is streaming feasible on the Steam Deck or to the computer?

Paul1 Reply

Live Audio Streaming Second Life

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The Preface of this post

Let’s begin with that what I am about to talk about is probably not even going to work for most of you because it would require way to much money to upgrade your home networking. This however is going to be something to understand and consider in your future upgrade plans for your home networking. Nothing here right now will stop you from streaming or make it useful but it will be a chance to educate you on how you might want to proceed in the future and make the experience a little more enjoyable. You also have the options of downloading games and installing onto your steam deck but someone games won’t work with the Steam as well as streaming them. This topic will at least maybe make it more enjoyable for you and make it so you can stream and not be pulling your hair out in the process.

Bandwidth will be the issue

Depending on what your computer you are using that you want to stream to your Steam Deck, the issue will be for the time being the amount of information that is sent to the Steam Deck.   Most  games are playing at the Highest possible settings and that requires the information to be transmittable to the Steam Deck.   Something like 1440p or really good RTX graphics card will want to send all this information to the Steam Deck.   There will be movement Lag or game lag even if you had the best home network in the world.  I can’t see this being without some form of lag.   You are essentially trying to send loads of data over either wired to Wireless or Wireless to Wireless, or even Wireless to Wired connections.    Even then you have a cap of how much data can be sent to through the air or though a wired connection.

Wired VS Wireless

Let’s Now talk about the speed caps and how much you will most likely get with each one of them.   According the LifeWire, You will get these types of speed:

I tend to think this is somewhat accurate because I can’t see this not being any faster than this in most cases. You have objects in the way to get to the wireless whether it being a Door, a Wall, or even other objects. That will tend to slow the connection down because of errors and bandwidth.  Even then even if you had gotten a 802.11ax wireless router the Steam Deck right now could only do the 802.11ac so that would mean it could only do 200 mbps(Milibytes Per Second) even at the best of times.

Now let’s talk about Wired options.   You can buy  dock that will connect to your wired network but the Steam Deck Dock will only do 1 Gbps which is way faster than you could wireles.   You would need  to do several things to get a faster connection.   One buy a Switch or Router that is 2.5Gbps capable, and upgrade your wired connections to a Cat 7 or 8.  You’d also need a 2.5Gb Ethernet connection to the Steam Deck by using a USB-C to 2.5gb Ethernet connection.  You can also use this to download games faster if you have a already have installed a big enough HDD or maybe you expanded your MicroSD card selections.  I have not yet to found a dock that will support 2.5gbps that will work with the Steam Deck but I am not sure if they even make them just yet.  It would be nice but I doubt anyone but maybe Steam Deck will incorporate that into their next versions of the DOCK.  You will also need to make sure you Desktop system that you want to stream from or two is capabile of thw 2.5gb also on a wired network.  You will need to check with the company that you bought your system from or check the motherboards website to see if it has a 2.5gbs ethernet connection.  Most gaming systems or motherboards will already havea 2.5gbs connection but some don’t.  So you might need to buy a 2.4gb ethernet connection dongle for the laptop or desktop in question.

Game performance tweaks

Finally with all that  being said, the last way to not have so much game lag while streaming is drop your resolution of the game and make the game run with less graphics.  Turn off DLSS and other options in the game, also if it says it is running best possible graphics, drop it down to mid way or lower and that will allow the information tobe transmitted faster to your streaming device such as the Steam Deck.  Even with this, it might still be a little slugish and slow to respond.  So the best approach, I have come up with is to download the games onto the Steam Deck and try to play them on the steam without streaming them.  I’ve found that most games work rather well playing from the Steam Deck than to try to stream them.   The only one so far I haven’t had a chance to try to figure out is Micrisoft Flight Simulator 2020.  I am hopeful they will release a patch for that so that I can play that on my Steam Deck.  Although, I have begun to try to figure out a way to get it to run on the steam deck like it does on the Linux machines I’ve used in the past.  Hopefully I will come up with a Hack to do that.

What’s your thoughts on Streaming Vs Downloading?  Do you have any problems streaming or have you had similar issues?  What games seem to run smoothly while streaming or did you have any games that will work well streaming?  I’d like to hear your results also.

So you want to upgrade your SSD on the Steam Deck, huh?

Paul2 Replies
The Prices of Steam Deck

Upgrading is Possible

I’m not going to say it won’t be easy to do. It just depends on how much of knowledge you have to do this. I bought the 64gb Model because well it was the cheaper of the 3. I figured it would be cheaper to do it myself than to pay them to do it. I am looking now and think I did a great job with this because I didn’t have to spend the 600 dollars for the 512gb model. In fact there are more bigger kinds of the SSD that I can install that will go beyond the 512gb that they are selling. If you want to do this, I really suggest checking out the Steam Deck Teardown that the IFIXIT guys did. I simply love the idea of tearing it down and being able to MOD it, if I so choice.  I’m going to talk about the best choices you have to upgrade your storage in the Steam Deck.   These are just my recommendations on which ones will help you and save you money in the process.

Buy NVME 2230 30 mm SSDs

So we start to talk about the kind of SSD’s you will need to buy in order to upgrade your Steam Deck.   You will need to find SSDs that are one sided NVME.  They can not have chips on both sides of the card, there would be no room for it.   You’re going to look for the type you might want but here are some good options that I see on Amazon.

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SkHynix 256GB PCIe NVMe 2230 SSD for 31$

Here’s the first one that I recommend for anyone who might just want to upgrade to a little bit bigger size. This however will not give you as much room as you might want but it will give you enough room to start off with and then you can SD cards to do the rest.  As you can see this one will be a good deal for you right now.   You can quickly and easily upgrade your Steam Deck to a bigger storage.   It however isn’t the only one I would recommend.

Micron SSD 512GB M.2 2230 30mm NVMe PCIe 4.0 for 99$

Now here’s a great deal going from jusst paying 399$ pluss tax to 499$ Plus tax.  Saving you over 130$, if you just did it yourself.   So this one should fit Steam Deck and I don’t see any problems with it.  It is small enough and fast enough to use with the Steam Deck.  You won’t see it slowing you down as you are gaming on the Steam Deck.

SN530 m.2 2230 SSD 1TB NVMe PCIe For 184$

This seems to be the best deal around because you can get almost a 1 tb for the best amount of money.   The only problem with this one is you really only get 866gb of space and the rest is taken up by design of the chip.   I don’t know if you want that or not but at least this one is available to you to buy.  You might be able to find other 1tb that will get closer to the 1tb limit but not  many and they start to get more expensive.

2TB M.2 2230 NVMe PCIe SSD Gen 4.0 for 539$

Finally we get to this bad boy, it is a bit expensive for my tastes but at least this is a Samsungs SSD.  So it will be blazing fast but I don’t know if I would pay 500$ for a 2tb when you can easy get Micro SD’s for cheaper.  I guess those who can afford to pay it will most likely.  I am sure there will be other manufacturers who will come out with 2tb but for right now this one is the only one on Amazon and claims to be able to upgrade the Steam Deck.  I suspect your will only get like 1.7tb of space off this SSD but it will be massive.  If you have a lot of games, this would definately let you put them on the Steam Deck.

Installing the Steam OS

So you bought a bigger SSd and went to install it but you will need to install the Steam OS.  You can follower the instructions on how to create a Steam OS recovery USB drive.   I personally might go with my own and use CloneZilla and clone the hard drive and move it to the new one after you install the new SSD.   Then grab something like Gparted and expand the disk to the size you need that would be my recommendations so you don’t loose any of you games or have to reinstall the games that you have already installed.   You will need a USB stick that has the size you want to clone so if you have a 64gb then you will need one that is at least that big.  You can use a dock or something like that, See my previous post about Docks.  to use multiple USB sticks.  Hope this helps.  Did you find this informative, why not share it and let others know that it is possible to upgrade your Steam Deck.

Is it worth upgrading to Windows 11?

Paul

Windows 11

Windows 11 is now Available

Microsoft releases Windows 11 last week and people all around have had their opinions from it’s good to not so much like I have said.   It just isn’t worth it right now to upgrade.   You have to worry about encryption of the HDD to having a TPM installed on your system.   All these requirements doesn’t mean it is any safer than before.   I know that Microsoft is preaching how this will help increase security in their OS.   I personally think it is just a lot of hot air, any security that they might think will help, will eventually have some hacker or virus get around.   It is a good idea for the short term but maybe no in the long term.    We’ve seen blogs talk about how it isn’t worth it and others where Microsoft talked about all these things that will come along but have yet not even seen anything on Windows 11.

Upgrade Woes

Even if you wanted to upgrade, you still have to go through a lot of system preparation for you to even upgrade to Windows 11.   You’ll need to enable TPM if you have it and also you will then need to make sure you have UEFI enabled.   This also makes you to turn your hard drive partition from MBR into a GPT to be able to use Windows 11.   This a lot of system just to use Windows 11.   I am hopeful that Microsoft will release a good tool to help you with this issue because I am sure most systems don’t even have GPT being used in Windows 10.   Microsoft has said in the past that you can avoid some of this if you install Windows 11 on a new system because you don’t have to encrypt your hard drive or use TPM.   So downloading Windows 11 might work for some of you but I am little hesitant due to Microsoft saying that may not support them in the future but I don’t see this being the issue because of the security risks involve.

Should you upgrade

This has been the question for most people around the world.   I’ve seen people wonder if they should upgrade.   I say probably not right now, due it being so new.   There are still problems and nothing is that compelling to install Windows 11 unless Microsoft brings on something so compelling that you will want Windows 11.   If they supported DDR5 and helped make the system faster, I am sure it would be something that might compel people to upgrade to Windows 11.   I am sticking with Windows 10 ]until I have to consider upgrading or installing a Linux Distro.   I am going to say just wait and see what happens in the near future.   Only you can really know for sure if you should upgrade.   Are you going to upgrade or are you going to wait?  Why Not leave a comment and tell me what your thoughts are about Windows 11.