News Steam Deck Mod Allows for Longer M.2 SSD Upgrades

[Admin]

Twitter user Belly Jelly shares his method to convert the Steam Deck's M.2 2230 slot to fit longer M.2 2242 SSDs.

Steam Deck Mod Allows for Longer M.2 SSD Upgrades : Read more

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Design fault, or "the price of being too thin"...

 

[junglist724]

Could help with capacity, but I'm pretty much always cpu bottlenecked on my deck when installing games or loading. Even on ethernet I can't really exceed 70MB/s on the 512GB nvme when installing because I'm pinned at 100% cpu usage from decompressing.

 

[Sleepy_Hollowed]

Well... depending on what you're looking for, you might want to stop and think, if you play on the go a lot more, you might want a drive that has the lowest heat, less dissipated power and higher performance than the smaller ones, or else it's kind of a downgrade.

I'd think that's the main use of this device unless you're a couch plugged player.

 

[mitch074]

Design fault, or "the price of being too thin"...

If they hadn't wanted to make it replaceable, they'd have soldered in the storage - as it is, it's more a design compromise than a fault.
A design fault would have been shipping the deck with a SSD that interferes with the wifi performance; a bad design choice would have been a soldered in SSD.

 

[-Fran-]

If they hadn't wanted to make it replaceable, they'd have soldered in the storage - as it is, it's more a design compromise than a fault.
A design fault would have been shipping the deck with a SSD that interferes with the wifi performance; a bad design choice would have been a soldered in SSD.

It's a design choice for sure; a trade off, if you will.

I have my Steam Deck and it's quite an impressive piece of tech. I think they could have gotten away with a few extra millimeters for better cooling and more space for components. That being said, faster SSDs imply more power and temperature as pointed out in the article, so they would need to redesign not only the extra space, but the cooling and power delivery.

All in all, I do think they can make it slightly bulkier and still be quite portable; I mean, it's already big, so making it a bit thicker wouldn't have been a massive increase in volume and weight. What it needs though, is a bigger battery. I wish they made the battery replaceable, but it seems like travel restrictions make it so that having replaceable batteries is more of a liability. Anyway, I like to think about it like the XBox 360's old battery pack for the wireless controller, if anyone remembers, haha. As for extra storage space, the SD card works great to my surprise. I thought it was going to be like in phones where the storage speed was noticeable different, but it's not that noticeable in the Deck, to my disbelief.

Regards.

 

[mitch074]

It's a design choice for sure; a trade off, if you will.

I have my Steam Deck and it's quite an impressive piece of tech. I think they could have gotten away with a few extra millimeters for better cooling and more space for components. That being said, faster SSDs imply more power and temperature as pointed out in the article, so they would need to redesign not only the extra space, but the cooling and power delivery.

All in all, I do think they can make it slightly bulkier and still be quite portable; I mean, it's already big, so making it a bit thicker wouldn't have been a massive increase in volume and weight. What it needs though, is a bigger battery. I wish they made the battery replaceable, but it seems like travel restrictions make it so that having replaceable batteries is more of a liability. Anyway, I like to think about it like the XBox 360's old battery pack for the wireless controller, if anyone remembers, haha. As for extra storage space, the SD card works great to my surprise. I thought it was going to be like in phones where the storage speed was noticeable different, but it's not that noticeable in the Deck, to my disbelief.

Regards.

Indeed - a replaceable battery requires a specific boat and shipping container where a glued battery doesn't. The impact per unit is in the order of several dollars, which due to taxes and all distribution fees can raise the price by up to a dozen bucks.
As for the bulk, it's already almost too big; I really think they couldn't have allowed themselves to make it any bulkier and keep it usable even by smaller people (kids, women).

 

[digitalgriffin]

Indeed - a replaceable battery requires a specific boat and shipping container where a glued battery doesn't. The impact per unit is in the order of several dollars, which due to taxes and all distribution fees can raise the price by up to a dozen bucks.
As for the bulk, it's already almost too big; I really think they couldn't have allowed themselves to make it any bulkier and keep it usable even by smaller people (kids, women).

I would have not gone after a flat back, but a wave back that allows you to wrap your hand around the controllers like kung fu grips, and allowed plenty of cooling/battery in the middle. This makes the console easy to grip no matter your size.

 

[happydance22]

Design fault, or "the price of being too thin"...

Neither lol. It's intentionally designed that way to make you purchase the extremely upmarked SSD version of the console since you can't upgrade it yourself.

A measly 256gb SSD runs you a hefty $130 extra, or ~33% more. This isn't any sort of accident. Hardware manufacturers have been pulling this nonsense since.. forever.