Steam Deck has been shrunk by stealth: SSDS cut in half

Valve's first console, the Steam Deck, has attracted a lot of attention, but it's also been shrinking and raffling.

Steam Deck is available in three storage configurations, ranging from 64GB eMMC with PCIe 2.0 X1 bandwidth to 256/512GB NVMe SSD with PCIe 3.0 x4 bandwidth, all in the M.2230 format.

But now Valve has secretly changed the configuration table and added PCIe 3.0 X2 versions of 256/512GB SSDS, which are shipped with them.

Although the bandwidth was halved from 4GB/s to 2GB/s, Valve noted in the configuration sheet that testing showed no performance impact with PCIe 3.0 x4/ X2 bandwidth.

Valve reportedly did this as early as the end of May, but without any public notice, players who bought Steam Deck in the last two months can now check which SSD they have.

So, can you replace it with a stronger third-party SSD?

Valve engineers do not recommend this, as there is no optimization for power supply, heating, etc. of third-party SSDS.