Is Building a PC Dumb when the Steam Deck Exists?

[mynameGeoff]

 

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[ToboRobot]

Come on Valve, sell us a Single Board Computer!

[Inception9269]

I'll take a full fledged pc over the Steam Deck any day of the week.

[ToboRobot]

21 minutes ago, Inception9269 said:

I'll take a full fledged pc over the Steam Deck any day of the week.

Unless that day of the week requires travel, or other situation where portability matters.  It's hard to take a full fledged PC to the beach or pass the time on the train.

[GeorgeMKane]

58 minutes ago, GeoffLMG said:

 

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Steam Deck is great, but offers very limited upgradeability. I would say a $700-800 laptop would be more worth it even (usually means you'll get something between a RTX 3050 to a 3050Ti though, on the NVIDIA side of gpu's (and the laptop would have to be like $50-150 off regular price)). If you don't have the money right away, just put it on a credit card and pay it off over time. It'll last you longer than the steam deck would too. Valve hasn't had a great track record on the hardware side though, so the warranty might be better with the laptop too. Hope that all changes with the steam deck though, because it is intuitive still.

 

P.S. The Steam Deck being sold only on steam limits their profits. Should be sold at best buy and micro center tbh.

[Shreyas1]

1 hour ago, Inception9269 said:

I'll take a full fledged pc over the Steam Deck any day of the week.

You clearly haven't experienced playing video games in bed then. 

[Shreyas1]

41 minutes ago, GeorgeMKane said:

Steam Deck is great, but offers very limited upgradeability. I would say a $700-800 laptop would be more worth it even (usually means you'll get something between a RTX 3050 to a 3050Ti though, on the NVIDIA side of gpu's (and the laptop would have to be like $50-150 off regular price)). If you don't have the money right away, just put it on a credit card and pay it off over time. It'll last you longer than the steam deck would too. Valve hasn't had a great track record on the hardware side though, so the warranty might be better with the laptop too. Hope that all changes with the steam deck though, because it is intuitive still.

 

P.S. The Steam Deck being sold only on steam limits their profits. Should be sold at best buy and micro center tbh.

Performance isn't everything. Tbh there are plenty of great games that you can play for the foreseeable future on steam deck. Games like Skyrim, Elden Ring, Fallout New Vegas, etc. all run great and will continue to run great as long as the system exists. I think if you're looking to play mostly single player RPGs the steam deck is a much more enjoyable experience than gaming laptops or even desktops.

 

On the other hand if you want to play competitive FPS games the steam deck kinda sucks for that. 

 

gaming laptops aren't all that upgradable either. In fact most are probably less repairable than the deck too. 

[Ultraforce]

32 minutes ago, Shreyas1 said:

You clearly haven't experienced playing video games in bed then. 

Personally I'd take desktop PC over Steam Deck, but that's because I have a phone or one of the various generations of portable Nintendo consoles I can play in bed instead.

[MrMonty27]

2 hours ago, GeoffLMG said:

 

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Personally, I'd struggle using the steam deck as a portable device because it isn't light and also i don't like the positions for the joysticks and buttons as well as the mouse pad. I would much prefer a switch style joycon on each side. Most of the time with the switch i have some source of power to charge it with me so the smaller battery life doesn't really matter to me.

 

As much as i love the idea for the steam deck i think it tries too hard to try and incorporate many niches and ideas causing it to be worse as a portable games console and not able to perform as well as a desktop either.

 

I hope valve continue to develop the steam deck and that in a few iterations/versions can make it a really compelling portable console while also being able to be a pretty good desktop. I just don't think that we are there yet.

[GodAtum]

Why did they compare performance on different OSes? Its like comparing apples and oranges!

[Inception9269]

2 hours ago, ToboRobot said:

Unless that day of the week requires travel, or other situation where portability matters.  It's hard to take a full fledged PC to the beach or pass the time on the train.

Why tf would you bring a gaming device to the beach? I'll stick to my phone, I don't feel the need to game when I'm outside my home.

[Inception9269]

1 hour ago, Shreyas1 said:

You clearly haven't experienced playing video games in bed then. 

You do know you can play PC games from bed, right? If your PC is in bedroom can just use an HDMI cable and a wireless controller.

[Inception9269]

14 minutes ago, GodAtum said:

Why did they compare performance on different OSes? Its like comparing apples and oranges!

Linus can't use Linux without breaking it, so he always makes it seem like Windows is the only way to play games on PC. Honestly the more I got into Linux this year the more I get annoyed by him with the way he handles anything related to the platform. The dude doesn't want to do his homework to learn how to use said platform, goes into it expecting windows level performance out of the box, and expecting it to just play well with everything he has without actually learning how to make it work. The learning curve is similar to someone going from Windows to MacOS and vice versa, but to him Linux should just work the exact same way as Windows.

[ToboRobot]

15 minutes ago, Inception9269 said:

Why tf would you bring a gaming device to the beach? I'll stick to my phone, I don't feel the need to game when I'm outside my home.

Because in Tofino the water is cold, but it is a beautiful place to hang out and smoke weed and read a book, or play some games alone.

Why play a crappy phone game when you can play a real game from Steam anywhere?

I don't have a Steam deck myself, but I could see why some people would.

[Shreyas1]

34 minutes ago, Inception9269 said:

You do know you can play PC games from bed, right? If your PC is in bedroom can just use an HDMI cable and a wireless controller.

PC in bedroom can suck because of the heat. Experienced that one firsthand. 

[Inception9269]

1 hour ago, ToboRobot said:

Because in Tofino the water is cold, but it is a beautiful place to hang out and smoke weed and read a book, or play some games alone.

Why play a crappy phone game when you can play a real game from Steam anywhere?

I don't have a Steam deck myself, but I could see why some people would.

Never once said there wasn't a reason to not get one, or that people shouldn't. Just that I'd take a regular PC over one any day.

[Inception9269]

1 hour ago, Shreyas1 said:

PC in bedroom can suck because of the heat. Experienced that one firsthand. 

I've always had my main, beefy PC in other rooms, with my secondary ones generally speaking being more tame. Except in the case of my living room PC, which I use mainly as a Plex server, with it having a Ryzen 3700x and a AiO 2080 Super. That one is pretty OP considering I barely ever play games on it, it being a case where I was using them on my main PC until I upgraded it, and I want to hold onto those components in case I need them instead of trying to sell them.

[Radium_Angel]

3 hours ago, Inception9269 said:

The learning curve is similar to someone going from Windows to MacOS

Having just made the switch, I found the learning curve almost non-existent. I've had much more issues picking up Linux, but that's neither here nor there,

 

But back on topic (of sorts)

The Steam Deck is *nix based, what if (tinfoil hat on now) Gabe specifically chose that option to push *nix into the next level and make it a solid viable option for gamers instead of the default choice of Windows?

Because if you are building a portable gaming x86 unit from the ground up, the logical and obvious choice would be to run Windows, but Gabe specifically chose not to go that way, and instead getting into the weeds with *nix, so it seems to me he's got an ulterior motive... 

[whm1974]

2 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

Having just made the switch, I found the learning curve almost non-existent. I've had much more issues picking up Linux, but that's neither here nor there,

 

But back on topic (of sorts)

The Steam Deck is *nix based, what if (tinfoil hat on now) Gabe specifically chose that option to push *nix into the next level and make it a solid viable option for gamers instead of the default choice of Windows?

Because if you are building a portable gaming x86 unit from the ground up, the logical and obvious choice would be to run Windows, but Gabe specifically chose not to go that way, and instead getting into the weeds with *nix, so it seems to me he's got an ulterior motive... 

Well Gabe is doing something right. To bad the Steam Machines didn't go anywhere. Valve could have SteamOS better, like installing the Distro w/o wiping all the partitions when installing. But that is another beast then the Steam Deck.

 

Hopefully The Deck will out last all previous promising items.

[Birblover12]

6 hours ago, Inception9269 said:

Linus can't use Linux without breaking it, so he always makes it seem like Windows is the only way to play games on PC. Honestly the more I got into Linux this year the more I get annoyed by him with the way he handles anything related to the platform. The dude doesn't want to do his homework to learn how to use said platform, goes into it expecting windows level performance out of the box, and expecting it to just play well with everything he has without actually learning how to make it work. The learning curve is similar to someone going from Windows to MacOS and vice versa, but to him Linux should just work the exact same way as Windows.

To be fair, he did give Linux a very fair shot in his Daily Driving Linux video. Personally, I think the biggest issue about Linux is people who say "use Linux it can do most of the things Windows can do!", and then when people try to switch from Windows to Linux and start encountering issues, suddenly people will say "well you just have to do x, y, z inside this terminal to get [insert thing here] to work". 

 

I agree that Windows and Linux are different in their own ways, and that's something people will have to know ahead of time. It's just the sudden requirement of having to know things (like running commands in a terminal for example) just to get basic functionality out of the OS that is often obfuscated by Linux shills, and then new users often get the short end of the straw because of that.

 

6 hours ago, Inception9269 said:

The learning curve is similar to someone going from Windows to MacOS and vice versa

I disagree, MacOS and Windows fundamentally are pretty similar, Linux is more of a "do it yourself" type of OS. I've tried all 3, and I would think that Linux has the steepest learning curve of all the major OS's.

[Inception9269]

2 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

Having just made the switch, I found the learning curve almost non-existent. I've had much more issues picking up Linux, but that's neither here nor there,

 

But back on topic (of sorts)

The Steam Deck is *nix based, what if (tinfoil hat on now) Gabe specifically chose that option to push *nix into the next level and make it a solid viable option for gamers instead of the default choice of Windows?

Because if you are building a portable gaming x86 unit from the ground up, the logical and obvious choice would be to run Windows, but Gabe specifically chose not to go that way, and instead getting into the weeds with *nix, so it seems to me he's got an ulterior motive... 

I first messed around with Linux way back in 2015 or 16. Ubuntu and Linux Mint were the only ones I tried back then. I was pretty tech savvy back then, but was nowhere near on the level that I am now. I was unable to make Ubuntu work for me when it came to my main PC which used a GTX 980. Ubuntu and Mint I had working decently enough on a laptop of mine, but I didn't understand a single thing about the platform, and it was completely alien to me. Literally the only positive of Linus' one month Linux challenge (which I can't rewatch now without facepalming every other minute) is that it brought the platforms existence back to memory for me, with it being something I kind of forgot about til then, even tho he did some other videos involving it before that challenge.

 

I don't like the SteamOS, I tried the HoloISO a couple months ago, and it had horrible performance and issues on my system since I had an Nvidia GPU. The biggest positive of the Steam Deck is that it's helping to pull attention to the Linux platform, and getting more companies to start supporting it.

 

Also as far as Linux learning curve goes, I never used MacOS. But I do think Linux has a steep curve. I bricked so many installs this year learning the platform. I did watch a ton of guides tho from people like DistroTube, The Linux Experiment, and a whole bunch of other people that helped me learn a lot about the platform to make the experience easier, to where I consider myself an experienced user of the platform by this point. I've used Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mint, PopOS, Fedora, Nobara, Arch Linux, Manjaro, and currently EndeavourOS which is my favorite of all the ones I've used. If I had to switch to another for whatever reason, Nobara or Arch Linux will likely be the ones I'd go with.

[Inception9269]

28 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

Well Gabe is doing something right. To bad the Steam Machines didn't go anywhere. Valve could have SteamOS better, like installing the Distro w/o wiping all the partitions when installing. But that is another beast then the Steam Deck.

 

Hopefully The Deck will out last all previous promising items.

One of the big things in my opinion that helps with the performance of the current SteamOS vs the ones Valve used back with the Steam machines is that the current one is based on Arch, whereas the original ones were on Debian. The Arch platform being significantly more up to date, with a more advanced kernel which brings better performance and efficiency.

[SlashedM]

Lovely timing for the video, while the actual quality may be mediocre, new wise, there is a 1650 + i5-12450H HP for 479, so take that as you may, or spend the extra bit for a 3050ti laptop

[AndreiArgeanu]

16 hours ago, Inception9269 said:

The learning curve is similar to someone going from Windows to MacOS and vice versa, but to him Linux should just work the exact same way as Windows.

MacOS is relatively intuitive to use, the learning curve is lesser than the Linux one partly because Linux lacks software support, something as simple as installing office or any of the adobe creative cloud suite for example is a complicated process if possible at all. The use of the command line in Linux feels almost mandatory. I think the expectation is that Linux should be as intuitive as Windows or MacOS which is why he draws comparisons between the way things are done in Windows and the way they are done in Linux since that's his main reference.

[WkdPaul]

18 hours ago, Shreyas1 said:

You clearly haven't experienced playing video games in bed then. 

Wait, you guys don't have phones ?

 

/s