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Please use the new HTML-based guide https://baldsealion.github.io/Steam-Deck-Ultimate-Windows-Guide/
This wiki will no longer receive updates
- This guide is a community provided reference material that you can choose to follow at your own risk - and the risk of your hardware.
- I / We are not responsible for any damage that this may or may not cause. Typically in this guide, warning is given on specific tasks that have risk.
You can still follow 99%(guestimation) of this guide with Windows 10. If you plan to play FIFA 23 or Valorant, use Windows 10, as they do not work on Windows 11.
There are a few reasons though why Windows 11 was chosen:
- Windows 11 is the SteamDeck Windows Community's more popular choice from testing experience
- Typically we have found that Windows 11 provides better touch accuracy
- Touch keyboard that moves apps out of the way instead of overlaying them
- Better support/compatibility for Bluetooth
- Future-proofing -- Microsoft has in the past locked gaming features behind newer Operating Systems(like making Direct X 12 only work on Windows 10)
I absolutely cannot recommend that a microSD be used for Windows Operating System (You can of course, use a microSD for storage for games)
Some have argued about this with me-- and that's fine, you don't need to follow this guide then, or pick and choose what you want to follow. It is after all, your SteamDeck. I won't however assist in troubleshooting your performance problems or Operating System issues if you choose to use a microSD-- you are on your own.
For the long answer as to why, see the bottom article of bottom of this page(or right here): Why I Believe microSD is a Bad Idea
Yes, that can work ok, as long as you mean an actualy Solid State Drive with m2 slot and not a USB Flash Drive(this will perform same or worse than microSD)
Yes.
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If your External SSD is connected to a hub/dock and connected to the charger, when you disconnect the charger, it is likely that Windows will freeze. Possible work-arounds would be sleeping the device first before disconnecting the charger cable, though this has limited success. Possibly more successful would be to hibernate the device first instead of sleep.
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You must use Windows To Go instead of the main Windows Home/Pro installation
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If you are connected through a dock made for the Steam Deck, your bandwidth for throughout may be limited to 5GBps. This is a very YMMV situation, but something to be aware of and will vary based on the dock's technical specifications.
Really, the Steam Deck should be compatible with any external solid state drives. However if you're looking for a specific model, a community member had 4 different external drives and confirmed these 3 are compatible(the 4th was not, model was WD SN750– this is likely an enclosure compatibility issue more than a drive issue):
- Samsung T7 external
- WD SN350
- Team group Vulcan ZForce
This will vary based on a lot of factors(what other apps you have included in Windows outside of this guide, what build of Windows you are using, etc) but typically in community testing, benchmarks perform similar, if not better, than their SteamOS counterparts. Some games can run faster in SteamOS thanks to pre-cached shaders, but you can also implement this using something like DXVK in Windows
Again this will vary based on your system, but if you follow this guide, very comparable! I don't have any fancy benchmarks to show you here, just personal & community testing experience.
Yes! This is covered in Section 1.6 of this guide. However, it is in an experimental phase so use at your own risk(but in testing, there haven't been any issues). This is provided by Ayufan's SteamDeck Tools
Yes.
- You cannot use the SteamDeck in Windows as a remote streaming host(but you can use it as a streaming client). Windows cannot modify GPU clocks currently. You can however, modify Refresh Rate, TDP, Framerate & disable SMT-- more about that later in the guide.
No, you can always revert back, as long as you have a spare USB flash drive and another computer, you can always reinstall SteamOS from scratch using the Recovery Image provided by Valve:
No, you can check here to see if this guide is outdated and incorrect and it is in fact available:
Yes, if your hard drive is 256GB or 512GB(or greater), please proceed to follow the guide
As long as the Dual Boot process is successfully performed, SteamOS will remain intact. There have been some instances where SteamOS could no longer boot after Windows was installed, but you can use the Image Recovery tool and perform a re-install(not re-image) to fix
Windows will add itself to the Bootloader and make itself the primary boot option. This means that when the device is powered on or rebooted, it will automatically load into Windows. To get into SteamOS, with the device powered off, hold Volume - & Power, this will access the boot menu, you can use the D-Pad to select SteamOS and A to launch it
Unfortunately, SteamOS needs a minimum of 32GB, it's nearly impossible to fit both on the 64GB model. You could clone SteamOS to a micro SD, then wipe Windows. This is a lengthy procedure, there is a video about this here - SteamOS on a Micro SD Card
Be warned that if you do this, you will not be able to perform any SteamOS firmware updates, this includes the SteamOS dock(there have been reports of people that have successfully "flashed" the firmware without SteamOS, but it is a risky process and this guide will not be covering that). You will need to erase the SteamDeck partition completely before proceeding with Windows install. This guide will not cover that process, but if you use G-Parted or another similar Partition Tool, then you can erase the SteamOS partition and proceed to install Windows with a USB Flash Drive.
*If you read all of the below information and still want to proceed with a microSD install, I cannot assist you in doing so, or really assist in support(ex. I cannot help troubleshoot your random BSODs)
microSD on Windows I think can be summed up in 3 major issues:
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Life expectancy will be drastically shortened for a micro SD with regular use as Windows Operating System. Why? The cells get corrupted after too much writing. Now you would wonder -- but this is just Flash Memory, isn't that what a Solid State Drive is? Yes-- but the behavior in which they write to their individual cells is different. For a Solid State Drive, it is designed so that each cell is written to evenly, so everyone participates, resulting in a long healthy life. With a microSD, it is designed so that it writes to any free available space it sees first, making it much more common to overwrite the same cells over and over. With Windows having so many disk writes happening, your card can be rendered useless over a short period of time. The claimed “10,000” writes, are testing the entire micro SD card. Most likely, you will fill up the microSD with games and have very little free space. Windows will use that remaining free space over and over for its writes, so the claims of 10,000 writes are not technically valid here.
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Windows is inherently terrible at managing your microSD hardware. You will get occasional, unwanted ejects. If your operating system is on it, it's time for a complete system crash!(ex. BSOD, unexpected reboot, etc). Some drivers work better than others, but this is definitely a Windows issue.
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Your bottleneck will always be your microSD. Solid State Drives have a large cache to store data before it is permanently written, microSDs have a much smaller cache. This is part of the reason their performance is worse. Additionally, they are inherently terrible at random read/write processes, which Windows uses frequently. You might be able to "get by" and have a somewhat stable experience(at best), but just know you will be typically be limiting your SteamDeck gaming performance if you are playing any recent/demanding games.
Below are some technical performance benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark from the SteamDeck Windows community for you to digest(NOTE: Not all benchmarks were performed with the same specifications):
Internal NVME - Samsung PM991A 1TB
SteamDeck Stock eMMC 64GB
External USB - SanDisk
microSD - Integral Ultima Pro
microSD - Samsung Evo Select
microSD - SanDisk Extreme
microSD - SanDisk Ultra
