Steam Deck (Valve handheld PC gaming device)

[schild]

My boy wants one of these. He's got a pretty solid laptop, so I'm kind of at a loss as to why he'd need this. Am I missing some aspect here, besides being able to play from the couch?

Have you used a switch?

[schild]

deck_bot
 
DeckBot [score hidden] just now 1
Hello! It looks like you have a US 512GB reservation. You reserved your deck 1 hour, 36 minutes, 11 seconds after pre-orders opened. There are 1 hour, 13 minutes, 30 seconds worth of pre-orders before yours remaining. You're 23.58% of the way there.

[Zetor]

To pour some salt in schild's wounds, my (pretty late) preorder is already shipping, it's in a GLS depot in Germany somewhere.  

It looks like EU orders are moving way faster, or there were just fewer orders over here idk. I put in my order for a 256gb deck at 6:30 CEST on the 17th (almost 12 hours after they opened up), and got the email last Thurs. This basically matches the prediction from this site. That same site tells me that if I placed the same order in the US at the same time I'd be getting the confirmation at the end of June, and in the middle-end of July if I was in the UK (rip).

[Trippy]

You can also see the progress here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/ulv219/comment/i7xqt0e?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=SteamDeck&utm_content=t1_i7y85w7

The EU models are going by hours every batch while the US and UK are going up by minutes*, except for the UK 64 GB which is also going up by hours.

[Trippy]

Oh and for US orders there's a good chance FedEx will steal it because it comes in a box plastered with Valve logos on the outside, so there's that to look forward to as well.

[Sky]

https://www.pcgamer.com/steam-deck-update-adds-per-game-performance-settings/

Nice! Get those details worked out before autumn 

[Zetor]

On the emulation front, this EmuDeck thing is pretty sweet, it integrates games into steam and everything. Currently in the process of moving all my emulator shit off the Vita (yeah yeah, lol, lmao, etc).

edit - a few minor gripes so far: the onscreen keyboard is a bit shit in desktop mode with no clickthrough (can get better ones from the KDE 'Discover' app store), and FPS locking to 30 doesn't help too much when emulating stuff (emulators don't play nice with it). Also, transferring files to the deck requires some minimal hacking (such as setting up ssh and using winscp, though I just did the super lazy option of starting a local webserver on my PC to share files with the deck whenever I need, and then download them via browser)

[schild]

Don't fuckin gripe here fella

[schild]

deck_bot
 
DeckBot [score hidden] just now 1
Hello! It looks like you have a US 512GB reservation. You reserved your deck 1 hour, 36 minutes, 11 seconds after pre-orders opened. There are 1 hour, 13 minutes, 30 seconds worth of pre-orders before yours remaining. You're 23.58% of the way there.

one week goes by

Hello! It looks like you have a US 512GB reservation. You reserved your deck 1 hour, 36 minutes, 11 seconds after pre-orders opened. There are 1 hour, 10 minutes, 34 seconds worth of pre-orders before yours remaining. You're 26.63% of the way there.

[Sky]

Watched pots, my friend.

In other news, do you want to see someone take a knife to a Deck? You know you do.

[Samwise]

But will it blend?

[Sky]

So now with Deck parts available on ifixit, who wants to jump the queue and build one out of parts? 

[Trippy]

No motherboard.

https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Steam_Deck

The 512 GB screen, which has an anti-glare etching, is only $99 (kit), though. So if you don't like the glare on your 64 GB/256 GB model you could replace that.

https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Miscellanous/Steam-Deck-512GB-Screen/IF260-003?o=2

Edit: all the parts with the 512 GB screen, and only the 512 GB screen as a kit (with tools) since that one seems to be a subset superset of all of the other kits comes out to $409.82.

The 512 GB model lists for $649. A 512 GB NVMe SSD that fits in the Steam Deck is around $130. So assuming you could find a "broken" Steam Deck (with working motherboard) for $239 with working 512 GB SSD or $109 without the SSD you could build yourself one for the same price as a new one.

Edit 2: this of course assumes all the other components on the broken Steam deck are damaged enough that you would want to replace them with new parts. Obviously if more of the parts can be salvaged than just the motherboard that reduces what you would need to get from iFixit.

[Sky]

Never stop being Trippy, I love it 

[schild]

Hello! It looks like you have a US 512GB reservation. You reserved your deck 1 hour, 36 minutes, 11 seconds after pre-orders opened. There are 1 hour, 13 minutes, 30 seconds worth of pre-orders before yours remaining. You're 23.58% of the way there.

one week goes by

Hello! It looks like you have a US 512GB reservation. You reserved your deck 1 hour, 36 minutes, 11 seconds after pre-orders opened. There are 1 hour, 10 minutes, 34 seconds worth of pre-orders before yours remaining. You're 26.63% of the way there.

another week

Howdy! It looks like you have a US 512GB reservation. You reserved your deck 1 hour, 36 minutes, 11 seconds after pre-orders opened. There are 1 hour, 4 minutes, 27 seconds worth of pre-orders before yours remaining. You're 32.99% of the way there.

[Sky]

For some reason the jornalits at this crappy site pulled out a 1991 military handbook to make a controversial post about a generally well-loved and amazing OS update to the Deck: https://kotku.com/steam-deck-os-update-3-2-valve-fan-noise-lifespan-1889

TLDR your deck is now either going to catch fire, only last for six months, or generate clickbait oops did I truncate the URL of course I did fuck them

[Trippy]

Haven't read the Kotaku article but Digital Foundry tested this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF8NzlBiaOM

So new fan profile does quiet down things but obviously temperatures have gone up. Impossible to say right now if that's shortening the lifespan of any of the electronic components.

Edit: note DF tested the beta version, not sure if today's release has any significant changes from what was tested

[Zetor]

The fan noise problem also doesn't affect all decks -- the decks being shipped can have two different fan types, and one of them was quiet even before the fan profile change (my fan was always quiet, guess I lucked out). And even if you get the deck variant with the 'bad' fan, you can buy a replacement kit from ifixit for like $30, which is not ideal, but IMO it's not the end of the world...

Really, that kotaku author should've just griped about the virtual keyboard in desktop mode for ~usefully cynical commentary~

[schild]

Hello! It looks like you have a US 512GB reservation. You reserved your deck 1 hour, 36 minutes, 11 seconds after pre-orders opened. There are 1 hour, 13 minutes, 30 seconds worth of pre-orders before yours remaining. You're 23.58% of the way there.

one week goes by

Hello! It looks like you have a US 512GB reservation. You reserved your deck 1 hour, 36 minutes, 11 seconds after pre-orders opened. There are 1 hour, 10 minutes, 34 seconds worth of pre-orders before yours remaining. You're 26.63% of the way there.

another week

Howdy! It looks like you have a US 512GB reservation. You reserved your deck 1 hour, 36 minutes, 11 seconds after pre-orders opened. There are 1 hour, 4 minutes, 27 seconds worth of pre-orders before yours remaining. You're 32.99% of the way there.

dj khaled

Hello! It looks like you have a **US 512GB** reservation. You reserved your deck **1 hour, 36 minutes, 11 seconds** after pre-orders opened. There are **58 minutes, 34 seconds** worth of pre-orders before yours remaining. You're **39.11%** of the way there.

whoa, a 10% jump

Fammy is on vacation June 5th-11th and won't be able to make timely updates to my data. The following is accurate as of Monday, June 6th at 4:30 PM EST.

Hola! It looks like you have a US 512GB reservation. You reserved your deck 1 hour, 36 minutes, 11 seconds after pre-orders opened. There are 48 minutes, 53 seconds worth of pre-orders before yours remaining. You're 49.18% of the way there.

[schild]

I hadn't considered this, but reading the steamdeck subreddit really puts on display the quality of hobbyist aftermarket stuff is going to get made for this thing.

[Trippy]

[schild]

[Sky]

I keep clicking the 'complete your purchase' button, but it doesn't seem to be working 

[Trippy]

On a related note the real UI is seriously fucked up. The buttons you are supposed to click, like the "Complete your purchase" "button" above are greyed out unless you hover over them. There's another one of the follow up screen that I can't remember that's the same -- shows as "disabled" unless you hover over it.

[Rendakor]

Presumably to make it more difficult for scalpers' bots to buy them.

[Trippy]

Ah, yeah, good point.

[Sky]

Since I still can't get a PS5 (not that I want one anymore, nice)... thank god for Valve's system. Can you imagine trying to score one of these if they were selling them traditionally?

Fuck the scourge of 3rd party sellers. I don't even shop at any site that won't let me filter them out now.

[schild]

Hello! It looks like you have a US 512GB reservation. You reserved your deck 1 hour, 36 minutes, 11 seconds after pre-orders opened. There are 1 hour, 13 minutes, 30 seconds worth of pre-orders before yours remaining. You're 23.58% of the way there.

one week goes by

Hello! It looks like you have a US 512GB reservation. You reserved your deck 1 hour, 36 minutes, 11 seconds after pre-orders opened. There are 1 hour, 10 minutes, 34 seconds worth of pre-orders before yours remaining. You're 26.63% of the way there.

another week

Howdy! It looks like you have a US 512GB reservation. You reserved your deck 1 hour, 36 minutes, 11 seconds after pre-orders opened. There are 1 hour, 4 minutes, 27 seconds worth of pre-orders before yours remaining. You're 32.99% of the way there.

dj khaled

Hello! It looks like you have a **US 512GB** reservation. You reserved your deck **1 hour, 36 minutes, 11 seconds** after pre-orders opened. There are **58 minutes, 34 seconds** worth of pre-orders before yours remaining. You're **39.11%** of the way there.

whoa, a 10% jump

Fammy is on vacation June 5th-11th and won't be able to make timely updates to my data. The following is accurate as of Monday, June 6th at 4:30 PM EST.

Hola! It looks like you have a US 512GB reservation. You reserved your deck 1 hour, 36 minutes, 11 seconds after pre-orders opened. There are 48 minutes, 53 seconds worth of pre-orders before yours remaining. You're 49.18% of the way there.

*crickets*

Ciao! It looks like you have a US 512GB reservation. You reserved your deck 1 hour, 36 minutes, 11 seconds after pre-orders opened. There are 28 minutes, 31 seconds worth of pre-orders before yours remaining. You're 70.35% of the way there.

[Sky]

Nice, looks like the initial clog is loosening up. Almost halved your remaining time in a week.

[schild]

Two weeks but yeah.

[Sky]

And the ball rolls faster: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/valve-more-than-doubles-steam-deck-production

Valve just tweeted out some great news for SteamDeck fans, saying it has more than doubled the number of Steam Decks being produced every week. The company also says it just sent out the last batch of Q2 reservation emails and is prepared to start kicking off Q3 reservations on the 30th -- or in three days.

But also is putting in some lower spec nvme drives into the 2 nvme models: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ssd-bandwidth-cut-in-half-on-some-steam-decks

The change allows the use of two drive configurations instead of just one, cutting the potential SSD bandwidth in half for some models. As a result, the PCIe Gen 3 NVMe drive built into the higher-end models will now come with access to either four PCIe lanes (x4) or two lanes (x2). However, customers won't know which drives they'll receive, with the company noting that, "Some 256GB and 512GB models will ship with a PCIe Gen 3 x2 SSD."

[Trippy]

Ouch. Hopefully there will be an easy way to figure out which one you get without opening up the back.

[Trippy]

Q3 emails have started.

https://twitter.com/OnDeck/status/1542546382946308097

[schild]

Q3 emails have started.

https://twitter.com/OnDeck/status/1542546382946308097

yup and you've got a pm

[Sky]

I've got a golden ticket!

Forget what I said about the Steam sale lol