Steam Deck Upgrade

[SirKrisBo]

Hi Valve

Given the pace handhelds are being developed with more and more powerful hardware, I'm concerned for the longevity of the Steam Deck.

I'd love to see Valve be a responsible company and reduce e-waste. They could do this by releasing a mainboard upgrade to the existing Steam Deck. I'm completely happy with the rest of the Steam Deck, just give me a little more power now it's available.

My understanding is that they're taking a loss on selling Steam Deck hardware and their business model is to make it up with Steam game sales. If that is indeed true, then surely it's also in their best interest to sell an upgrade kit rather than taking on the cost of replacing all hardware?

Anyway, Valve, if you could pull this off I'm sure it would be welcomed.

[feytharn]

Originally posted by SirKrisBo:

Hi Valve

Given the pace handhelds are being developed with more and more powerful hardware, I'm concerned for the longevity of the Steam Deck.

I'd love to see Valve be a responsible company and reduce e-waste. They could do this by releasing a mainboard upgrade to the existing Steam Deck. I'm completely happy with the rest of the Steam Deck, just give me a little more power now it's available.

My understanding is that they're taking a loss on selling Steam Deck hardware and their business model is to make it up with Steam game sales. If that is indeed true, then surely it's also in their best interest to sell an upgrade kit rather than taking on the cost of replacing all hardware?

Anyway, Valve, if you could pull this off I'm sure it would be welcomed.

Considering that meddling with a console the size and density of the Steam deck is much more fiddly than working on a desktop PC, I am pretty sure encouraging that would increase e-waste instead of decreasing it.

[76561199487896319]

трэш

[Gwarsbane]

Originally posted by SirKrisBo:

Hi Valve

Given the pace handhelds are being developed with more and more powerful hardware, I'm concerned for the longevity of the Steam Deck.

I'd love to see Valve be a responsible company and reduce e-waste. They could do this by releasing a mainboard upgrade to the existing Steam Deck. I'm completely happy with the rest of the Steam Deck, just give me a little more power now it's available.

My understanding is that they're taking a loss on selling Steam Deck hardware and their business model is to make it up with Steam game sales. If that is indeed true, then surely it's also in their best interest to sell an upgrade kit rather than taking on the cost of replacing all hardware?

Anyway, Valve, if you could pull this off I'm sure it would be welcomed.

They are not taking a loss on the hardware, though to get it down to that price has been painful in their own words so they are not making much.

As for replacing the main board, thats easier said then done. Replacing it with something that takes more power, causes more heat and has more storage in it is nearly impossible.

Something will suffer.

If it stays the same, but the chip is faster, it creates more heat, the current cooling method is specifically designed for the current APU and there for will not cool the chip well enough.

It will also use more power, meaning the battery won't last as long. They can't put in a bigger battery into the same form factor.

The only possible thing is to make the case for it bigger, change the cooling system and put in a bigger battery.


So in the end, when the next Steam Deck comes out either buy that one, or wait. If you buy that one, sell off your older one or give it to someone in your family.

Either way, they won't be doing just main board upgrades, there is just not enough space inside them to upgrade anything else.

[Mailer]

Valve is partnered up with iFixit to provide replacement parts for certain areas of the Steam Deck which are not nestled behind a volatile battery; i.e. the thumbsticks and triggers first and foremost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxnr2FAADAs
That alone makes the Steam Deck a lot more e-waste friendly than most other hardware companies, because a lot of other devices do not even try in the slightest for repair-ability, while companies like Apple actively try to harm right-to-repair.
Ripping out the mainboard meanwhile would be an extremely delicate process and absolutely not worth it.

If you've been a customer with Steam for a while, accruing games in your library up until the point when the Steam Deck was released, then you should already have plenty of legacy games that will run absolutely fine on it, like Borderlands 2, Skyrim or The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. There's really no need to pursue any better performance than that, provided you now have plenty of legacy games that you can carry around anywhere you want.

If you are still insistent on getting more performance out of your Steam Deck, then check out CryoUtilities to cram that extra bit of juice out of the Deck, or simply wait for the next revision sometime in the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9EjXYZUqUs

[rawWwRrr]

Originally posted by SirKrisBo:

Given the pace handhelds are being developed with more and more powerful hardware, I'm concerned for the longevity of the Steam Deck..

There were other handheld PCs that came before the Deck which the Deck made obsolete when it was released. The Deck proved the form factor and that there was a market to exploit. It was only a matter of time before others would develop Deck-killers to further exploit that market.

[Haruspex]

Eh, the Deck wasn't really designed to be upgradable like that. Not that it would be impossible to do, but there would be a lot of sacrifices if they wanted to build a main board upgrade replacement. I think it's much more likely that a new Deck will be designed from the ground up for optimum efficiency and performance.

Who knows though, maybe someone will take the Framework[frame.work] approach in a new handheld. Maybe even Framework themselves. I personally think we're going to see a lot more of these PC handhelds going forward, and someone might innovate with a little modularity.

[☁アンナとルカス☁]

I think a good Option would be for Valve to Release a new Steam Deck and people can send in thier old one to get a Discount and Valve salvage parts of the Deck that they can reuse

[Gwarsbane]

Originally posted by ☁アンナとルカス☁:

I think a good Option would be for Valve to Release a new Steam Deck and people can send in thier old one to get a Discount and Valve salvage parts of the Deck that they can reuse

They won't do that just because it would be very expensive to get those back in, clean them up and then put them in other decks, which are now worth even less because you are putting in used, parts that could easily die within a few months.

[SirKrisBo]

Originally posted by Gwarsbane:

As for replacing the main board, thats easier said then done. Replacing it with something that takes more power, causes more heat and has more storage in it is nearly impossible.

Something will suffer.

If it stays the same, but the chip is faster, it creates more heat, the current cooling method is specifically designed for the current APU and there for will not cool the chip well enough.

It will also use more power, meaning the battery won't last as long. They can't put in a bigger battery into the same form factor.

It does not always logically follow that a faster chip will produce more heat and use more power. The new Z1 Extreme in the Ally is said to outperform the SD by 50% at the same 15W TDP. So all other things equal in the SD means higher performance with the same power draw and the same requirements for heat dissipation i.e you can use the existing cooling solution.

Have you actually taken your deck apart and looked inside for yoursef? It's not challenging to remove the mainboard. Just remove the heatsink/heatpipe (I removed mine to install a Honeywell thermal pad) and SSD, and then unplug a few connectors . It comes out very easily.

[SirKrisBo]

Originally posted by Harusp3x:

Eh, the Deck wasn't really designed to be upgradable like that. Not that it would be impossible to do, but there would be a lot of sacrifices if they wanted to build a main board upgrade replacement. I think it's much more likely that a new Deck will be designed from the ground up for optimum efficiency and performance.

Who knows though, maybe someone will take the Framework[frame.work] approach in a new handheld. Maybe even Framework themselves. I personally think we're going to see a lot more of these PC handhelds going forward, and someone might innovate with a little modularity.

Again, I disagree. Pull yours apart and take a look. It's fairly simple to remove the mainboard. Upgrading the Zen 2 + RDNA 2 with the new Z4 + RDNA 3 architecture, but still maintaining a max 15W TDP doesn't seem like it should be a challenge given ASUS can fit it into much smaller hardware.

[Blupanda]

Originally posted by feytharn:

Originally posted by SirKrisBo:

Hi Valve

Given the pace handhelds are being developed with more and more powerful hardware, I'm concerned for the longevity of the Steam Deck.

I'd love to see Valve be a responsible company and reduce e-waste. They could do this by releasing a mainboard upgrade to the existing Steam Deck. I'm completely happy with the rest of the Steam Deck, just give me a little more power now it's available.

My understanding is that they're taking a loss on selling Steam Deck hardware and their business model is to make it up with Steam game sales. If that is indeed true, then surely it's also in their best interest to sell an upgrade kit rather than taking on the cost of replacing all hardware?

Anyway, Valve, if you could pull this off I'm sure it would be welcomed.

Considering that meddling with a console the size and density of the Steam deck is much more fiddly than working on a desktop PC, I am pretty sure encouraging that would increase e-waste instead of decreasing it.

I have been wondering this as well, replacing components still mean the old components get thrown out. And then there’s the fact that creating modular (easily upgradable) hardware requires more components and materials than embedded (not easily upgradable) hardware. But I am not an expert on chipsets so I could be inaccurate.

Hopefully Valve creates new upgraded versions of the Steam Deck sometime soon.