I have a problem. I like to have all of my games downloaded on the gaming system I play on. It's the closest thing to 'owning' the game you purchased in this digital age. I have around 400-500 games on steam, which are around 5 TB or so in total (thanks Ark).
Since the steam deck only has a micro SD card slot and an NVME 2230 slot, options are limited without getting too creative. An ironic fortune for proton is that not all of my games are compatible with SteamOS, so I don't need 5tb+ necessarily, just enough for the games that do work.
So I ended up purchasing these:
- NewQ Portable Steam Deck Dock: https://a.co/d/0Ov3HUL
- 2x Cotchear Mini Super Speed Micro SD/SDXC TF USB 2.0 Card Reader Adapter: https://a.co/d/eb4N9Wq
- 3x Silicon Power 1TB Micro SD Card U3 SDXC microsdxc High Speed MicroSD Memory Card with Adapter: https://a.co/d/i7rtkAb
A relatively inexpensive experiment, aside from the micro SD cards, which can still be used as needed, or find their way to other uses if the experiment fails.
I only needed 3 SD cards because I already had a 1tb one before this. So that totals to 4 TB of micro SD cards plus my 256gb nvme, which I could upgrade for a total of 5gb
The biggest issue I'm facing with this setup is that those USB adapters are unreliable, and often disconnect randomly. Two of them have already just died, so Im going to opt for some more familiar brands like this SanDisk MobileMate USB 3.0 microSD Card Reader: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07G5JV2B5 and see how that goes.
The dock itself seems good enough. Especially for the price. And the SD cards are holding up.
Anyway, I thought I'd share my little journey.
Do you have any accessories that are a must have for you?
Hey you're not blind. It might have been a little confusing.
I do indeed have a 256gb internal nvme drive.
I opted not to upgrade it because unfortunately my first steam deck died during such an upgrade. They let me RMA, but I'm currently not comfortable with opening the deck again at this time.
It's odd because it's not a difficult procedure, and I've gutted many laptops before that had much more complicated layouts. Something must have shorted during the procedure or I just had a bad egg. No idea
I'll eventually get around to upgrading, but I'm fine with the current solution as it fits my needs for the most part.
Oof that’s rough. Glad they let you rma the previous one.
Me too. Really makes me happy with my purchase and valve earned some big points for me
Yeah I’ve been very pleased with my deck since it arrived a few weeks back.
Have you tried decky loader yet? I love it.
Not yet. I’m mostly buddy emulating switch games at the moment and don’t see much need to tweak yet.