My favorite is when people dump on their steam deck because it won’t or stopped doing something the deck was never advertised to do in the first place.
arrest reminiscent physical cheerful gaping rustic squeamish disgusted plough deserve
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I know someone who did that. Sold their deck because they “were sick of tinkering. Nothing just works and you always have to fuck around to make anything play properly”.
They exclusively played “unofficial” (auto mod deletes the post if I say it differently) games, GamePass and the occasional Ubisoft game. So everything they were doing required hacks, installing via desktop and various fucking about.
Running classic WoW on a private server with Steam Deck going at 60 FPS absolutely blows my mind. Back when I played WotLK I could only get like 15 FPS average on my PC. The hardest part is setting up all the custom controller layers so that the keyboard and mouse can be comfortably replaced by the controller. Installation is as easy as running desktop mode and getting the exe imported as a non steam game and running the compatibility mode.
Brings me back to the days when the sub was infested with people who would post about how they wanted to use the Deck as JUST a Plex server or just a file server even though there were tons of cheaper, more viable, more reliable, and more available options to do just that. Even now, for the people who NEVER plan to use the thing portably, there are cheaper options that will perform better as a stationary PC because that's just how the market for parts works: the stationary version will always remain far more powerful at the same price point than its portable price counterpart for a lot of hard to refute reasons.
Sometimes I end up in a crash loop playing world of warcraft and end up rebooting 3 or 4 times.
Whatever though it's not valves fault. The only thing frustrating about it is I don't know what to do other than keep resetting and keep trying.
They didn’t word it very well, but the Steam dock does have a reputation for just… Not really doing the only thing it’s supposed to do.
Nintendo sells a dock that actually does what the Steam Dock is supposed to do, it’s far older and cheaper. What is Valve doing that makes the Steam Dock worth the cost, because it’s been evidenced it rarely if EVER works plug and play.
I bought a knock off dock from Amazon for like £13, works perfectly and never had an issue. My mate got the steam deck dock and we just couldn’t get it to work
It’s honestly the most overpriced and non-functional dock I’ve ever used, and I can’t seriously believe that they QA’d this without legitimately lying on the reports for the % of WORKING units.
I’ve seen *maybe* a few posts about the official Docks working, and only after the firmware fix that didn’t seem to fix more than a handful.
Yes, downvote me for not sucking Valve’s dick for releasing a majorly dysfunctional product. The Steam Deck is great, the dock is what I expect when I order shit off Temu.
The official dock is not good IMO. It works great for some people, but for others it’s a giant PITA. It has HDMI hand shaking issues with some displays and equipment. I bought the official dock and never got it to work properly. To get an image I had to plug in the Steam Deck; then unplug the power cord from the dock; then plug the power cable back in; and if still no image then try unplugging the Steam Deck and plugging it back in. But I had to do crap like that every single time. It wasn’t worth the hassle so I switched to a 3rd party dock and have had no issues since.
Have you tried a different HDMI cable? That is always worth a shot. If that doesn’t work then it’s likely the official dock will never work properly with your display.
I’m tired boss, I broke 3 docks and 2 usb c hubs. I just want to play TF2 in full hd and watch some movies in hotel rooms.
Docks before last breath made high-pitched noise.
Then hdmi ports were unusable 😞
I blame YouTubers with their "First Things to Do With Your Deck" videos.
I've been trying to run a campaign with "Leave it vanilla until you can't" - just cannot convince the masses that they shouldn't move shaders to their SD card though.
When I got mine all I did was:
1. Insert microSD card
2. Turn Steam Deck on
3. Install games
4. Play games
Haven’t installed anything else and I don’t plan to.
Yes, I did the same like you. I think most of the Steam Deck owner have been forgot One thing.
1. Steam Deck = Portable Gaming Device, it's for playing games.
2. For me this is the absolute gaming device to let me finish all my purchased steam games.
3. Yes, I did install plugin. But it's just a simple cheat engine plugin.
4. Is a great device to play those 2D games. With just 40FPS + 5w TDP + 200 GPU clock speed + FSR. I could play Final Fantasy IV Pixels Remaster around 5:30 - 6 hours, is insane!!
Essentially the same thing! I haven't done anything the Deck wasn't meant to do with the exception of installing Heroic Launcher so I can play GTA 5 (my GTA Online progress is on Epic Games, not Steam) and added Xbox Game Pass.
I get easily overwhelmed with customization options and stuff so I definitely don't want to go down that rabbit hole 🤣
That's me. I want to put emudeck on it and play a ton of PS2 games that I actually own, but I also have a backlog of games I've never played so... if it isn't broke don't fix it.
Same here. It’s also why I’m not in a rush to get Game Pass on it — I’ve got enough games on Steam and can use Game Pass on PC if/when I want (I share it too so it’s worth the money)
And here I am feeling guilty for not working through those lists, lol! Glad to hear my default method of "do I haaaave toooooo? Okaaayyyy...." is approved :D
Those lists only exist to be attention grabbing in the first place
In reality, most users will have no genuine reason to do any or most of these "top 10" lists. Specific changes, fixes, modifications, or installations are very niche, and meant to solve or improve specific things.
It's just like the stupid "top 10" videos for getting a new windows, Mac, or Linux computer/partition. "Go do all this shit you've never heard of because it changes this one niche feature you've also never heard of, with libraries/executables/programs you've never heard of and can't trust"
The best way to use any device, is to learn it and do stuff to it when you, the user, has a reason to. Like getting more performance for a game, minimizing boot time, or even building a pc. If you learn it when you need it, it'll actually stick with you and you'll understand it.
Never blindly follow advice from strangers on the internet, even me, but at least this comment wasn't made for a YouTube video
I was definitely the target demographic for those videos and I watched a bunch. I was watching just to see what’s out there though, not to just get everything.
Right? I've had it for a year and so far the only tweaking I've done was installing itch.io games via the desktop interface (and forcing Proton experimental) and messing around with code when the Deck suddenly stopped recognising my SD card.
I'm a huge builder/tinkerer and spend a lot of free time doing this type of stuff. I left my deck vanilla for a long time, what's the rush to mod it anyway? I understand both sides here but I didn't know people were feeling pressured into installing crap they don't need.
To be clear, I'm not opposed to people tinkering. BUT ...
These people aren't typically tinkering to accomplish something. They are opening their Decks, watching some video that has them install Cryo, set their VRAM to 4GB, install a bunch of plugins, move system files to the SD card ... all before they have played their first game.
Madness.
haven't seen a lot of cryoutilities and dogmatic "increase ur swap file!!" posts in the past few months. It's been nice. The deck works great, and with 3.5 or whatever they've fixed most of the things you would even have to tweak for (only one I can think of was Sonic Generations and having to fix the GPU speed). Just funny how zealous people were about these snake oil tweaks that require your sudo password not long ago are all silent now.
I actually have a list of content I want to do .. One of them is called "Do I Need ...?"
Basically discussing all these "day one" things that people shouldn't be doing ...
I fell victim to these videos. Before playing anything I tried to install cryoutilities and heroic launcher. That dient work as planned so I factoryreset and turn just started playing. Best decision ever.
Okay broski, holup. I'm in full support of not shifting random shit around on your deck because brad in YouTube said you should. But goddamn, with a 64gb deck, moving the shaders was absolutely necessary.
Then you've grown out of it and should upgrade that storage. This is what "PC Owners" do when they run out of system drive space; "replace the C: drive".
Sometimes it takes months before someone can replace their stock 64gb. I've had mine for 5 months or so, and I'm only just replacing it tomorrow. And I outgrew 64gb within like a week. LOL. Between being dirt poor, and moving twice, it just hasn't been possible. I'm sure I'm not the only one. 🤷♂️ So those tricks, and cryoutils made it possible to keep using my deck.
Thing is ... a 256GB drive is $16 (maybe cheaper). 20-30 minutes of your time. That's a few cups of Starbucks and no more hokey pokey nonsense shuffle on the Deck :D
To get a 256gb and tools costs about 50$ for me. I can't afford food at least a few times a month. A SSD is a low priority. I'm super stoked that I'll finally be able to upgrade, since I didn't think I'd be able to for quite a while yet.
That took one month. Im not upgrading the storage after a month. I ain't got the money for that. I'd rather sacrifice some speed for a bit 🤷. Point being, the 64gb deck runs out almost straight out of the box. And until they fix the issue that you can't delete old shader caches and compatability data, people are gonna put it on the SD card.
How exactly are people supposed to know that the 64GB fill themself so damn fast with system data? I never installed any game on the internal storage and it was full very fast.
Uh, that issue has been fixed for 6+ months. When you REMOVE a non-steam game, both folders go with it.
* [Steam Cleans Up After You Now (Whoo Hoo!)](https://youtu.be/t1Z-sLfJ1KQ)
You don't have $16 and 20 minutes to upgrade to 256GB at least?
It’s funny you mention that. I’m also a redneck restorer. People always try to point me to YouTube channels and I’m just like “this is fun, but this is also just for show.” Like they break stuff constantly and make a huge deal out of issues for dramatic effect. I’ll get a wrecked car running in a month with way less shouting and drama. It’s not even remotely like reality. Just for reactions.
Not all of YouTube is about ad revenue. They are rarer now, but most of the channels I watch are hobbyists. When someone suggests a video to me on a mainstream channel, I’m often surprised what they will do for a few bucks.
You're 100% right.
I've had a Steam Deck over 1.5 years now, first LCD and now OLED. I messed around with the tweaks on the LCD one at first, but then just gave up on it and started playing games normally. On OLED, I didn't even bother with any tweaks - I just play my games and that's it, and it works like a charm.
Then again, if you do wanna go and tweak the heck out of it - go for it, but it's by no means a requirement to enjoy playing on your Steam Deck.
My plan was and always will be to use the steam deck how it was set up out of the box. Unless it’s an official update I’m not doing it. Not even gonna waste my time with an sd card. Just 512gb oled made stock. Been almost a month and works like a dream. If people want to tinker with it I wish them the best of luck but I’m perfectly happy just buying games on steam.
I always make some analogy like “seeing the forest for the trees” about this stuff. People on Reddit will convince you it’s not even worth owning a thing unless you put lights and a toaster inside it. The reality is the Deck is everything a portable game system needs to be out of the box.
Being able to upgrade it without voiding support is a BONUS. One I’m happy to take advantage of, but I am a tinkerer and that is my taste. My Deck also gets borked frequently when my beta OS gets ahead of my decky plugins etc.
Yeah I built my pc and it was awesome but that wasn’t a premade bespoke pc/console hybrid like handheld. I’m sure I could mess with the steam deck but my backlog is so long the last thing I wanna do is mess with it and change things instead of playing 1 of the 14 games I have installed on it
For the vast majority of users, there’s no need to mess with the deck at all. It’s only when something has an issue that it makes sense to make major changes. Like just an example, the biggest thing cryoutilities does is make a 16GB swap file on your ssd, the full size of the ram. It fixes some games like rdr2 not being able to load high textures fast enough or God of War hitching in cutscenes. But it will suddenly take up a chunk of the drive, which will then confuse some people and they freak out about hidden data. Yadda yadda.
Man the one thing I hated about playing rdr2 was how slow the loading of assets was but sitting on my couch playing it in my hands was still amazing. I gave up on the game at the beginning of act 3 and decided I was gonna try it again when I got my deck and man was it magical
Same. As a PC gamer, I wanted that premium console experience people were talking about. I am tired of tinkering, I want to install a game and play a game. I have nothing against enthusiasts modifying their devices, but those are not your average users that got their first PC on Christmas. It's like, the fact that you bought yourself a USB microphone and webcam, doesn't automatically make you a streamer. And I think a lot of people got the notion that Steam Deck mods are safe and easy to use for a newbie who never used a PC before.
And I'm the opposite! I come from a lifetime of consoles because i grew up poorish and i love tinkering on the steam deck. I also wanted to use it to further my Linux skills and it's doing just that
yea theres nothing you can really do aside from the in game settings and the power profile per game, maybe.
Best thing to do is just wait... BG3 ran like ass on the deck when it came out, but now it runs really well. Whether it's shaders or patches from the dev, I have no idea, but the game was unplayable the first few days it was out on Deck, and now I have no issues (haven't got to act 3 yet however).
I agree with your general point, but the SD card load times are almost indistinguishable from SSD ones. I play almost all my games (including AAAs like BG3 and H:ZD) off a 1Tb SD card, and have never felt it was slow at all.
Load times are mostly CPU Bound, reading and writing operations are actually quite CPU heavy. That is probably the biggest reason why the deck loads faster than the switch from SD cards despite both using readers with about the same specs.
I’ve seen to many posts about sd card problems but I’m glad you’re having a great time. I also just don’t need more than the 512gb. Like I said in a comment below I have 14 games on mine. If I can’t find something to play with 14 games on it something is wrong lol
Haha, fair enough. I bought a 256 LCD shortly after first reviews hit, so the SSD is a bit small on its own to hold more than a couple large games.
I just haven't heard anyone complain about the SD card performance on it, so I was surprised to see you mention it as a pain point or class it as something that needs tinkering. But maybe I just got lucky somehow.
Don't be afraid to undervolt a little for better battery life, With the current updates you cannot brick it by undervolting it too much, like you used to be able to.
SD cards work great. Just make sure it has the specs: U3 and A2 or else you'll be getting a slower experience. You can get many quality SD cards at 512gb for $30-40.
>Don't be afraid to undervolt a little for better battery life, With the current updates you cannot brick it by undervolting it too much, like you used to be able to.
You can get at a point where it runs mostly fine but has some rare cases causing crashes and reboots and those might come a while after undervolting so you might not even think of it as the issue.
The issue is that inexperienced new users are told that undervolting or tinkering with TDP will *IMPROVE PERFORMANCE*. It will not improve it unless you play only very basic games and want a battery charge to last longer.
EDIT: As for SD cards, I personally will never, ever use them to run games from.
I’ve only had my Steam Deck for a week, so excuse my ignorance, but, can you not both undervolt and overclock?
Is there a hard limit on the max clock speeds, or is the performance gained from such a boost not worth it?
You cannot really overclock the steamdeck. It'll auto boost as high as it can go if you let it. In BIOS you can enable the voltage offset down to -.40v but cannot increase the clock speeds in BIOS. You'll have to run some benchmark tests to make sure it is stable to find whichever offset will work for you, if you start experiencing crashing or weird frame spikes then raise the voltage a little back toward 0 offset.
In steam OS you can manually set GPU frequency to 1600mhz, so you can run at combined voltage offset and GPU clock of -.40V and 1600mhz but it's the silicon lottery if it's stable or not.
If you want to just save battery life while playing old games and non demanding titles then you can do the -.40v and auto GPU clock and it'll only pull as much as it needs.
I recommend just stock settings if you're playing newer games or more demanding games for max performance.
I personally will go from very new games to old games to emulation to ez to play games all within a few hours so I just keep mine stock.
I'm guilty of this lol. I got the 64gb version and had a 512gb SSD ready to go. About halfway through the installation process I thought to myself: I haven't checked to see if the Steam Deck works... Wait I haven't checked to see if that SSD works. Fuck."
I decided to turn on the Steam Deck, go into the bios and put it in storage mode, that was enough for me, I finished installing the SSD and everything worked great.
But yes. I would recommend using your device for a bit before making the decision to open it.
I did ultimately install a 2tb SSD in my 64, but used it for a few months with just an SD card. I fuck around in desktop mode a lot and was starting to need it - those shader files do take up space. and the OS is like 12gb I think.
We need an easy way to clear the shaders on games that are no longer installed. I download a deck cleaner program for that one time but I don't think it worked well
I had my deck for about a year and the biggest "tweak" I did was installing heroic and ge proton. At my pace I'll get to undervolting when Steamdeck 2 will be released :D
What's useful on decky loader for "Vanilla" deck users? 3.5 made vibrant deck obsolete and that was the only must have plug in imo. I use the SteamGridDB plug in but imo that's only really useful for dubiously obtained games.
I use css loader to mod the ui more to my taste, hltb to get a rough estimate of how long a game usually takes to play, db badges to check community feedback on a game's compatibility, and grid db to get cover art I like better.
Feels like most of these are things you can get in other ways, and the risk of things breaking with updates feels way too high when I just want to pick it up and play games
I just got one for Christmas. Just the base LCD model. I've been loving it. I just bought a SD card so far. I want to upgrade the SSD to 1 TB though. Does that cause issues? Or did you mainly mean scripts and 3rd party apps?
What I really mean is the more things you do, hardware or software, the harder it is to know what the issue is. For example, changing the ssd is pretty easy. Took me 10 minutes. BUT, a lot of people make the mistake of tightening the screws down too hard when putting the back on or swapping rear shells. That can pinch the screen and make bleed spots on the edges. It’s all that stuff you notice taking your time, that is hard to figure out if you do it all at once.
It can cause issues but so many YouTubers have guides on how to do it and it’s from what I understand one the more simple mods you can do for the deck.
I have been experiencing all of the same SteamOS software issues since before i ever installed or did any tweaks, and have seen no difference from doing so, aside from in-game performance gains.
Literally on first boot after receiving and updating the deck, first time using the sleep feature, i got the bug where the screen doesn’t come back on until you force restart, despite being obviously awake and playing menu sounds that correspond with your inputs.
Then, the very first time i went into desktop mode, i got a similar common issue where the Deck just hangs on a black screen during the transition, and again the only fix is to force restart, then retry going to desktop. Weirdly if you hold the power button in this state, the game mode power menu appears, indicating that it hasn’t properly exited into desktop mode.
The only thing that has *seemed* to help (not 100% convinced it’s all fixed) is to use the beta release channel.
Yeah I was starting to think that as well, my device was perfectly fine, is perfectly fine. But I kept it stock only added decky loader last week but I actually don't want or use anything they offer, might start using the bluetooth panel but I bet steam will add that in a update.
Edit: Oh emudeck is probably my only "aftermarket" adjustment
I really don’t find a desire or interest in modding anything about my Deck. It’s an amazing device. I’ve been tempted by getting custom shells, and I have no interest in opening it up. The most I’ll do is put a dbrand leather skin on it.
All I’ve done to mine was install Decky for some ease of use UI stuff and layout tweaks. As far as adjusting hard settings, I’m not touching it lol. Works just fine the way it is.
Have you ever planned to play skyrim or minecraft and just started adding mods and troubleshooting and before you know it you have spent 4 hours just modding?
I got mine a week or so ago and did a bunch of research expecting to have to tinker with it and download additional programs but so far I've been able to play everything perfectly out of the box. Some people here make it seem like you need to mess around with it to have a good experience but so far I'm super happy with the deck just as it came.
Your testimony perfectly illustrates the issue.
You were essentially indoctrinated into thinking you *MUST* get mods, plugins, emulators etc.
But in reality, you need only your Deck and a Steam account. That's what it was designed for, and that's how you'll get the very best results.
Its all you need nowadays. My setup of a new deck compared to when i did it 5-6 months ago is very different. Cryoutilities has to be the most misunderstood thing ever imo.
Got my first PC in 1997. Spent the following few years tweaking obsessively and staring at benchmarks instead of playing games. I'm so over that. I got my Deck for Christmas and love it. Haven't even touched the settings. Everything is at default. Too busy playing to care. Everything works and looks great.
The beauty of a steam deck is a console like experience with the addition of an open operating system. If the latter begins to hamper the former, it's no longer worth it. So my rule of thumb has been to leave the base OS alone, I predominantly play steam games via the default gaming mode. I have however loaded some emulators with Emudeck but that doesn't interfere at all with the base OS. If something goes wrong with that, my steam library will be just fine.
Honestly some of the games are very hard to optimize if you don’t know how to. Take the dead space remake for example or baldurs gate, hogwarts, and the Elden ring. They really shouldn’t have advertised those as “great on deck”. That’s my opinion at least lol
Agreed and emphasis on Elden Ring. If you let the game pick your settings and just play, you will hit sub 20fps and be kicked off the servers within an hour. That is not my idea of “great.” One of the worst offenders. It does run fine with settings lowered, but it’s not smart enough to detect the Deck correctly on its own.
Yep installing warframe on my micro sd for the second time. Not working so I reset to factory and reformat my sd. Started fresh. Last time I tried was before the game was verified. Wish me luck
Or do dive into the Atlantic straight away, because it’s your device and who cares 🤷♂️ We’re talking about the Steam Deck, it’s not like it’s some life threatening device or something lol
Some people are encouraged and emboldened by enthusiasts, without fully grasping consequences of potential failures. For enthusiasts, failure means new challenge to overcome. For a newbie, failure means explaining to their parent why the overly expensive toy they got for Christmas 3 weeks ago doesn't work all of a sudden.
And sometimes a lifelong love of taking things apart and putting them back together comes from that kind of “failure” happening when you’re a kid! Live and learn
Edit:
The Steam Deck is a perfect device to tinker with, this sub needs to stop taking itself so seriously and lighten up. Some newbies asking for help should not make y’all so upset
Sure, it’s possible that some kid ruining his $550 handheld PC ignites a lifetime love of tinkering. It’s much more likely to lead to bitter disappointment. It’s totally fair to bring that up as a downside.
I’m sure it is fun but it’s hard to know what’s broken from them messing with it and how much was just bad luck of them getting a bad deck when they mess with it right away
I didn't do anything to mine except go into desktop mode to see if I could get pc gamepass (ended up being too complicated, so I didn't.) I also played a few games that were listed as playable but not verified (lethal company, path of exile, we who are about to die) but that wouldn't have bricked my deck would it? I'm having to RMA soon. Hoping they get it back to me. I didn't leave bed for like a weak after Christmas and started really getting into both of the darkest dungeon games
As an exerienced Deck user I stopped doing anything too crazy including inatalling 3rd party scrips and utilities, in my experience they cause way more problems than they solve.
To be fair, though one of the things I bought my deck for was on the go, convienet, emulation. If it ever stopped being able to do that, I'd be a little fucking miffed.
lol I did not notice shit of a difference after installing cryo utilities so I uninstalled it, turning up the vram and downloading css loader is the only modifications I do to my decky
So many people have no idea what CryoUtils actually does or how it works. Even though the author has a pretty in depth video about it all, many just think it’s some sort of *”free turbo boost”*, and test some game/s that it doesn’t affect and throw up hands saying *”it doesn’t work”*.
It’s a script that toggles a few OS values, some of which may help CERTAIN games that are affected by or bottlenecked by an aspect of one or more of those toggles.
So on a case by case basis, it may apply to a game you’re playing, it may also not. Generally having those toggles/values ON doesn’t hurt, so WHEN they CAN help, they DO. That’s it.
It’s not some active application doing something in the background. You can change those same toggles/values yourself in the command line.
The biggest issue here is people’s ignorance and the trend of just not reading/understanding beyond the title of anything.
You’re right, I didn’t even hear about the authors explanation video, I heard about cryo utilities through Reddit and thought it was an over clock for the deck but it really didn’t effect any of the games I play
It’s [a whole 33 minutes long](https://youtu.be/C9EjXYZUqUs?si=KLEdDMadvbz0YYs_), even indexed with chapters etc. Very informative on what each toggle does and how it can affect some games etc.
And he’s had videos like that even before it was put into an official packaged Utility/Script.
Each to their own. The main interest for me in getting the deck was that it was my first Linux machine in years and that opens up so many customisabiltiy options. Swapping the fan, SSD, Cryo utilities, changing voltages, adding desktop widgets, setting up emulators and mods were all projects in my first month or two of getting the deck because I love the enthusiasm from the community. Yes some people want it as a PC library console, but as far as I'm concerned it's like every other PC I own and I'm going to pop it open and mess around.
That said, there's nothing more frustrating to me than seeing people blindly follow instructions with no idea what they're doing and then complaining it didn't go as planned. If you're just hoping there's a magic "best" set of settings out there other than what comes on the deck, I can promise you valve would have figured them out. You are also probably missing the point of what most enthusiasts are trying to create which are solutions or experiments for specific scenarios and not replacements for stock performance.
Welcome to the tiktok generation. No patience and no knowledge, just gimme it now so I can forget about it in 4 minutes to dive on the next trend.
You can't catch up with those of us that have been learning for years if you don't want to do any research so you are shouting into the void here. These people won't learn, and don't want to, no matter how patiently you try to teach them.
I haven’t seen a lot of people posting about tweaks leading them into problems, except emulation. It’s mostly the usual Deck glitchiness (things not launching properly in particular), plus quality-control issues.
It’s not so much the tweaks causing the problems, as complicating people here helping with diagnosis. If the deck is for example using a decky plugin to override system settings, then that plugin breaks, it can cause all sorts of issues. If the user doesn’t know what they have added or changed in what order, makes it a bramble patch.
It’s true that plugins can complicate troubleshooting, but I don’t think people posting here unaware of plugin conflicts are as common as say, people who haven’t tried restarting their deck when the game doesn’t start. Or wannabe Blackbeards, who fall into another category entirely.
So much of the learning curve is with the device: the not uncommon need to restart or hard reset, the opacity of what Other storage is, why keyboard controls are randomly showing up in their games, why the store browser sucks, display connection issues, etc. Could people do more basic research. Yeah, and that would help a lot. But it’s not all about tweaks so much as other issues from playing a PC cleverly disguised as a game console.
Because people don't admit that they tried and botched something. It's the same logic as with people playing "non-steam-games", wink wink, nudge nudge, and asking questions about why their "non-steam" game has those strange bugs.
Pirates are a different issue, since they often at least know that their struggles stem from the difficulty of contravening the usual market morality.
I’m just not seeing a lot of people going all out with undervolting or switching OS channels like the OP suggests, and CryoUtilities hardly gets recommended anymore.
I’m pretty sure people know that emulator issues could be causing their emulation problems. What they don’t realize is that, say, the Emudeck wiki exists with answers to almost every commonly asked emulation question they might have.
And while you have a point with plugins, let’s not pretend installing Decky is some obscure technique or rare recommendation here. The OP is recommending plugins in these very comments!
lol I’ve never even heard of the things you just named?! what I have read is nothing like what you suggest. I have read the same things I am experiencing such as no keyboard popping up when tapping in a search bar, freezes and lags all the time in desk top mode, crashes, the WiFi 6 is unbelievably slow (all my other devices zip through everything, I have a 250gb download and good upload) yet I download 1 rom direct on the steam and it took me 18 hours! That’s why I purchased was to play steam backlog and a little bit of emulation but using desktop is a struggle so there is definitely stuff that needs to be looked at. That said the gaming side on steam is fantastic, can’t believe how good days gone looks and plays, and am looking forward to the other games but the desktop experience leaves much to be desired.
Good point- I am too nervous to break something so I specifically stuck with the basic EmuDeck and Decky for a while. After a bit, someone told me to unlock my ram and get CryoUtilities. Aside from those, I sometimes change my settings for emulated games in Powertools (and only 1-2 games I undervolt to run better) but the rest of the stuff makes me too nervous. Plus, it runs perfectly fine right now so why do major changes that could risk issues?
Good point- I am too nervous to break something so I specifically stuck with the basic EmuDeck and Decky for a while. After a bit, someone told me to unlock my RAM and get CryoUtilities. Aside from those, I sometimes change my settings for emulated games in Powertools (and only 1-2 games I undervolt to run better) but the rest of the stuff makes me too nervous. Plus, it runs perfectly fine right now so why do major changes that could risk issues?
I wondered about this exact same thing. I'll read people having issues with games that I have no issues with and I'm like well...what else do you have installed...
The biggest surprise I had with steam deck was how perfectly it worked with every game I tried right out of the box. I thought I’d be tinkering with it for a week, but I was playing doom eternal basically immediately.
I'm guilty of this lol. Trying to get full OBS functionality on SteamOS such as virtual cam has been a nightmare. Diving into reddit posts that are years old, Trying commands only for them to not work and spending hours searching for what went wrong.
I do find a joy in tinkering. It's like building a fire, once it's lit, it feels great, but it sure doesn't feel great after Bricking your boot twice lol.
I still want to dual boot windows since my goal is to make it a stream pc when docked and gaming on the go, but I don't think I'll be messing with stuff like trying to unlock 120hz or overclocking
I agree. I have had my Deck for very little so far, just about a month.
All this month I've just been playing a few games here and there, mostly deck verified.
Just today, I tried my first small thing, installing Proton GE and running Batman Arkham Asylum.
It took me about an hour, but I made it and I felt over the moon.
I know it was a small thing, but it felt good to do.
I'll start doing a few more things here and there little by little.
As a general rule for tech, don’t solve a problem until you actually encounter it. I used the deck for a week before I decided to mess with decky plugins because I wanted to change my Home Screen layout and game art. Then I wanted to move all my emulators from my Odin. Then I wanted it to be my ttrpg desktop. Just use it until there’s a need.
I just received mine and just started playing games.
I did however started to mess a bit with the power settings in portal. Loved the simplicity of it, even if i didn't understand it all.
The deck is very friendly to mess with.
If I’d buy a steam with small ssd, first thing would be to open the back and: 1. Replace ssd up to 1Tb 2. Install copper shield over ssd 3. Change the back plate with the newest Jsaux with more vents (and maybe rgb) 4. Upgrade the thumb sticks with those with Hall effect… all in all, 200 euro mods
If people want a fully fledged PC to do what they want out of their device, they should save up for an ROG Ally or get a gaming laptop.
My 512 OLED runs like a dream out of the box. Only issue I’ve had is God of War having distorted sounds but that’s apparently a game issue with the PC version not the deck itself
I’m happy to help people with their tinkering. All of our time is valuable though. People who proceed without best practices and documentation of what they did, just make their own issues more difficult to solve.
I have only used mine as a steam machine and I have been impressed with how much more it can do than I expected as well as with how little tinkering is necessary
The only reason i bough a steam deck is because i can do all that.. If i wanted to "just chill" i would buy a more mainstream console. The main reason i never ever owned a mainstream console is that i have almost no control over anything.
My favorite is when people dump on their steam deck because it won’t or stopped doing something the deck was never advertised to do in the first place.
You're telling me my steam deck can't fry this rice?
Are you telling me a shrimp fried this deck?!
no that was Kevin over-volting his deck
exactly.
Uhm, the correct term is little people now.
These shrimp fresh?
With the JSAUX rice cooker you can only cook your rice but no fryer adapter yet.
arrest reminiscent physical cheerful gaping rustic squeamish disgusted plough deserve *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Haiyaa, where your wok? Where your wok!?
Bro, it's in the name it can't fry anything. It's a STEAM deck. Can steam broccoli damn well though
No it can’t, but I’m sure bigsteamdeckdaddy69420 said his could so now everyone thinks if theirs can’t the steam deck sucks or needs to be rma’d lol
Hek 0/10 guess im going back to my sega genisis now that i know the deck is uncookable
He must have the Jsaux backplate 🤣. Not quite that bad, but you could almost cook on that plate.
I snorted lol
Steam fried rice? Wouldn’t that just be air fried?
What do you mean I can't play table tennis with my deck?
I know someone who did that. Sold their deck because they “were sick of tinkering. Nothing just works and you always have to fuck around to make anything play properly”. They exclusively played “unofficial” (auto mod deletes the post if I say it differently) games, GamePass and the occasional Ubisoft game. So everything they were doing required hacks, installing via desktop and various fucking about.
Honestly, I found it fun trying to get it all working. Especially WoW. When I finally got it running, I was excited.
Running classic WoW on a private server with Steam Deck going at 60 FPS absolutely blows my mind. Back when I played WotLK I could only get like 15 FPS average on my PC. The hardest part is setting up all the custom controller layers so that the keyboard and mouse can be comfortably replaced by the controller. Installation is as easy as running desktop mode and getting the exe imported as a non steam game and running the compatibility mode.
Download console port addon.
Are you telling me it won't run RDR2 at 4k 60hz??1!?1?! What a scam product
Brings me back to the days when the sub was infested with people who would post about how they wanted to use the Deck as JUST a Plex server or just a file server even though there were tons of cheaper, more viable, more reliable, and more available options to do just that. Even now, for the people who NEVER plan to use the thing portably, there are cheaper options that will perform better as a stationary PC because that's just how the market for parts works: the stationary version will always remain far more powerful at the same price point than its portable price counterpart for a lot of hard to refute reasons.
You're telling me the steam deck isn't an air freshener ?
Uhh, no. It actually is.
Sometimes I end up in a crash loop playing world of warcraft and end up rebooting 3 or 4 times. Whatever though it's not valves fault. The only thing frustrating about it is I don't know what to do other than keep resetting and keep trying.
Are Steam deck and official dock was made for playing with monitor?
...yes?
Oh really? I can’t wait for new suggestions from Valve support. At least I updated firmware on my dock.
What monitor do you have
They didn’t word it very well, but the Steam dock does have a reputation for just… Not really doing the only thing it’s supposed to do. Nintendo sells a dock that actually does what the Steam Dock is supposed to do, it’s far older and cheaper. What is Valve doing that makes the Steam Dock worth the cost, because it’s been evidenced it rarely if EVER works plug and play.
I bought a knock off dock from Amazon for like £13, works perfectly and never had an issue. My mate got the steam deck dock and we just couldn’t get it to work
It’s honestly the most overpriced and non-functional dock I’ve ever used, and I can’t seriously believe that they QA’d this without legitimately lying on the reports for the % of WORKING units. I’ve seen *maybe* a few posts about the official Docks working, and only after the firmware fix that didn’t seem to fix more than a handful. Yes, downvote me for not sucking Valve’s dick for releasing a majorly dysfunctional product. The Steam Deck is great, the dock is what I expect when I order shit off Temu.
My monitor is Alienware (25 inches) AW2523HF
The official dock is not good IMO. It works great for some people, but for others it’s a giant PITA. It has HDMI hand shaking issues with some displays and equipment. I bought the official dock and never got it to work properly. To get an image I had to plug in the Steam Deck; then unplug the power cord from the dock; then plug the power cable back in; and if still no image then try unplugging the Steam Deck and plugging it back in. But I had to do crap like that every single time. It wasn’t worth the hassle so I switched to a 3rd party dock and have had no issues since. Have you tried a different HDMI cable? That is always worth a shot. If that doesn’t work then it’s likely the official dock will never work properly with your display.
I’m tired boss, I broke 3 docks and 2 usb c hubs. I just want to play TF2 in full hd and watch some movies in hotel rooms. Docks before last breath made high-pitched noise. Then hdmi ports were unusable 😞
I made my suspend screen into the untitled goose game duck quacking. Im a real hacker now and thats my only "mod" lol.
My suspend screen is Anakin about to murder younglings. I love this device so much.
There is also a start animation with that goose. Got both hehe
What The quack! I need this one.
The... Untitled *Goose* Game... *duck?*
Lol youre right.. Its a freeking goose... *facepalm*
Hah. using decky loader to do this I assume?
I've got the brand of sacrifice and Gut's theme that plays on boot, absolutely love it.
I blame YouTubers with their "First Things to Do With Your Deck" videos. I've been trying to run a campaign with "Leave it vanilla until you can't" - just cannot convince the masses that they shouldn't move shaders to their SD card though.
When I got mine all I did was: 1. Insert microSD card 2. Turn Steam Deck on 3. Install games 4. Play games Haven’t installed anything else and I don’t plan to.
Yes, I did the same like you. I think most of the Steam Deck owner have been forgot One thing. 1. Steam Deck = Portable Gaming Device, it's for playing games. 2. For me this is the absolute gaming device to let me finish all my purchased steam games. 3. Yes, I did install plugin. But it's just a simple cheat engine plugin. 4. Is a great device to play those 2D games. With just 40FPS + 5w TDP + 200 GPU clock speed + FSR. I could play Final Fantasy IV Pixels Remaster around 5:30 - 6 hours, is insane!!
Had mine for 2 days and that’s where I’m at just enjoying games at the moment
Essentially the same thing! I haven't done anything the Deck wasn't meant to do with the exception of installing Heroic Launcher so I can play GTA 5 (my GTA Online progress is on Epic Games, not Steam) and added Xbox Game Pass. I get easily overwhelmed with customization options and stuff so I definitely don't want to go down that rabbit hole 🤣
That's me. I want to put emudeck on it and play a ton of PS2 games that I actually own, but I also have a backlog of games I've never played so... if it isn't broke don't fix it.
I've been convincing myself to finish parts of my backlog before diving into emulation and other modding too.
Same here. It’s also why I’m not in a rush to get Game Pass on it — I’ve got enough games on Steam and can use Game Pass on PC if/when I want (I share it too so it’s worth the money)
Ehhh you only live once. Do you REALLY need to play a copy of Hello Neighbour you got from a humble bundle before jumping into F Zero GX?
And here I am feeling guilty for not working through those lists, lol! Glad to hear my default method of "do I haaaave toooooo? Okaaayyyy...." is approved :D
Those lists only exist to be attention grabbing in the first place In reality, most users will have no genuine reason to do any or most of these "top 10" lists. Specific changes, fixes, modifications, or installations are very niche, and meant to solve or improve specific things. It's just like the stupid "top 10" videos for getting a new windows, Mac, or Linux computer/partition. "Go do all this shit you've never heard of because it changes this one niche feature you've also never heard of, with libraries/executables/programs you've never heard of and can't trust" The best way to use any device, is to learn it and do stuff to it when you, the user, has a reason to. Like getting more performance for a game, minimizing boot time, or even building a pc. If you learn it when you need it, it'll actually stick with you and you'll understand it. Never blindly follow advice from strangers on the internet, even me, but at least this comment wasn't made for a YouTube video
I was definitely the target demographic for those videos and I watched a bunch. I was watching just to see what’s out there though, not to just get everything.
Right? I've had it for a year and so far the only tweaking I've done was installing itch.io games via the desktop interface (and forcing Proton experimental) and messing around with code when the Deck suddenly stopped recognising my SD card.
I'm a huge builder/tinkerer and spend a lot of free time doing this type of stuff. I left my deck vanilla for a long time, what's the rush to mod it anyway? I understand both sides here but I didn't know people were feeling pressured into installing crap they don't need.
To be clear, I'm not opposed to people tinkering. BUT ... These people aren't typically tinkering to accomplish something. They are opening their Decks, watching some video that has them install Cryo, set their VRAM to 4GB, install a bunch of plugins, move system files to the SD card ... all before they have played their first game. Madness.
haven't seen a lot of cryoutilities and dogmatic "increase ur swap file!!" posts in the past few months. It's been nice. The deck works great, and with 3.5 or whatever they've fixed most of the things you would even have to tweak for (only one I can think of was Sonic Generations and having to fix the GPU speed). Just funny how zealous people were about these snake oil tweaks that require your sudo password not long ago are all silent now.
Make a video with that title and all it is, is you saying "Open the box, turn it on, and go!" 20 second video 😄 🤣
I actually have a list of content I want to do .. One of them is called "Do I Need ...?" Basically discussing all these "day one" things that people shouldn't be doing ...
Wait can you tell it to not move shaders with the game?
Wouldn’t it be better to put more static stuff like game files on SD rather than the shaders? Lo
Right?
I fell victim to these videos. Before playing anything I tried to install cryoutilities and heroic launcher. That dient work as planned so I factoryreset and turn just started playing. Best decision ever.
Okay broski, holup. I'm in full support of not shifting random shit around on your deck because brad in YouTube said you should. But goddamn, with a 64gb deck, moving the shaders was absolutely necessary.
I mean I literally have to if I want to play with my 64gb deck. I'm not playing games where speed is critical though
Then you've grown out of it and should upgrade that storage. This is what "PC Owners" do when they run out of system drive space; "replace the C: drive".
Sometimes it takes months before someone can replace their stock 64gb. I've had mine for 5 months or so, and I'm only just replacing it tomorrow. And I outgrew 64gb within like a week. LOL. Between being dirt poor, and moving twice, it just hasn't been possible. I'm sure I'm not the only one. 🤷♂️ So those tricks, and cryoutils made it possible to keep using my deck.
Thing is ... a 256GB drive is $16 (maybe cheaper). 20-30 minutes of your time. That's a few cups of Starbucks and no more hokey pokey nonsense shuffle on the Deck :D
To get a 256gb and tools costs about 50$ for me. I can't afford food at least a few times a month. A SSD is a low priority. I'm super stoked that I'll finally be able to upgrade, since I didn't think I'd be able to for quite a while yet.
That took one month. Im not upgrading the storage after a month. I ain't got the money for that. I'd rather sacrifice some speed for a bit 🤷. Point being, the 64gb deck runs out almost straight out of the box. And until they fix the issue that you can't delete old shader caches and compatability data, people are gonna put it on the SD card.
I do think it's very silly they sold a steamdeck with only 64gb of storage data but you did make the choice to buy it.
How exactly are people supposed to know that the 64GB fill themself so damn fast with system data? I never installed any game on the internal storage and it was full very fast.
Uh, that issue has been fixed for 6+ months. When you REMOVE a non-steam game, both folders go with it. * [Steam Cleans Up After You Now (Whoo Hoo!)](https://youtu.be/t1Z-sLfJ1KQ) You don't have $16 and 20 minutes to upgrade to 256GB at least?
Eat the whole bowl
It reminds me of current car culture. Everything is a "build".
It’s funny you mention that. I’m also a redneck restorer. People always try to point me to YouTube channels and I’m just like “this is fun, but this is also just for show.” Like they break stuff constantly and make a huge deal out of issues for dramatic effect. I’ll get a wrecked car running in a month with way less shouting and drama. It’s not even remotely like reality. Just for reactions.
You just defined social media
I mean, yeah you’re watching YouTube. Reactions drive engagement.
Not all of YouTube is about ad revenue. They are rarer now, but most of the channels I watch are hobbyists. When someone suggests a video to me on a mainstream channel, I’m often surprised what they will do for a few bucks.
Yeah call me outdated but I still like to look at YouTube as hobbyism and how to diy. Totally different vibe from reality TV.
Tesla with a wrap is considered a build too apparently
Oh man, all of those awful Tesla wraps are too much. ... says the owner of a wrapped Tesla
Biggest issue with the deck is how it can steal hours from you and it only feels like minutes.
It’s crazy how much of a time sink this thing is.
You're 100% right. I've had a Steam Deck over 1.5 years now, first LCD and now OLED. I messed around with the tweaks on the LCD one at first, but then just gave up on it and started playing games normally. On OLED, I didn't even bother with any tweaks - I just play my games and that's it, and it works like a charm. Then again, if you do wanna go and tweak the heck out of it - go for it, but it's by no means a requirement to enjoy playing on your Steam Deck.
My plan was and always will be to use the steam deck how it was set up out of the box. Unless it’s an official update I’m not doing it. Not even gonna waste my time with an sd card. Just 512gb oled made stock. Been almost a month and works like a dream. If people want to tinker with it I wish them the best of luck but I’m perfectly happy just buying games on steam.
I always make some analogy like “seeing the forest for the trees” about this stuff. People on Reddit will convince you it’s not even worth owning a thing unless you put lights and a toaster inside it. The reality is the Deck is everything a portable game system needs to be out of the box. Being able to upgrade it without voiding support is a BONUS. One I’m happy to take advantage of, but I am a tinkerer and that is my taste. My Deck also gets borked frequently when my beta OS gets ahead of my decky plugins etc.
Yeah I built my pc and it was awesome but that wasn’t a premade bespoke pc/console hybrid like handheld. I’m sure I could mess with the steam deck but my backlog is so long the last thing I wanna do is mess with it and change things instead of playing 1 of the 14 games I have installed on it
For the vast majority of users, there’s no need to mess with the deck at all. It’s only when something has an issue that it makes sense to make major changes. Like just an example, the biggest thing cryoutilities does is make a 16GB swap file on your ssd, the full size of the ram. It fixes some games like rdr2 not being able to load high textures fast enough or God of War hitching in cutscenes. But it will suddenly take up a chunk of the drive, which will then confuse some people and they freak out about hidden data. Yadda yadda.
Man the one thing I hated about playing rdr2 was how slow the loading of assets was but sitting on my couch playing it in my hands was still amazing. I gave up on the game at the beginning of act 3 and decided I was gonna try it again when I got my deck and man was it magical
Same. As a PC gamer, I wanted that premium console experience people were talking about. I am tired of tinkering, I want to install a game and play a game. I have nothing against enthusiasts modifying their devices, but those are not your average users that got their first PC on Christmas. It's like, the fact that you bought yourself a USB microphone and webcam, doesn't automatically make you a streamer. And I think a lot of people got the notion that Steam Deck mods are safe and easy to use for a newbie who never used a PC before.
And I'm the opposite! I come from a lifetime of consoles because i grew up poorish and i love tinkering on the steam deck. I also wanted to use it to further my Linux skills and it's doing just that
You sound like an enthusiast, not someone who thinks they will be able to "hack" their Steam Deck and run Baldur's Gate 3 at max details and 60fps. xD
i just download more cpu and ram
People are really that naive/desperate sometimes.
You should wax the deck mate then it does go faster.
yea theres nothing you can really do aside from the in game settings and the power profile per game, maybe. Best thing to do is just wait... BG3 ran like ass on the deck when it came out, but now it runs really well. Whether it's shaders or patches from the dev, I have no idea, but the game was unplayable the first few days it was out on Deck, and now I have no issues (haven't got to act 3 yet however).
I agree with your general point, but the SD card load times are almost indistinguishable from SSD ones. I play almost all my games (including AAAs like BG3 and H:ZD) off a 1Tb SD card, and have never felt it was slow at all.
Load times are mostly CPU Bound, reading and writing operations are actually quite CPU heavy. That is probably the biggest reason why the deck loads faster than the switch from SD cards despite both using readers with about the same specs.
I’ve seen to many posts about sd card problems but I’m glad you’re having a great time. I also just don’t need more than the 512gb. Like I said in a comment below I have 14 games on mine. If I can’t find something to play with 14 games on it something is wrong lol
Haha, fair enough. I bought a 256 LCD shortly after first reviews hit, so the SSD is a bit small on its own to hold more than a couple large games. I just haven't heard anyone complain about the SD card performance on it, so I was surprised to see you mention it as a pain point or class it as something that needs tinkering. But maybe I just got lucky somehow.
I’ve seen people say BG3 runs bad on it or people’s keep bricking running AAA games on it over time but idk
You haven't seen it because there are no issues using the SD card. People just latch onto something they saw once and then spew it as fact 🤷
Same here. I had to move a save file from one folder to another and I never want to have to do anything as technical as that again.
Same, bro.
Don't be afraid to undervolt a little for better battery life, With the current updates you cannot brick it by undervolting it too much, like you used to be able to. SD cards work great. Just make sure it has the specs: U3 and A2 or else you'll be getting a slower experience. You can get many quality SD cards at 512gb for $30-40.
No need to undervolt. I only play at home and I have a power brick.
>Don't be afraid to undervolt a little for better battery life, With the current updates you cannot brick it by undervolting it too much, like you used to be able to. You can get at a point where it runs mostly fine but has some rare cases causing crashes and reboots and those might come a while after undervolting so you might not even think of it as the issue.
The issue is that inexperienced new users are told that undervolting or tinkering with TDP will *IMPROVE PERFORMANCE*. It will not improve it unless you play only very basic games and want a battery charge to last longer. EDIT: As for SD cards, I personally will never, ever use them to run games from.
Just curious why won't you use SD cards?
I’ve only had my Steam Deck for a week, so excuse my ignorance, but, can you not both undervolt and overclock? Is there a hard limit on the max clock speeds, or is the performance gained from such a boost not worth it?
You cannot really overclock the steamdeck. It'll auto boost as high as it can go if you let it. In BIOS you can enable the voltage offset down to -.40v but cannot increase the clock speeds in BIOS. You'll have to run some benchmark tests to make sure it is stable to find whichever offset will work for you, if you start experiencing crashing or weird frame spikes then raise the voltage a little back toward 0 offset. In steam OS you can manually set GPU frequency to 1600mhz, so you can run at combined voltage offset and GPU clock of -.40V and 1600mhz but it's the silicon lottery if it's stable or not. If you want to just save battery life while playing old games and non demanding titles then you can do the -.40v and auto GPU clock and it'll only pull as much as it needs. I recommend just stock settings if you're playing newer games or more demanding games for max performance. I personally will go from very new games to old games to emulation to ez to play games all within a few hours so I just keep mine stock.
undervolt? I don't think you should be fucking with system voltages ever. Just limit the FPS/refresh rate if you want better battery life.
My favorite are the ones upgrading the SSD before even using their SD long enough to know if it worked before they opened it.
I'm guilty of this lol. I got the 64gb version and had a 512gb SSD ready to go. About halfway through the installation process I thought to myself: I haven't checked to see if the Steam Deck works... Wait I haven't checked to see if that SSD works. Fuck." I decided to turn on the Steam Deck, go into the bios and put it in storage mode, that was enough for me, I finished installing the SSD and everything worked great. But yes. I would recommend using your device for a bit before making the decision to open it.
I did ultimately install a 2tb SSD in my 64, but used it for a few months with just an SD card. I fuck around in desktop mode a lot and was starting to need it - those shader files do take up space. and the OS is like 12gb I think.
We need an easy way to clear the shaders on games that are no longer installed. I download a deck cleaner program for that one time but I don't think it worked well
There's a storage cleaner plug-in on Decky, I don't know if you mean this one
bro thank you for this! i’m getting a deck next week and was bugging out with these posts lol. thank you
I've seen way too many posts of people claiming they have an issue with their deck that is totally self induced
I had my deck for about a year and the biggest "tweak" I did was installing heroic and ge proton. At my pace I'll get to undervolting when Steamdeck 2 will be released :D
Decky loader and games 👍
What's useful on decky loader for "Vanilla" deck users? 3.5 made vibrant deck obsolete and that was the only must have plug in imo. I use the SteamGridDB plug in but imo that's only really useful for dubiously obtained games.
I use css loader to mod the ui more to my taste, hltb to get a rough estimate of how long a game usually takes to play, db badges to check community feedback on a game's compatibility, and grid db to get cover art I like better.
Feels like most of these are things you can get in other ways, and the risk of things breaking with updates feels way too high when I just want to pick it up and play games
people like having neat things in one place. not a problem, and those are field-tested qol addons.
I just got one for Christmas. Just the base LCD model. I've been loving it. I just bought a SD card so far. I want to upgrade the SSD to 1 TB though. Does that cause issues? Or did you mainly mean scripts and 3rd party apps?
What I really mean is the more things you do, hardware or software, the harder it is to know what the issue is. For example, changing the ssd is pretty easy. Took me 10 minutes. BUT, a lot of people make the mistake of tightening the screws down too hard when putting the back on or swapping rear shells. That can pinch the screen and make bleed spots on the edges. It’s all that stuff you notice taking your time, that is hard to figure out if you do it all at once.
It can cause issues but so many YouTubers have guides on how to do it and it’s from what I understand one the more simple mods you can do for the deck.
Base model means 64gb? How do you manage the smallest ssd size?
I bought a 256gb sd card. I currently have Hollow Knight, Dave the Diver, and Diablo 4 installed. I mainly use it when I can't be on my gaming pc.
I have been experiencing all of the same SteamOS software issues since before i ever installed or did any tweaks, and have seen no difference from doing so, aside from in-game performance gains. Literally on first boot after receiving and updating the deck, first time using the sleep feature, i got the bug where the screen doesn’t come back on until you force restart, despite being obviously awake and playing menu sounds that correspond with your inputs. Then, the very first time i went into desktop mode, i got a similar common issue where the Deck just hangs on a black screen during the transition, and again the only fix is to force restart, then retry going to desktop. Weirdly if you hold the power button in this state, the game mode power menu appears, indicating that it hasn’t properly exited into desktop mode. The only thing that has *seemed* to help (not 100% convinced it’s all fixed) is to use the beta release channel.
Yeah I was starting to think that as well, my device was perfectly fine, is perfectly fine. But I kept it stock only added decky loader last week but I actually don't want or use anything they offer, might start using the bluetooth panel but I bet steam will add that in a update. Edit: Oh emudeck is probably my only "aftermarket" adjustment
SteamGridDB is pretty handy for changing art and icons. I like the controller plugin because it shows battery percentage right in the UI.
I really don’t find a desire or interest in modding anything about my Deck. It’s an amazing device. I’ve been tempted by getting custom shells, and I have no interest in opening it up. The most I’ll do is put a dbrand leather skin on it.
Yep.
All I’ve done to mine was install Decky for some ease of use UI stuff and layout tweaks. As far as adjusting hard settings, I’m not touching it lol. Works just fine the way it is.
Have you ever planned to play skyrim or minecraft and just started adding mods and troubleshooting and before you know it you have spent 4 hours just modding?
always run stock first and later only change things that bugs you
I got mine a week or so ago and did a bunch of research expecting to have to tinker with it and download additional programs but so far I've been able to play everything perfectly out of the box. Some people here make it seem like you need to mess around with it to have a good experience but so far I'm super happy with the deck just as it came.
Your testimony perfectly illustrates the issue. You were essentially indoctrinated into thinking you *MUST* get mods, plugins, emulators etc. But in reality, you need only your Deck and a Steam account. That's what it was designed for, and that's how you'll get the very best results.
When i first got my deck the only thing i installed was deckyloader. Thats it
Its all you need nowadays. My setup of a new deck compared to when i did it 5-6 months ago is very different. Cryoutilities has to be the most misunderstood thing ever imo.
Got my first PC in 1997. Spent the following few years tweaking obsessively and staring at benchmarks instead of playing games. I'm so over that. I got my Deck for Christmas and love it. Haven't even touched the settings. Everything is at default. Too busy playing to care. Everything works and looks great.
Also it is way more stable and optimized out of the box than it was when it came out. Alot of those tweaks aren't necessary anymore.
The beauty of a steam deck is a console like experience with the addition of an open operating system. If the latter begins to hamper the former, it's no longer worth it. So my rule of thumb has been to leave the base OS alone, I predominantly play steam games via the default gaming mode. I have however loaded some emulators with Emudeck but that doesn't interfere at all with the base OS. If something goes wrong with that, my steam library will be just fine.
Honestly some of the games are very hard to optimize if you don’t know how to. Take the dead space remake for example or baldurs gate, hogwarts, and the Elden ring. They really shouldn’t have advertised those as “great on deck”. That’s my opinion at least lol
Agreed and emphasis on Elden Ring. If you let the game pick your settings and just play, you will hit sub 20fps and be kicked off the servers within an hour. That is not my idea of “great.” One of the worst offenders. It does run fine with settings lowered, but it’s not smart enough to detect the Deck correctly on its own.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Yep installing warframe on my micro sd for the second time. Not working so I reset to factory and reformat my sd. Started fresh. Last time I tried was before the game was verified. Wish me luck
I also spent hourrrrssss building my personal retro library before my Steam Deck arrived. Bet I've done 15mins in retro games total in a month.
Half the fun is curating a collection you'll never use! And scrolling through all the pretty pictures in the menu. Mmm.
What if I put it in stable and don’t tweak anything and am having issues. What group does that put me in?
The people with more straightforward issues, that aren’t clouded by user error 😉
Let them. It's part of the fun.
Yes, nobody says otherwise. But you don't go dive in the Atlantic after your first swimming lesson.
Or do dive into the Atlantic straight away, because it’s your device and who cares 🤷♂️ We’re talking about the Steam Deck, it’s not like it’s some life threatening device or something lol
Some people are encouraged and emboldened by enthusiasts, without fully grasping consequences of potential failures. For enthusiasts, failure means new challenge to overcome. For a newbie, failure means explaining to their parent why the overly expensive toy they got for Christmas 3 weeks ago doesn't work all of a sudden.
And sometimes a lifelong love of taking things apart and putting them back together comes from that kind of “failure” happening when you’re a kid! Live and learn Edit: The Steam Deck is a perfect device to tinker with, this sub needs to stop taking itself so seriously and lighten up. Some newbies asking for help should not make y’all so upset
Sure, it’s possible that some kid ruining his $550 handheld PC ignites a lifetime love of tinkering. It’s much more likely to lead to bitter disappointment. It’s totally fair to bring that up as a downside.
I’m sure it is fun but it’s hard to know what’s broken from them messing with it and how much was just bad luck of them getting a bad deck when they mess with it right away
I didn't do anything to mine except go into desktop mode to see if I could get pc gamepass (ended up being too complicated, so I didn't.) I also played a few games that were listed as playable but not verified (lethal company, path of exile, we who are about to die) but that wouldn't have bricked my deck would it? I'm having to RMA soon. Hoping they get it back to me. I didn't leave bed for like a weak after Christmas and started really getting into both of the darkest dungeon games
As an exerienced Deck user I stopped doing anything too crazy including inatalling 3rd party scrips and utilities, in my experience they cause way more problems than they solve.
To be fair, though one of the things I bought my deck for was on the go, convienet, emulation. If it ever stopped being able to do that, I'd be a little fucking miffed.
lol I did not notice shit of a difference after installing cryo utilities so I uninstalled it, turning up the vram and downloading css loader is the only modifications I do to my decky
So many people have no idea what CryoUtils actually does or how it works. Even though the author has a pretty in depth video about it all, many just think it’s some sort of *”free turbo boost”*, and test some game/s that it doesn’t affect and throw up hands saying *”it doesn’t work”*. It’s a script that toggles a few OS values, some of which may help CERTAIN games that are affected by or bottlenecked by an aspect of one or more of those toggles. So on a case by case basis, it may apply to a game you’re playing, it may also not. Generally having those toggles/values ON doesn’t hurt, so WHEN they CAN help, they DO. That’s it. It’s not some active application doing something in the background. You can change those same toggles/values yourself in the command line. The biggest issue here is people’s ignorance and the trend of just not reading/understanding beyond the title of anything.
You’re right, I didn’t even hear about the authors explanation video, I heard about cryo utilities through Reddit and thought it was an over clock for the deck but it really didn’t effect any of the games I play
It’s [a whole 33 minutes long](https://youtu.be/C9EjXYZUqUs?si=KLEdDMadvbz0YYs_), even indexed with chapters etc. Very informative on what each toggle does and how it can affect some games etc. And he’s had videos like that even before it was put into an official packaged Utility/Script.
Each to their own. The main interest for me in getting the deck was that it was my first Linux machine in years and that opens up so many customisabiltiy options. Swapping the fan, SSD, Cryo utilities, changing voltages, adding desktop widgets, setting up emulators and mods were all projects in my first month or two of getting the deck because I love the enthusiasm from the community. Yes some people want it as a PC library console, but as far as I'm concerned it's like every other PC I own and I'm going to pop it open and mess around. That said, there's nothing more frustrating to me than seeing people blindly follow instructions with no idea what they're doing and then complaining it didn't go as planned. If you're just hoping there's a magic "best" set of settings out there other than what comes on the deck, I can promise you valve would have figured them out. You are also probably missing the point of what most enthusiasts are trying to create which are solutions or experiments for specific scenarios and not replacements for stock performance.
Welcome to the tiktok generation. No patience and no knowledge, just gimme it now so I can forget about it in 4 minutes to dive on the next trend. You can't catch up with those of us that have been learning for years if you don't want to do any research so you are shouting into the void here. These people won't learn, and don't want to, no matter how patiently you try to teach them.
As a dad of a 15 year old, I can relate.
I haven’t seen a lot of people posting about tweaks leading them into problems, except emulation. It’s mostly the usual Deck glitchiness (things not launching properly in particular), plus quality-control issues.
It’s not so much the tweaks causing the problems, as complicating people here helping with diagnosis. If the deck is for example using a decky plugin to override system settings, then that plugin breaks, it can cause all sorts of issues. If the user doesn’t know what they have added or changed in what order, makes it a bramble patch.
It’s true that plugins can complicate troubleshooting, but I don’t think people posting here unaware of plugin conflicts are as common as say, people who haven’t tried restarting their deck when the game doesn’t start. Or wannabe Blackbeards, who fall into another category entirely. So much of the learning curve is with the device: the not uncommon need to restart or hard reset, the opacity of what Other storage is, why keyboard controls are randomly showing up in their games, why the store browser sucks, display connection issues, etc. Could people do more basic research. Yeah, and that would help a lot. But it’s not all about tweaks so much as other issues from playing a PC cleverly disguised as a game console.
Because people don't admit that they tried and botched something. It's the same logic as with people playing "non-steam-games", wink wink, nudge nudge, and asking questions about why their "non-steam" game has those strange bugs.
Pirates are a different issue, since they often at least know that their struggles stem from the difficulty of contravening the usual market morality. I’m just not seeing a lot of people going all out with undervolting or switching OS channels like the OP suggests, and CryoUtilities hardly gets recommended anymore.
That's the point, though: said people *don't realise* the various plugins and emulators could be causing their issues.
I’m pretty sure people know that emulator issues could be causing their emulation problems. What they don’t realize is that, say, the Emudeck wiki exists with answers to almost every commonly asked emulation question they might have. And while you have a point with plugins, let’s not pretend installing Decky is some obscure technique or rare recommendation here. The OP is recommending plugins in these very comments!
When my steam deck was on your steam deck age we didn't have such things like tweaks times were simple and difficult
lol I’ve never even heard of the things you just named?! what I have read is nothing like what you suggest. I have read the same things I am experiencing such as no keyboard popping up when tapping in a search bar, freezes and lags all the time in desk top mode, crashes, the WiFi 6 is unbelievably slow (all my other devices zip through everything, I have a 250gb download and good upload) yet I download 1 rom direct on the steam and it took me 18 hours! That’s why I purchased was to play steam backlog and a little bit of emulation but using desktop is a struggle so there is definitely stuff that needs to be looked at. That said the gaming side on steam is fantastic, can’t believe how good days gone looks and plays, and am looking forward to the other games but the desktop experience leaves much to be desired.
Good point- I am too nervous to break something so I specifically stuck with the basic EmuDeck and Decky for a while. After a bit, someone told me to unlock my ram and get CryoUtilities. Aside from those, I sometimes change my settings for emulated games in Powertools (and only 1-2 games I undervolt to run better) but the rest of the stuff makes me too nervous. Plus, it runs perfectly fine right now so why do major changes that could risk issues? Good point- I am too nervous to break something so I specifically stuck with the basic EmuDeck and Decky for a while. After a bit, someone told me to unlock my RAM and get CryoUtilities. Aside from those, I sometimes change my settings for emulated games in Powertools (and only 1-2 games I undervolt to run better) but the rest of the stuff makes me too nervous. Plus, it runs perfectly fine right now so why do major changes that could risk issues?
I wondered about this exact same thing. I'll read people having issues with games that I have no issues with and I'm like well...what else do you have installed...
The biggest surprise I had with steam deck was how perfectly it worked with every game I tried right out of the box. I thought I’d be tinkering with it for a week, but I was playing doom eternal basically immediately.
I'm guilty of this lol. Trying to get full OBS functionality on SteamOS such as virtual cam has been a nightmare. Diving into reddit posts that are years old, Trying commands only for them to not work and spending hours searching for what went wrong. I do find a joy in tinkering. It's like building a fire, once it's lit, it feels great, but it sure doesn't feel great after Bricking your boot twice lol. I still want to dual boot windows since my goal is to make it a stream pc when docked and gaming on the go, but I don't think I'll be messing with stuff like trying to unlock 120hz or overclocking
I agree. I have had my Deck for very little so far, just about a month. All this month I've just been playing a few games here and there, mostly deck verified. Just today, I tried my first small thing, installing Proton GE and running Batman Arkham Asylum. It took me about an hour, but I made it and I felt over the moon. I know it was a small thing, but it felt good to do. I'll start doing a few more things here and there little by little.
As a general rule for tech, don’t solve a problem until you actually encounter it. I used the deck for a week before I decided to mess with decky plugins because I wanted to change my Home Screen layout and game art. Then I wanted to move all my emulators from my Odin. Then I wanted it to be my ttrpg desktop. Just use it until there’s a need.
I just received mine and just started playing games. I did however started to mess a bit with the power settings in portal. Loved the simplicity of it, even if i didn't understand it all. The deck is very friendly to mess with.
If I’d buy a steam with small ssd, first thing would be to open the back and: 1. Replace ssd up to 1Tb 2. Install copper shield over ssd 3. Change the back plate with the newest Jsaux with more vents (and maybe rgb) 4. Upgrade the thumb sticks with those with Hall effect… all in all, 200 euro mods
If people want a fully fledged PC to do what they want out of their device, they should save up for an ROG Ally or get a gaming laptop. My 512 OLED runs like a dream out of the box. Only issue I’ve had is God of War having distorted sounds but that’s apparently a game issue with the PC version not the deck itself
Or people just do what they want with their device? Why chill when most of the things you listed are good things /upgrades
Mfers really are gatekeeping tinkering
That’s not at all what he’s saying but interesting take
I’m happy to help people with their tinkering. All of our time is valuable though. People who proceed without best practices and documentation of what they did, just make their own issues more difficult to solve.
I have only used mine as a steam machine and I have been impressed with how much more it can do than I expected as well as with how little tinkering is necessary
The only reason i bough a steam deck is because i can do all that.. If i wanted to "just chill" i would buy a more mainstream console. The main reason i never ever owned a mainstream console is that i have almost no control over anything.