Valve Steamdeck

Preamble

I was somewhat skeptical about this computer at first even though all the reviews praised it; what made me go for it was actually an iFixit teardown of it that stated the very high level of repairability and overall build quality. Turns out it is a beefy machine perfect for a whole bunch of stuff, not just gaming.

Hardware

There is a dedicated tech specs page on the official website but I’ll list the most important components here just in case.

┌─────────────┬────────────────────────────────────┐
│ CPU (APU)   │ 7nm custom Zen2 4c/8t, 2.4-3.5 GHz │
│ RAM         │ 16GB LPDDR5                        │
│ Display     │ 7" 1280x800 IPS                    │
│ Storage     │ MicroSD, M.2 2230 NVME SSD         │
└─────────────┴────────────────────────────────────┘

I did a small hardware mod replacing analog joysticks with Hall effect ones to avoid any drift in future. Working with Steamdeck is a breeze and in some ways was even easier than modding my Switch consoles, though this time small soldering work is needed albeit not crucial.

Otherwise it is a generic x86_64 PC with BIOS and all that stuff. I also have a dock station so the whole setup is 100% usable as a regular PC, and not a weak one - this APU is beefy and the is plenty of fast RAM too, so I was totally comfortable using it as a dev machine at some point.

Software

Stock SteamOS is an Arch-based distro with a couple of nuances - the core system is “immutable” and somewhat stripped down, but from gaming mode you can absolutely reboot into good ‘ole KDE session and use it properly.

Apart from any of the GNU/Linux distro it is possible to install not just Windows, but OpenBSD/FreeBSD too (I’ve tried to find any witnesses with NetBSD installed there but wasn’t able at the time of writing this page; it is probably totally viable, I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t run NetBSD).

Photos