25 June, 2023: Steam Deck as Primary PC

I've been using the Steam Deck as my primary PC for about 11 months now and it's really been a great success. I had been using Arch Linux on my previous PC, so the move to Steam OS wasn't much of a change as it's an Arch-based distro. I have the deck hooked up to a dock and have a monitor, mouse, and keyboard connected to it so it functions as a normal desktop PC. It just happens to be housed in a mobile shell.

Monitor Choices

Choosing a monitor that was a good fit for the Steam Deck and my lifestyle turned out to be an important consideration. I previously had an ultrawidescreen 1440p monitor that worked well enough. I used this for the first 3 months or so of having the deck and it actually worked fine with it. However, for heavier games a 1440p widescreen resolution was really a bit much for the deck's little APU I was pushing it hard and getting lower framerates. Lowering the resolution is always an option, but if I'm going to be gaming at 1080p then it seems a bit ridiculous to be wasting the electricity to run such a huge monitor. So, I passed the ultrawidescreen off to my partner and looked for something that was a better fit for me.

I ended up finding a great monitor which is focused on power efficiency, the Philips 242B1G. It only uses 7-9W to generate a great 1080p picture with excellent response times. It also has the fun feature of turning itself off when I walk away from the PC, which I initially thought might be a bit annoying, but it's actually pretty nice and saves on a tiny bit more energy.

Modifications

I have my Steam Deck undervolted, which was quite easy to do using the Smokeless_UMAF BIOS tool. This software unlocks a bunch of options which are hidden by default. Undervolting the CPU and GPU lowered the power draw by around 1W at idle while increasing performance and lowering temperatures by about 2-3C. It's not a huge difference but why not do it if the silicon will support it?

While I was in the BIOS options, I went ahead and raised the GPU memory from 1GB to 3GB. This is not a hidden option and can be done by anyone that has a Steam Deck. I find that GPU memory is more important for my normal use cases.

Steam Deck as Gaming Desktop

At 1080p the poor little Steam Deck can finally relax, as it keeps up much better at this resolution. In reality it's designed specifically for the 800p resolution of its internal screen, but I've found that even in heavier titles it can deliver a steady 30fps at 1080p which is plenty good enough for me. It's as playable as modern consoles are, which often deliver the same framerates for similar titles, although they're aiming at 2140p these days.

Nearly all games that I've tried to run on the Steam Deck work unless the developer has specifically introduced a feature to prevent their game from working. Even anti-cheat software for online multiplayer games can easily be configured by the developers to work correctly with the Steam Deck, and many do take this step. On lighter titles the deck can quite easily keep up a smooth 60fps, and it's great for emulation all the way up through the Switch.

Steam Deck as Productivity Machine

Once you have a mouse and keyboard connected the deck is a wonderful device for all of your daily computing needs! I watch a ton of YouTube, browse Gemini, keep up with the news, etc. It's perfectly capable of coding and compiling as needed and its video encoding and decoding are top notch and snappy. The speakers on the front are plenty loud, and as long as you don't need a lot of bass they're great for music and streaming. Watching Twitch is great, everything just works like a dream.

(Minor) Issues

My main gripe about Steam Deck OS is that the packages are never updated. Many of the packages under pacman were last updated in early 2022 and I doubt they ever will be. It seems like Valve just took a snapshot of the Arch package database and then washed their hands of it. I *could* fix this by pointing pacman to the main arch packages, but I think this may break a few things when I update.

It's a teeny tiny issue that impacts hardly anything and almost nobody uses pacman on SteamOS anyway as there are a few roadblocks to turning off read-only mode. Anything you install with pacman also gets overwritten whenever Valve issues an OS update, so there's that. There are just a few programs that I like which aren't on Flathub, which is the primary software source for SteamOS. If you install something from Flathub it works great, updates as normal, and isn't overwritten. So really, I should just get used to what's on Flathub and stop whining. However, a lot of console-based programs aren't on there and never will be.

Also, oddly, some games produced using RPGMaker don't seem to work correctly with Proton. Most of them do, but some don't. This is such a niche issue that I'm not sure if it will ever be addressed, but I thought I'd mention it while I'm complaining. :)

Conclusions!

Using the Steam Deck as your primary PC is not only viable, but it's been a great experience! It's a nice, affordable, power-efficent way to enjoy all of your games as well as take care of whatever your normal daily tasks may be, from web browsing to coding. I'm writing this phlog on the deck right now! Also, technically I can unplug it and use the deck as it was intended, as a mobile device. But I haven't done that in months...

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