Solving Steam Deck Shader Storage with a 61.44TB SSD

The essence of this unconventional amalgamation lies in its absurdity. We chose the Solidigm P5336 enterprise SSD, offering a staggering 61.44TB capacity. While the capacity is amazing, it leverages an enterprise U.2 form factor, which is problematic given the Steam Deck’s M.2 slot. As such, an M.2 to external U.2 adapter from NFHK was employed as the bridge, paired with an Icy Dock enclosure to hold the drive.

Unnecessary modifications of the steam deck that make stationary? I could not resist posting this here ;) My question to all the steam deck fans out there: Would you be able to fill this 60 TB beast with games?

petrescatraian,

@cron I don't know if I'd fill one of those 60TB with either Steam or non-Steam games. But I have a different question: why struggling with incompatible hardware? Like, okay, you got an adapter, but isn't that thing too physically big for your Deck?

ekZepp,
@ekZepp@lemmy.world avatar

I think that beyond 1, max 2 tb is just a waste to have more storage, you’ll just end up stuck with the " Netflix dilemma" all the time. Every game is already in your Steam library (or the other ones) as it is. Even if the wifi download take time, with a cheap dock and a cable connected to the modem you can download all your title quite quickly. With 2 tb there should be also enough room for “free games” files.

cron,

I think it is hard to set a limit, as some games have 2 GB and others have 200 GB. Depending on the games (and mods) you like, it is possible to fill a 2 TB disk with just a handful of games. Other gamers might have 100+ games installed on the 512 GB model.

Smokeydope,
@Smokeydope@lemmy.world avatar

Please dont give game developers any more excuses to bloat their games I have enough pain with 50-100gb titles, when they get a whiff of this they’ll cream their pants and bloat them to a terabyte per game.

ramble81,

3D print a custom back for that and make it portable again. Though I wonder how much power the drive consumes.

Edit: NM, between the external power supply required and the fact the first picture is it just sitting on the Steam Deck and not actually integrated, you’d be carrying it around extra. Maybe mod the deck and put the drive in a housing so it’s easier to hook up.

e0qdk,
@e0qdk@kbin.social avatar

OK, that's fun and all, but how much does that crazy SSD cost? :p

normanwall,

deleted_by_author

    •
    SkySyrup,

    huh, that’s not the worst price, was expecting it to be much worse

    e0qdk,
    @e0qdk@kbin.social avatar

    Wow, that's a heck of a lot cheaper than I expected. I mean, it's still more than I'm willing to pay for it on my own, but it's not the "haha no way could I ever buy one" level of impossible I was expecting. My boss probably wouldn't bat an eye if I asked for one to stick in a workstation... Hmm.

    PM_ME_YOUR_SNDCLOUD,

    I had to read the title three times before it clicked that it said 64 TERABYTES and not gigabytes.

    Holy smokes.

    Synthead,

    Would you be able to fill this 60 TB beast with games?

    Why would you do that? You can only play one game at a time. You’ll really only enjoy a few games at most a day. Just keep the game data on the Deck that you plan to play.

    This is like keeping every website you know open in a tab, just in case you plan to visit it.

    Odum,

    The problem with that is more download speed, imo. Yeah, you can only play 1 game at a time, but if it’s going to take you a day to install another game, why not have a few? And then ofc different games satisfy different needs. Like you can have a long JRPG, a shooter you’re playing with your friends, a casual indie game you’re working on.

    You can only play one game at a time, but that doesn’t stop you from playing multiple games over some days

    AnUnusualRelic,
    @AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world avatar

    Now you can enjoy five terabytes of updates each time you turn the deck on. Isn’t that nice?

    BirdyBoogleBop,

    Steam has an update schedule so only updates a couple games at a time unless you force the updates.

    skulblaka,
    @skulblaka@kbin.social avatar

    More frequently, I boot the Deck and immediately start a game so it has no time to download anything, and then put it to sleep when I'm done playing. So when using what I would expect to be the standard use case, the deck downloads nothing at all ever until I actually take the time to wake it up and then let it cook for an hour or two, or manually force an update on a game I want to play but can't because there's an update out.

    I find it hard to believe that Valve expected people to just keep their Deck sitting around with the screen on for multiple hours doing nothing but updating. My Switch downloads updates on sleep mode when plugged into power. The PS5 and Xbox do it. The PS4 did it. Why can't the deck at least have a toggle option for it?

    Stampela,

    Doing it the PS3 way could be the least complex option: just auto turn on 30 seconds to check if there’s updates every day, download if needed. On the deck it would also require a power check (just don’t if it’s not plugged in) and a further check if it’s a connection marked as having limited data. Still a decent solution imo.

    Synthead,

    This is what my point is. You don’t need 60 TiB of games on a device.

    SteveTech,

    If you haven’t worked it out, that whole project was definitely more about because we can, than any sort of sensible reason.

    Synthead,

    Hah, yeah, and it’s awesome that you can do this with a Deck. It is just a computer, after all 😄

    lemann,

    This is like keeping every website you know open in a tab, just in case you plan to visit it.

    I’m in this photo and I don’t like it

    hydroptic,

    This is like keeping every website you know open in a tab, just in case you plan to visit it.

    Yeah, and what kind of an utter moron would do something like that? 😅

    Honestly it feels like there’s something wrong with my brain that just stops me from making good use of bookmarks (and that something might actually be the ADHD, now that I think about it.)

    Generally I just forget that I bookmarked something, so keeping a tab open serves as a sort of reminder to get back that page – right now I have 4 tabs “bookmarked” with a bunch of different WiFi AP models I was looking into, and seeing those tabs reminds me that yeah I need to do that shit at some point.

    Yes, in theory I could just use the reminder application that comes with my frickin’ operating system, but somehow that always eventually goes to shit too 😂

    averyminya,

    No, I would not. I’m not sure anyone would be able to fill 60tb of games, that is roughly 600 100gb games?

    I have a library of nearly 1,200 + 50 + free games from Epic (some duplicates - say another 50?) and I’m fairly certain all of them installed would only take up maybe 1/3rd.

    I currently have 6tb of SSD filled with games (181 on steam + say 25 between other launchers) and 8tb of HDD storage (with 156 games downloaded). Let’s call it an even 350games at 10TB, that would mean 60TB is 3,500 games of variable storage size (largest game is ~170gb most between 1gb and 25gb). If we throw in emulated games maybe we can add some ratio of games/gbs if that matters.

    Bad estimate math but I think it’s close enough for gauging just how many games one would need to own in order to fill up 60TB. That said, with shader cache maybe we’d be closer to the 2,000 game mark, with the rest of the space being used by shaders? Lol.

    Now, I like having a lot of games readily available. It comes in use more often that people assume and it’s nice having a curated selection of games available. However, I find that at just 1,000 games curating this list takes some time, deciding what game fits better on PC or handheld, if it’s a game I’m even interested in, etc. So to own and actively curate triple the number of games… I’d need far fewer hobbies and far more time for gaming, lmao!

    averyminya,

    All this said, the realization that I could download my entire steam library onto a single steam deck… Now that seems enticing. However, I feel it brings along a new issue itself… Everytime you turn on the deck you will be waiting for hours as the shaders update, lmao!

    cron,

    Just imagine how long it would take if 100+ games are updating every time you turn on the deck. It would probably be pretty unusable in the main UI.

    averyminya,

    With my 512gb it took maybe 10 to 15 minutes last night after being offline for a couple weeks on a road trip. I could only imagine a list an order of magnitude larger…

    That said, I do think the main UI is generally pretty okay when they’re updating. The downloads page itself though would actually be unusable though I think, scrolling through a list of games that size would take so long, and each time you manually update something at the very bottom, it moves it and brings you back up to the top… yet another long, long scroll to queue the update for the next lmao!

    ripcord,
    @ripcord@kbin.social avatar

    It's a reason I disable updates generally

    code,

    my steam library and all dlc is just over 10tb. Thats for 976 games. I need to step up my game

    cron,

    The factory library must grow.

    Dagnet,

    Get a couple of COD games and suddenly 61tb won’t be enough

    AngryCommieKender, (edited )

    My Skyrim install with mods is just over 1.5 GTB you just need more mods

    Edit: just woke up, totally mistyped the wrong prefix

    cron,

    Skyrim base install size is 6 GB

    AngryCommieKender,

    I mistyped that should have been TB

    Mango,

    Mistyped? Is that TB instead of GB?

    AngryCommieKender,

    Yeah, just woke up when I typed that, lol thanks

    nottheengineer, (edited )

    60TB is a lot. My library almost fits on a 4TB drive, but I don’t play modern COD or Battlefield. All the huge AAA games nowadays are huge in storage cost as well, so it’s probably be possible to fill it all up.

    Edit: Fixed 4GB typo

    cron,

    A 4 GB drive is really not much for a library, or did you mean TB?

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