The Steam Deck portable gaming PC has a socket SSD slot, but there is a catch

Valve announced the Steam Deck, a portable gaming PC, this week and gamers are in turmoil. As pre-orders opened on Friday, questions poured in about various aspects of the device which is powered by AMD’s Zen 2 processor and RDNA 2 GPU technology. It comes in three variants which differ only in size. storage capacity and type. Among other things, potential buyers were eager to hear if and to what extent the onboard storage options are scalable. Co-founder and president Gabe Newell has confirmed that all three Steam Deck models use an m.2 slot, although Valve discourages buyers from trying to upgrade the storage themselves.

Gabe’s email responses were first posted to the reddit r / Steam community by u / midnight_watch and u / BernardoOne. u / midnight_watch first asked if the SSD was scalable or not, to which Gabe replied “2230 m.2 slot”. This indicates that the SSD is indeed swappable – but more on that in a moment. Noting that the base $ 399 model uses eMMC storage instead of NVMe, u / BernardoOne received confirmation that the m.2 slot is present in this model, and therefore upgradeable as well.

As a result of these exchanges, Valve has updated the specs page on steamdeck.com to reflect the inclusion of a 2230m2 slot in all models. Next, Valve added the additional clause “Not intended for end user replacement”. This phrase is special because Valve praised the open nature of the device. For example, the Steam Deck comes with Valve’s redesigned SteamOS, which is based on Linux, but nothing prevents end users from installing Windows (or another version of Linux) instead and using it as a a normal PC. At the same time, nothing in the wording suggests that Valve will also prevent end users from upgrading. Valve is probably only exonerating itself of any liability in case anything goes wrong with the exchange.

So, is upgrading that easy? Well, maybe not quite. While m.2 NVMe drives are ubiquitous these days, the Steam Deck doesn’t use a particularly common size. This sequence of numbers, 2230, in front of m.2 indicates the dimensions of the module in millimeters. Most PC builders are used to 2280m2 drives that are 22mm wide by 80mm long. These 2230 modules, on the other hand, are less than half the length and are typically intended for OEM builds.

Therefore, the new 2230 m.2 discs can be very difficult to find as most models are only sold in bulk. Here in the United States, for example, we can easily find a single 128GB model of KIOXIA on Amazon that only doubles the capacity of the base 64GB model. Instead of new ones, buyers will have to search for units ripped from OEM devices and listed on sites like eBay. As a result, it probably still makes sense for most consumers to stick with the supported high-speed microSD card slot for expansion.

Of course, none of these concerns stopped Steam Deck’s pre-orders from selling like crazy. The Scalper have not been deterred by Valve’s purchase protection policies, and so-called “confirmed pre-orders” are listed on eBay and other sites for hundreds of dollars above MSRP.