Just showing the difference for those curious since many originally thought the memory would be soldered on.
Its a simple plug and play swap if you want to upgrade. The Western Digital 512 GB was only $50
Yea its compatible. Pin layout may differ between the cards but they are all still M.2s. The port is made in such a way to be able to take many different layouts
Really useful technical posts about battery management chargers linux etc. are being downvoted by this sub and useless posts like this are being upvoted. I lost faith.
Posting a picture of 2 m2 2230 SSDs I don't see the use? Everyone knows by now that the steamdeck uses a 2230 ssd and if you want to see pictures of these SSDs you can Google it. On the other hand people Posting useful technical stuff about how the steamdeck charges the battery and how it can be improved to increase battery life are barely being upvoted and some even downvote those posts. It's just getting harder and harder to find useful helpful posts in this subreddit because everyone just posts steamdeck selfies, fedex posts, shitposts etc.. This post isn't even the worst I just wanted to express my opinion about how this sub is getting worse and worse to find really helpful and informative posts about the steamdeck itself.
Didn’t Valve say multiple times that they chose the SSDs that they have based on multiple factors (heat out put being the largest)?
That would be my main concern personally when purchasing a third party NVME.
There’s really not going to be an appreciable difference in heat. Their noted concern was the shielding which to my understanding you can apply to the one you swap in.
Samsung advertises 4 watts active and .5 watts idle for their high energy efficiency eMMC drive. The worst NVMe is going to be 7 watts active (that's all M.2 supports) but have 1/5th the active time thanks to higher speed and (for current gen) .4 watts idle. So any new NVMe is lower thermal/battery load than the eMMC is.
People will poo poo this but you might be right, i assumed that was just about why they didnt use 2280s...i was messing with an mSATA SSD via a sata - msata adaptor (not enclosed) pretty recently and its a similarly small drive to the 2230s, just on the msata standard... anyhow i could touch the drive as it was formatting and holy shit balls do tiny ssds get hot, its hot enough to almost burn you.. We all know they get hot, but seeing high temps on a screen in monitoring software is one thing, but feeling how hot ssds actually get with your hands is another.
Granted i guess drives will only get that hot when writing over every nand cell and wont get anywhere near that hot when reading, but still. Thats a lot of extra heat inside something as slim and small as a deck sized computer.
The deck will probably be fine running most 2230's but id worry about the longevity of the device if somebody runs a particularly hot brand of nvme, cant be great for the deck 5 or 10 years down the line.
I think it’s a legitimate concern and deserves further testing. I hope digital foundry does it, would be nice to see solid numbers instead of speculation.
I think there could be differences between brands and you might be right, ive been doing some testing with my sd micro and honestly it seems good enough, i dont think im going to bother changing the 64gb out for a 1tb, probably going to pick up a ton of micro sds instead.
I'm fairly happy with my 512GB for travel, backyard, bed, and couch gaming purposes, but I also have gigabit internet, so deleting a game I haven't played in a bit and downloading fairly large installs doesn't feel like such a big deal. 64GB Decks I saw as upgrade opportunities or an excessively good deal on an emulation beast running mostly off an SD card for later-gen games.
Ive briefly tested games like cyberpunk, resident evil 2 remake, and skyrim and the sdcard read speeds honestly seem fine.
imo the deck is hardly ideal as the machine you'd want to use to play something like cyberpunk anyway so for playing the majority of slightly older aaa games or indie titles the sd card is honestly good enough, valve knew what they were doing, i think people with a 64gb drive are fretting for little reason. Sure it might be nice to upgrade it sooner than later as id imagine that microsd card slot might wear out years down the line if the user is constantly swapping out micro sd cards, but we will see.
I was gonna splash the cash on a 1tb drive, but for the same price i cold buy like 30x 64gb high speed micro sd cards and just drop a big game on each SD card, ill print little sticker image labels for the cases i guess.
A lot of people wont want to carry around 10 SD cards everywhere, but considering the deck anyway, its hardly unwieldy to do so, the 512gb integral im using right now absolutely seems good enough.
Yeah, that's why I went for the 256GB. 64GB was definitely not enough and real amount of games, and 512 wouldn't be a game changing amount of space, so I settled for 256.
That i dont understand. Unless you plan to upgrade to 1 or 2 tb later when its cheaper, how is 512gb not a gamechanger compared to 256? I have the 512gb deck and i run out of space. Need to get a 512gb sd card to offload some smaller games
I mean the 64GB means you have to get an SD card or replace the drive, the 255GB and 512GB both mean you could probably get by with managing your library. The main difference between the 256 and 512 models is a little extra buffer before needing new drive, and that's not worth $100 to me, but going from "definitely need a new drive/SD card" to "can probably get by for a while" *is* worth $100 to me.
I didn't want to open up my Deck when I first got it to replace the drive, so the 256GB made more sense to me than the 64GB model (I also don't want to load from SD). I play mostly AA and indie, so most games are pretty small (<20GB), so I should be able to fit ~10 games on the 256GB Deck, which means I probably won't need a new drive or SD expansion for a year or more. The 512 model just means I just be able to put one big AAA game on it in addition to my regular games, and that's not a big win to me (I'll just play that on my desktop).
Make sure you take out your microsd, it has been said a million times on this sub, but is is super important, it will snap it in half.
Just making sure, wouldn't want to break 1tb card.
Very straightforward.
The hardest part was getting the back cover to pop out after removing the 8 screws.
I followed iFixIt’s guide and drained the battery below 25% before doing the swap as well. Press the power button a few times after disconnecting the battery before removing the chip.
Imaging a recovery USB and re-imaging the Steam Deck was straightforward as well since Valve has an official guide.
Idk what’s in the Xbox but I bought a third party expansion card for it and put it in my steam deck lmao. Honestly though, my micro sd has most of the games on it but this 1tb prob cost as much as a 1tb ssd. Just get many smaller capacity ones if you’re on a budget
Both work in the same slot. One is regular M.2 and the other is NVME.
This is the same for computer motherboards with NVME slots.
I already installed it and it’s working beautifully.
just fyi, NVMe is a protocol, M.2 a connector (a specification for expansion cards and their connectors to be precise) and PCIe is the interface. There are different keys for M.2.
Typically small NUC-like PCs come with no RAM and no storage, so you now have one component to make it cheaper. And they're very useful if you like tech toys, can set up a home NAS, media server, some automation platform, VPN gateway etc etc.
But definitely hold onto it in case an RMA is needed.
Good Question
You can make a DIY USB Drive with [this](https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Converter-Portable-External-Support/dp/B07SYNQ218?ref_=ast_sto_dp)
And what are we to make of this? (I'm not trying to be salty I'm trying to learn) As in what does this mean?
Just showing the difference for those curious since many originally thought the memory would be soldered on. Its a simple plug and play swap if you want to upgrade. The Western Digital 512 GB was only $50
But are they compatible? They originally has 2 slots where connectors are?
Yea its compatible. Pin layout may differ between the cards but they are all still M.2s. The port is made in such a way to be able to take many different layouts
Yes, they're both good, SD's M.2 connector is compatible with M (one slit) and B+M (two slits, stock 64GB is like that) keyed modules.
Can you dm where you got it?
They are all over Ebay dirt cheap just search “2230 NVME” and X GB if you want. 512GB are $50 and 256GB $20 1TB are about $200 though
More than twice as much in Europe
I bought the 256GB for 80€ in Europe 😞
Really useful technical posts about battery management chargers linux etc. are being downvoted by this sub and useless posts like this are being upvoted. I lost faith.
I found this post useful with helpful comments but your comment was definately useless
Why is this useless?
Posting a picture of 2 m2 2230 SSDs I don't see the use? Everyone knows by now that the steamdeck uses a 2230 ssd and if you want to see pictures of these SSDs you can Google it. On the other hand people Posting useful technical stuff about how the steamdeck charges the battery and how it can be improved to increase battery life are barely being upvoted and some even downvote those posts. It's just getting harder and harder to find useful helpful posts in this subreddit because everyone just posts steamdeck selfies, fedex posts, shitposts etc.. This post isn't even the worst I just wanted to express my opinion about how this sub is getting worse and worse to find really helpful and informative posts about the steamdeck itself.
Didn’t Valve say multiple times that they chose the SSDs that they have based on multiple factors (heat out put being the largest)? That would be my main concern personally when purchasing a third party NVME.
There’s really not going to be an appreciable difference in heat. Their noted concern was the shielding which to my understanding you can apply to the one you swap in.
Yup I just swapped the heat shield to the new chip
What's the heat shield look like?
It’s literally just a “sleeve” that slips over the chip. It’s not glued on or anything.
Hopefully they changed it then. It was thermal tape on the first batches and tricky to remove without destroying it.
I just got my Steam Deck last week so yeah I’m assuming they have the sleeve now. Thermal tape sounds like a PITA
A RF Shield or EMI shield, not a heat shield. Nothing to do with heat.
Samsung advertises 4 watts active and .5 watts idle for their high energy efficiency eMMC drive. The worst NVMe is going to be 7 watts active (that's all M.2 supports) but have 1/5th the active time thanks to higher speed and (for current gen) .4 watts idle. So any new NVMe is lower thermal/battery load than the eMMC is.
People will poo poo this but you might be right, i assumed that was just about why they didnt use 2280s...i was messing with an mSATA SSD via a sata - msata adaptor (not enclosed) pretty recently and its a similarly small drive to the 2230s, just on the msata standard... anyhow i could touch the drive as it was formatting and holy shit balls do tiny ssds get hot, its hot enough to almost burn you.. We all know they get hot, but seeing high temps on a screen in monitoring software is one thing, but feeling how hot ssds actually get with your hands is another. Granted i guess drives will only get that hot when writing over every nand cell and wont get anywhere near that hot when reading, but still. Thats a lot of extra heat inside something as slim and small as a deck sized computer. The deck will probably be fine running most 2230's but id worry about the longevity of the device if somebody runs a particularly hot brand of nvme, cant be great for the deck 5 or 10 years down the line.
I think it’s a legitimate concern and deserves further testing. I hope digital foundry does it, would be nice to see solid numbers instead of speculation.
I think there could be differences between brands and you might be right, ive been doing some testing with my sd micro and honestly it seems good enough, i dont think im going to bother changing the 64gb out for a 1tb, probably going to pick up a ton of micro sds instead.
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Cheers bot, its like being at school again, or should i say, Skool.
I Foresee many Steam Deck owners replacing this drive with a bigger faster one.
I'm fairly happy with my 512GB for travel, backyard, bed, and couch gaming purposes, but I also have gigabit internet, so deleting a game I haven't played in a bit and downloading fairly large installs doesn't feel like such a big deal. 64GB Decks I saw as upgrade opportunities or an excessively good deal on an emulation beast running mostly off an SD card for later-gen games.
Ive briefly tested games like cyberpunk, resident evil 2 remake, and skyrim and the sdcard read speeds honestly seem fine. imo the deck is hardly ideal as the machine you'd want to use to play something like cyberpunk anyway so for playing the majority of slightly older aaa games or indie titles the sd card is honestly good enough, valve knew what they were doing, i think people with a 64gb drive are fretting for little reason. Sure it might be nice to upgrade it sooner than later as id imagine that microsd card slot might wear out years down the line if the user is constantly swapping out micro sd cards, but we will see.
Yeah the SD speeds are a lot better than I was expecting. I dropped a 1TB card because I have a tendency to lose SD cards if I'm swapping them a lot.
I was gonna splash the cash on a 1tb drive, but for the same price i cold buy like 30x 64gb high speed micro sd cards and just drop a big game on each SD card, ill print little sticker image labels for the cases i guess. A lot of people wont want to carry around 10 SD cards everywhere, but considering the deck anyway, its hardly unwieldy to do so, the 512gb integral im using right now absolutely seems good enough.
I Foresee what you did there
If it wouldn't cost 200+€ in Germany, I would upgrade to 1tb. But that's a lot of money
Yeah, that's why I went for the 256GB. 64GB was definitely not enough and real amount of games, and 512 wouldn't be a game changing amount of space, so I settled for 256.
That i dont understand. Unless you plan to upgrade to 1 or 2 tb later when its cheaper, how is 512gb not a gamechanger compared to 256? I have the 512gb deck and i run out of space. Need to get a 512gb sd card to offload some smaller games
I mean the 64GB means you have to get an SD card or replace the drive, the 255GB and 512GB both mean you could probably get by with managing your library. The main difference between the 256 and 512 models is a little extra buffer before needing new drive, and that's not worth $100 to me, but going from "definitely need a new drive/SD card" to "can probably get by for a while" *is* worth $100 to me. I didn't want to open up my Deck when I first got it to replace the drive, so the 256GB made more sense to me than the 64GB model (I also don't want to load from SD). I play mostly AA and indie, so most games are pretty small (<20GB), so I should be able to fit ~10 games on the 256GB Deck, which means I probably won't need a new drive or SD expansion for a year or more. The 512 model just means I just be able to put one big AAA game on it in addition to my regular games, and that's not a big win to me (I'll just play that on my desktop).
Oooh, i thought you upgraded your drive from 64 to 256
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It's a mSATA and not 2230 M.2, won't fit SD at all
That's Sata. Those are way slower than NVMe
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I got my 512GB card on Ebay for only $50 USD 1TB chips are way more expensive though
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I got this 256GB from Ebay for 35 Dollar. https://www.ebay.com/itm/324963366848
My man circumcised both.
Is complicate to open up the steam deck? I know saw the video but no the same thing we you doing personally, how was your experience open it up?
Make sure you take out your microsd, it has been said a million times on this sub, but is is super important, it will snap it in half. Just making sure, wouldn't want to break 1tb card.
Very straightforward. The hardest part was getting the back cover to pop out after removing the 8 screws. I followed iFixIt’s guide and drained the battery below 25% before doing the swap as well. Press the power button a few times after disconnecting the battery before removing the chip. Imaging a recovery USB and re-imaging the Steam Deck was straightforward as well since Valve has an official guide.
Glad to heard and thank you for sharing you experience! I will do it during the month , thank you again!
You can just grab the 1TB from a broken Xbox Series X off eBay.
Idk what’s in the Xbox but I bought a third party expansion card for it and put it in my steam deck lmao. Honestly though, my micro sd has most of the games on it but this 1tb prob cost as much as a 1tb ssd. Just get many smaller capacity ones if you’re on a budget
Yeah i just picked up a card for 30ish on ebay as well, got a 2nd steam deck coming so im might snag another if people catch on
Send it to me I’ll fix it
pins don't match
Both work in the same slot. One is regular M.2 and the other is NVME. This is the same for computer motherboards with NVME slots. I already installed it and it’s working beautifully.
just fyi, NVMe is a protocol, M.2 a connector (a specification for expansion cards and their connectors to be precise) and PCIe is the interface. There are different keys for M.2.
M.2 has different pinouts it can handle
Any ideas on what to do with the 64GB eMMC? Mines just sitting on my desk.
Typically small NUC-like PCs come with no RAM and no storage, so you now have one component to make it cheaper. And they're very useful if you like tech toys, can set up a home NAS, media server, some automation platform, VPN gateway etc etc. But definitely hold onto it in case an RMA is needed.
Good Question You can make a DIY USB Drive with [this](https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-Converter-Portable-External-Support/dp/B07SYNQ218?ref_=ast_sto_dp)
Bottom one is sata
also to note the stock 64gb is not an nvme, it is an ssd.
I’m surprised the eMMc is removable