Valve acknowledged that he used a downgrade on the hardware configuration Steam Deck add an SSD drive that operates at a lower speed than originally incorporated. The company has already stated that this change does not affect performance, but the debate has already taken place.

The original Steam Deck specs showed that the 256 and 512 gigabyte models used SSDs over PCIe Gen 3 x4, however the current English specs note that “some 256GB and 512GB models come with a PCIe Gen 3 x2 SSD. In our tests, we did not notice any effect on game performance between x2 and x4”.

The intention of this downgrade that can be found in certain Steam Deck units would guarantee production and delivery to customers. Valve announced last week that it intends to “ship more than double Steam Deck units every week”something I would add PCIe Gen 3 x2 SSDs for.

Steam Deck designer Lawrence Yang told PCGAMER “Many Steam Deck components are sourced from multiple suppliers to improve redundancy and production capacity. One of our SSD suppliers provides a PCIe Gen 3 x4 NVMe SSD, while another provides a x2 SSD (2 lanes)”.

Steam Deck specifications according to the website in English.

RGetting a dual lane PCIe Gen 2 SSD means bandwidth is limited to 2GB per second instead of 4GB/s offers four lanes (x4). However, Valve insists that it has thoroughly tested both components and that they noted no effect on performancesomething that, if indeed true, would be partly due to the layout of the Steam Deck itself, which has the same architecture as a standard x86 mini-PC, but served as a hybrid video game console.

In short, buyers now face the lottery of whether their Steam Deck can incorporate a two-lane or four-lane PCIe Gen 3 SSD. Perhaps on a performance level, the impact is not significant, and Valve’s reasons are understandable considering the problems it has with the official dock, but in the end paying the same for different features will certainly not be to everyone’s taste.