Best SSD for Steam Deck

The Valve Steam Deck is a great handheld gaming PC. It may lack the power of a full desktop system, but it’s a tad more portable than those behemoths and a bit easier to handle if you're travelling or enjoy playing classic PC games in bed of an evening. It has spawned something of a handheld PC revolution too, and while it may not have been the first handheld gaming PC to hit the market, there’s no doubt that it has transformed the landscape.

Since it was first released, we’ve seen handheld gaming PCs such as the ASUS ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, OneXPlayer OneXFly, and MSI Claw A1M. Valve has released the OLED version of the Steam Deck as well, and it’s fair to say that despite the growing competition, for many gamers, the whole software experience has made the Steam Deck the one to beat.

The Steam Deck initially launched with three different models, with the internal storage being a key differentiator. With the launch of the OLED versions, there are potentially five different models to choose from, although as two of those are being phased out, that again means there are three different models to choose from. And once again, the internal storage is at the top of the spec lists.

Speaking of which, here are the specs for the Steam Deck models:

The soon to be phased out budget model, with a 64GB eMMC SSD was, and still is, rife for an upgrade. 64GB is just not much room by modern game standards, and an upgrade totally makes sense. The same can be said of the other models as well though, with only the top 1TB OLED model really giving you enough room to have several big, sprawling games on the machine at any one time. Throw in a few movies, and even that space can disappear quickly.

Which is why it’s such good news that you can upgrade the SSD in the Steam Deck. The process isn’t as terrifying as you might first think, and Valve worked with iFixit to produce the definitive walkthrough for upgrading the SSD in the Steam Deck.

Given the diminutive nature of the Steam Deck it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to discover that there isn’t much room in the machine for a full-length SSD. Valve has used an M.2 2230 SSD instead of the more common (on PC at least) M.2 2280 SSD. In case you don’t look at the SSDs all day long, those numbers mean it’s 22mm wide and 30mm long, which is tiny. Even so, the good news is that you can get M.2 2230 SSDs with up to 2TB of capacity, such as with the MP600 CORE MINI. Meaning there’s potentially an upgrade available whatever model you have bought.

Here at CORSAIR, we have a couple of M.2 2230 models for you to choose from, with the naming highlighting the underlying technology used by the drive. The MP600 MINI uses TLC NAND flash and available as 1TB and 2TB drives, while the MP600 CORE MINI uses QLC NAND flash and is available in 1TB and 2TB capacities as well. QLC NAND is used in generally more budget focused drives, and they may not offer the fastest performance, but given the Steam Deck uses PCIe 3.0 this isn’t a factor here. Basically, both models are more than fast enough.