Worth buying the 64 GB version?

[Moogal™]

I mostly intend to play simpler games such as FF8 Remastered and some others. Is it worth buying the cheapest and use microSD to expand storage or is it just waste of time and money?

[invision2212]

i started with a 64gb and it was fine for gaming, i mainly played AAA games on it off the sd card. i later upgraded the internal storage to 512gb just to have more storage

[Moogal™]

Originally posted by invision2212:

i started with a 64gb and it was fine for gaming, i mainly played AAA games on it off the sd card. i later upgraded the internal storage to 512gb just to have more storage

Ok thnx

[N a v y 3 0 0 1]

It is very much worth it, the micro SD card slot loads extremely fast!

[Khanjima]

Yeah if you like being able to install a singular game at a time, but i suppose you could exchange the SD

[Mahjik]

The only concern with the 64GB model today is that at this point in time, the shader files cannot be set to an alternate location. This means even if you install a 1TB SD card, it some point the internal 64GB storage will fill up just because of the shaders.

That could either change as to where shaders are downloaded, or you don't have too many games installed at one, or you upgrade the internal storage as others have done.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Originally posted by Mahjik:

The only concern with the 64GB model today is that at this point in time, the shader files cannot be set to an alternate location. This means even if you install a 1TB SD card, it some point the internal 64GB storage will fill up just because of the shaders.

That could either change as to where shaders are downloaded, or you don't have too many games installed at one, or you upgrade the internal storage as others have done.

There is a workaround to install the shaders on the SD card. Someone posted it in these forums before.

[invision2212]

Originally posted by Lauren:

It depends. If you use Windows it's more than sufficient. I loaded a bunch of games and noticed the internal SSD fill up with proton installs for each game. Gotta watch your storage usage.

can you just not reply to any more topics? you have the most useless posts and you arent helping anyone. no one cares about your windows obsession or your baby fits. no one needs nor wants you here.

proton doesnt fill up the internal drive either, i have 3 versions of proton and about 15 games installed.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Originally posted by invision2212:

Originally posted by Lauren:

It depends. If you use Windows it's more than sufficient. I loaded a bunch of games and noticed the internal SSD fill up with proton installs for each game. Gotta watch your storage usage.

can you just not reply to any more topics? you have the most useless posts and you arent helping anyone. no one cares about your windows obsession or your baby fits. no one needs nor wants you here.

proton doesnt fill up the internal drive either, i have 3 versions of proton and about 15 games installed.

What she is doing is spam and attempting to change the topic of threads. Both against the ToS.

[ugafan]

The 64 GB is going to fill up quickly. Even if you're not installing many games you're going to wish you had more storage. But if you are willing to upgrade the internal storage you can come out cheaper than one of the higher priced models.

[N a v y 3 0 0 1]

You can use a micro SD card, and trust me, it loads FAST!

[retrogunner]

I concur about the 64GB being a great price point/starting point. I use a 400GB U3 A1 Sandisk and I cannot really tell the difference between it and my NVMe (and I've a 4 lane.)

And you're not over committed to the 256GB model for $160+ more -- which only costs about $40 - $50 to buy and replace on your own. It allows you to grow affordably as needed. (With my 400GB SD Card, I'm only using 1/3 of my 256GB NVMe with a boatload of flatpaks, over 200 games installed, all the game's wasted shader cache.

If you're worried about space, a lot comes down to your use-case. Of the 64Gb, it really rounds down to about 60GB formatted. Then start taking away space:
* rootfs partitions ~10GB (2x5GB each)
* /home/.steamos ~ can be be 3 - 8GB (this is where /var , /etc, /opt , /root are installed (we'll call it 5GB for ballpark math)
* /home/deck
- we'll say 5GB each version of Proton uses 1GB+ of space. (say you have 4.x, 7.x, Proton experimental and GE (stored under the Steam client directory)
- 1GB Steam client for the deck is installed under /home/deck/.local

So, let's say that's roughly 25GB leaving 35GB free space. (Remember, there's no immediate need to upgrade the NVMe yet which is also the cheaper route if you're comfortable with part replacement.)

That's 30 - 35GB for
* game sames (deleting a game doesn't remove your saves so that can build up)
* download caches (which can be emptied)
* shader caches which can be up to 10% of install size for AAA titles (casual & indies are like 1-5% of install size.)
* Flatpaks for Discord, Firefox, Emulators/Game managers/utils, Minecraft (via PolyMC), desktop apps (stored under /var/lib aka /home/.steamos/apps/*/var/lib) -- their shared dependencies can use 1-2GB between them, then the apps themselves. There's ways of installing them elsewhere but a bit of knowledge is required.

So, will 64GB work for you? Depends on your use-case and usage over time. I'd totally get two more Steam Deck at 64GB for each of my kids. It totally kicks the crap out of the family Switch and is perfect for couch based LAN parties OR using docked to the TV.

The only downside is for those huge AAA titles like Borderlands 3 (150GB with a 15+GB shader cache) OR installing every part of the Halo:MCC all at the same time. Sure, you'd install them to an SD Card but their shader cache would take a chunk of NVMe space until uninstalled to reclaim that space. *THEN* at that point, consider spending $40 on a 256GB NVMe upgrade (or more).

Another benefit to using the SD Card exclusively like me -- Steam Deck resets as you will not have to re-download those games again as you remove the SD Card. If all on the NVMe, it's toast when reset.

Hope this helps your purchase decision. Cheers, retro.

[Mizufluffy]

I think retrogunner gave a good answer. I especially like this part here:

Originally posted by retrogunner:

So, will 64GB work for you? Depends on your use-case and usage over time.

In my case I went with the 256 GB model for a few reasons.
1) I expect the internal SSD will gather files over time. I got really tired of constantly cleaning up the internal storage of my old smartphone before I got a new one last year so I'm rather cautious about small internal storage on a modern device, and I'd rather get extra space and not use it than not taking it and then regret it in a few years.
2) It left me with some space for games, which in my case may vary from 100 MB to 100 GB+, although most are probably around 3 GB to 30 GB, while I was still deciding about my microSD card choice.
I hadn't ordered one before I actually received my Deck (it would have been bad if I had already bought a microSD card but then something happened to the Deck during shipping).
On that note I went with a Samsung EVO Plus 512 GB microSD card but I think I might go for a 1 TB card in the future.

I haven't compared how the performance is between SSD and microSD card by installing a game on one and measuring loading times etc. and then moving the game to the other storage and doing it again but in my personal opinion I can't say I have noticed games being slow or anything like that. There have been some videos on YouTube about microSD card performance on a Steam Deck so you may want to check those if you are curious.

[theDeed]

Originally posted by invision2212:

i started with a 64gb and it was fine for gaming, i mainly played AAA games on it off the sd card. i later upgraded the internal storage to 512gb just to have more storage

How did you find the battery playing AAA games? I know it's not great but also heard even while charging the battery drops slowly?

[Mahjik]

Originally posted by theDeed:

Originally posted by invision2212:

i started with a 64gb and it was fine for gaming, i mainly played AAA games on it off the sd card. i later upgraded the internal storage to 512gb just to have more storage

How did you find the battery playing AAA games? I know it's not great but also heard even while charging the battery drops slowly?

If you have the proper power source (oem or other), it will charge the Deck to full then only run via direct power bypassing the battery while playing. i.e. you can play unlimited duration while plugged in.

[Haruspex]

Absolutely worth it. Games run great off an SD card. The biggest thing to watch out for is installing and uninstalling a lot of games. As it is now the shader compilation data doesn't clear, and some people have run into an issue where the tiny 64 GB SSD fills up.

You're not permanently stuck with that 64 GB though. You can buy a bigger drive and easily install it yourself. I got a 1 TB NVME drive from Microcenter for about $110. I now have twice the storage of the 512 GB model for less than the 256 GB model costs.