Dear Gabe (opens in new tab), Steam Deck's 2230 form factor NVMe drives are starting to dwindle further. Now is the time to tinker and void your warranty. If you are asking "Is the Steam Deck SSD upgrade worth it? I will explain it for you.

I compared each of Sabrent's new collection of Rocket NVMe 2230 SSDs to the Steam Deck's own internal NVMe drive to see if upgrading the Steam Deck SSD would visibly improve your handheld experience The results are shown below. Or it may simply be a drag.

So we are on the same page, but your Deck may have a different SSD than mine. Because Valve downgraded the internal SSD (opens in new tab) on the steam Deck, so it's a bit of a lottery as to whether the 256GB or 512GB models will have a PCIe Gen 3x4 or Gen 3x2 SSD. My Deck Gen 3x4 512GB (ESMP512GKB4C3-E13TS) SSD, tested with a Phison controller and 96-Layer TLC flash memory. [Sabrent's Gen 4x4 drives in 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB capacities sell for $50, $90, and $170, respectively. That's considerably more than I would pay for a 2280 form factor drive of the same capacity, but I'm convinced. So far, there are few smaller, faster competitors. [Each uses 177-layer 3D NAND flash technology and is rated at 5GB/s, so no matter how many lanes RNGabe has to grace your Steam Deck, you should see real, tangible improvements over the Steam Deck internal SSD. Whether that translates into real-world performance and potentially draining your Deck's battery is another question.

My Deck's original Phison SSD chugs along at 2,292 MB/sec and 1,176 MB/sec read/write speeds; 4K random reads are 54 MB/sec and writes are 235 MB/sec. This random performance is noteworthy for Steam Deck users because it simulates the actual intermittent accesses that the drive receives on a daily basis.

For file transfers, it took an average of 36 seconds to transfer a 7 GB game folder from one location to another on the original drive. For game load times, both Disco Elysium and Disney Dreamlight Valley took about 20 seconds. This is my standard time.

Since power consumption is another consideration, we kept an eye on the Steam Deck's power usage during loading and found an average power increase of about 6W over the original SSD for many games. This should be noted as there is concern that replacing the Steam Deck SSD may increase power consumption.

When a Sabrent Rocket 512GB SSD of similar capacity was installed in the Steam Deck, the average power consumption was around 2W. With read/write speeds of 3,566MB/s and close to 2,853MB/s, we would have expected higher power consumption, but considering that games that used to take 20 seconds to load a new game now launch in less than 14 seconds, and 30-second loads have been reduced by 11 seconds, the increase in power consumption does not seem to be a The SSDs did not seem to take much longer to boot up.

In other words, there appears to be no trade-off between performance and power consumption.

When it comes to actual random performance, the 512GB Sabrent boasts a 78MB/sec read speed over the Phison and a 252MB/sec write speed. In other words, the 7GB file transfer time was significantly reduced from 36 seconds to 14 seconds.

As for the 256GB drive, although downgraded from my original SSD in terms of capacity, the 7GB file transfer is 14 seconds, with a read speed almost identical to the 512GB version, and a slightly lower write speed of 1,969 MB/sec. Random 4K write results were often slightly better than their middle siblings, but there was no improvement in load times compared to Deck's original SSDs.

Overall, there is no significant difference in performance versus its larger-capacity sibling SSDs, although power consumption is at least improved over Deck's larger-capacity SSDs. However, it is nearly identical to the 512GB in terms of file transfers and load times. Some load times that took 40+ seconds on Deck's original SSD were cut in half or more, while some games took even longer to load. A bit fickle, to be sure.

Read speeds were again 3,566 MB/sec, but write speeds were much higher at 3,046 MB/sec. Random scores, however, remained virtually unchanged. In other words, while read speeds appear impressive, they do not seem to translate to actual use.

Price is always a factor when recommending an SSD. So let's consider the 2280 form factor in terms of price.

A 1TB version of the best gaming SSD available today, the WD Black SN850X (opens in new tab), can often be had for the price of a 512GB Sabrent Rocket 2230. It's true that this is less of a bargain than upgrading a PC. It's like comparing the price of apples and oranges: both are nutritional sources, but they use different cases and manufacturing processes, so there is little comparison in terms of price. Of course, there will always be price differences for things that are launched with a very specific market in mind. And we deckheads are very specific.

For owners of 512GB decks, there will be a trade-off no matter what happens. If you have speed in mind, simply replacing it with a Sabrent drive of the same capacity may improve load times and maybe even improve power consumption a bit.

There is also the option of a $170 1TB drive, but depending on how you use it, it may leave a mark on your wallet and shorten battery life.

Similarly, owners of a 256GB Deck will only save $30 by upgrading to a 512GB drive, and while the performance improvement is solid, it is a bit difficult to recommend.

On the other hand, for users currently using the lowest capacity Steam Deck, a 512GB Sabrent drive is a no-brainer. Especially considering that the combined price of both is $160 less than the 512GB Deck; even the 256GB option is a great choice if you want to save $30 on something as fast as its 512GB sibling. If you can forgo a bit of storage capacity, the 64GB Deck is sure to blow away whatever eMMC SSD you're selling.