Valve has quietly made the Steam deck a little worse

The handheld PC Steam Deck has only been on the market for a few months. However, to all appearances, the manufacturer Valve has quietly entered small hardware downgrade performed. It should not all specimens concern, but this decision naturally raises a number of questions. We catch the most important details for you together.

There is talk of this hardware downgrade

According to a recent report by Hardwarelux magazine, the change is on the English product page of the Steam Deck. on the German side however, is not mentioned. Accordingly, some of the 256 GB and 512 GB models with delivered with a PCIe Gen 3 x2 SSD hard drive instead of PCIe Gen 3 x4. But what exactly is the difference? at the x4 variant the SSD hard drive is connected over a total of four laneswhereas only two lanes in the x2 version come into use.

According to Valve, this change should no impact on performance have while playing. However, according to Hardwarelux, the number of connections can be halved based on slightly longer loading times to make noticable.

Why this hardware downgrade?

The change was made according to the report already in May performed. So far, however, Valve has not felt compelled to communicate this on a larger scale.