I went with 64GB version, as NVMe drive is easily swappable.
- Use flatpak when installing external software on SteamOS as it's the only persistent solution, as Steam Deck when it's updating OS it's (as Android Phones i.e.:) installing an update on passive partition, and it will be swapped during restart when the update was finished.
- Here you'll find a list of 2230 single-sided NVMe drives available on the market, seems like the best option as for 04-02-2023 is WD SN740 Link
- I decided to go with Hynix BC711 512GB as it was the best option at that time on the market considering quality/price ratio.
- Steam Deck AMD APU is based on Zen 2 architecture, so NVMe M.2 slot should be attached to PCIe 4.0 lanes, but I couldn't find verified info.
- Initial setup after unboxing a Steam Deck I decided to do on a stock drive (64GB) to have a backup disk, if restoring an official image would fail or my new NVMe drive would be defective.
- To open a Steam Deck you can follow iFixit tutorial from here
- The biggest problem when opening a Steam Deck is to unlatch latches on handgrips, I recommend using some plastic tool for opening phones or guitar pick
- Reimage new disk using official tutorial from Valve
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After a disk change and running reimage from official recovery image from Valve site, everything went smoothly until Steam Deck was rebooted to fresh SteamOS install, I went through setup wizard, I added a 5GHz WiFi SSID, after that installation/configuration process started, and after it finished first step, steam deck stuck on "starting steam deck update download" like mentioned here on the Reddit post
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I fixed that problem, by going back in the setup wizard to settings, restoring default/factory settings and using 2.4GHz WiFi network instead of 5GHz (as it occurred later Steam Deck has some problems with 5GHz networks)
- If it will not fix the issue for you, you can try following this post
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WiFi 5GHz
- Steam Deck uses Realtek RTL8822CE WiFi chip, in gerenal Realtek WiFi chips are known in the Linux community as problematic ones and there are several different issues with drivers for those chips.
- The first symptom which I've seen was yellow sign in the SteamOS main view top bar on the WiFi icon, when i went to Settings there was an error message "cannot reach steam servers"
- By going to desktop view and checking what's going on in the terminal, I've seen logs mentioned here
- I fixed the problem with my 5GHz network by turning off WiFi power management setting in Developer Mode Link
- Other links
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Sleep download
- Steam Deck doesn't have an option to download games/patches when in Sleep mode, it's such a common feature in modern consoles that I would not even think that Valve would not implement even a simple implementation of it. Community feature request
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Charging LED
- turned on for a minute when Steam Deck is fully charged, and then it's turning off for a minute and that's happening in a loop, really irritating during night
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Display issues
- Steam Deck's IPS display has a huge backlight bleeding in all corners
- I have 1 Bad pixel on my unit, there are some posts on Reddit where other users received a replacement for free, I would not try as it is not worth an effort Link
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Anti-cheat support
- Nowadays most popular Multiplayer games are using secure boot/kernel-level anti-cheat systems, like FIFA 23, Valorant, Call of Duty MW2, etc.
- They are not supported on Linux, so they are not supported on Steam Deck (SteamOS is now based on ArchLinux, previously Debian)
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Steam Deck sometimes freeze on a black screen when switched to desktop environment
- It often happens after resume from sleep
- SMB/NFS