Valve changed its Steam Deck without telling anyone

It’s been a few months since the Steam Deck, hybrid PC and laptop from Valve, is being delivered around the world. Being particularly anticipated for a while, Valve’s machine has been pre-ordered by many people and despite a difficult period, Valve is now promising to speed up deliveries. But if you were still waiting for your copy, know that it could be different from the very first deliveries.

Indeed, PC Gamer explains that Valve would have subtly modified one of the internal components of its device. In this case, it is the SSD. However, no official announcement, or even the product sheet, confirms this allegation. It is the owners of the Steam Deck to whom we owe this information. According to them, the original model contained a Phison SSD registered ESMP512GKB4C3-E13TS, which is a custom x4 SSD model.

The new models as for them, would rather be accompanied by an SSD registered E08 (instead of E13 in the serial number) which is an SSD x2 model. This change, however subtle, has yet to be documented by the firm and hasn’t even resulted in any modification to the Steam Deck’s serial number, so there’s almost no way to tell. the difference. The only way is to open your copy and look at the serial number of the SSD itself as indicated above.

What does this affect concretely?

For the moment, the sources are not clear on the consequences of such a modification. It seems that no noticeable change has been noticed in the power of the machine… at least for now. It also seems unlikely that Valve has made a reduction in the performance of its product without having taken the trouble to inform its customers beforehand. We therefore have good hope that the new SSD will not change the experience of players, which so far has proven to be very pleasant.