Soldato
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Is it possible to get Steam OS onto a PC - like, all the desktop hardware powering the handheld software setup?
*** The Official Steam Deck Thread ***
- Thread starter DrCrabHands
- Start date
Ish. Not Steam OS itself but you can replicate the entire experience. I use Bazzite on my gaming PC and have done for nearly a year.
There are other options but I’ve never looked into them as Bazzite worked perfectly for me from day one. For reference, I have a Ryzen 5700 coupled to a PowerColor 6800XT so established hardware even a year ago. The only time you may have an issue is with cutting edge hardware and even then…
No as they haven't released the Steam OS v3 image yet. Links to the Steam Desk recovery image which tried to install but when booting the actual OS just crashes probably because I have an nVidia GPU.
Bazzite worked very well on my Ally so I'll try that on my spare PC next.
I initially used a USB and it's very slow or just sticks at a black screen. One tip was to use an SD Card in an adapter which worked very quickly.
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Found an interesting shortcut today - I'm sure it's probably been posted here before, if you hold the "..." button down you can use the left stick up/down to change the brightness, much quicker than diving into the settings menu! 
Wondering if anyone has a recommendation for a cheap dock which allows HDR? Could potentially replace my Nvidia shield with the Deck to stream from the PC if there is one!
I have tried with a HP dock I got with a laptop, but that doesn't allow me to enable it.
Quite a few on Amazon between £20-30 which say 4k/60hz but no mention of HDR
Wondering if anyone has a recommendation for a cheap dock which allows HDR? Could potentially replace my Nvidia shield with the Deck to stream from the PC if there is one!
I have tried with a HP dock I got with a laptop, but that doesn't allow me to enable it.
Quite a few on Amazon between £20-30 which say 4k/60hz but no mention of HDR
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Soldato
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Are you sure it's a dock issue and not a streaming issue?.. Can you stream HDR to your Deck? (I'm assuming OLED?)Found an interesting shortcut today - I'm sure it's probably been posted here before, if you hold the "..." button down you can use the left stick up/down to change the brightness, much quicker than diving into the settings menu!
Wondering if anyone has a recommendation for a cheap dock which allows HDR? Could potentially replace my Nvidia shield with the Deck to stream from the PC if there is one!
I have tried with a HP dock I got with a laptop, but that doesn't allow me to enable it.
Quite a few on Amazon between £20-30 which say 4k/60hz but no mention of HDR
Yeah it's an OLED, and it can display HDR fine when running natively and stream HDR fine (as long as it's enabled on the PC).
Tried in all 3 cases with Ori and the Will of the Wisps, with the dock it shows N/A against the HDR setting
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A bit more research and I've found the following:
If I enable HDR on the PC and connect via the dock, I CAN enable HDR in game when streaming from the PC, however it doesn't actually switch to HDR mode on the TV.
I don't appear to be able to enable HDR on any other devices either when connected via the dock, so it's not just the Steam Deck.
I also tried using the DP connection on the dock to connect to my monitor, and still wasn't able to enable HDR on the Steam Deck, either from streaming or running natively.
All of the above leads me to believe it's definitely the dock which is the limitation here, but without having another dock to test with, unfortunately I can't confirm 100%
I have found a "JSAUX" dock on Amazon which does say 4k@120Hz HDR (although only in one of the product images, not the actual text, which is why I didn't find it before), so will give that a go
If I enable HDR on the PC and connect via the dock, I CAN enable HDR in game when streaming from the PC, however it doesn't actually switch to HDR mode on the TV.
I don't appear to be able to enable HDR on any other devices either when connected via the dock, so it's not just the Steam Deck.
I also tried using the DP connection on the dock to connect to my monitor, and still wasn't able to enable HDR on the Steam Deck, either from streaming or running natively.
All of the above leads me to believe it's definitely the dock which is the limitation here, but without having another dock to test with, unfortunately I can't confirm 100%
I have found a "JSAUX" dock on Amazon which does say 4k@120Hz HDR (although only in one of the product images, not the actual text, which is why I didn't find it before), so will give that a go
Further update - apparently streaming HDR to the deck isn't actually possible currently. I can enable HDR on the host PC, but it doesn't actually pass that HDR stream through to the display, so whether the dock supports it or not is irrelevant for me at the moment anyway!
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Associate
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Have you tried sunshine and moonlight? I don't stream to an HDR display so I'm not certain, but I'm sure I've seen notes about it in the docs.
I have - that's what I use on my Shield and it works great. The only issue is when you have an over-enthusiastic 5 year old who keeps accidentally hitting the "PS" button on the controller, returning to the Shield home screen and dumping you out of the game (usually causing it to stop responding to controller input and losing the remote audio device, requiring a run upstairs to reset everything)...
Was hoping to use the SD instead for a more seamless experience, but if I want to use HDR then it seems that's out of the question (at least for now)
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Ah right! Yeah the streaming experience is still far from perfect. I use sunshine due to streaming to the deck from an ultrawide Linux host using gamescope, which makes the built in streaming a bit of a nightmare and easier to tweak in sunshine.I have - that's what I use on my Shield and it works great. The only issue is when you have an over-enthusiastic 5 year old who keeps accidentally hitting the "PS" button on the controller, returning to the Shield home screen and dumping you out of the game (usually causing it to stop responding to controller input and losing the remote audio device, requiring a run upstairs to reset everything)...
Was hoping to use the SD instead for a more seamless experience, but if I want to use HDR then it seems that's out of the question (at least for now)
I can't imagine handing it over to anyone with little or no patience.
It's all far from perfect, but at least for you it's not completely broken!
Hah, yes, it's taken a while for things to get relatively stable; I thought being able to use the SD docked would be the final part of the puzzle, but so close and yet so far!
I should really bite the bullet and build a "games console" PC running SteamOS, but seems a waste to spend £££ when it's already (mostly) working
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Yeah and then you have yet another PC to upgrade
I feel much the same. One PC to rule them all!
The 256Gb LCD? I wouldn't see it as "cut down". The LCD is decent, battery life slightly worse than the OLED. Game performance will be 99% the same.
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If you think you'll get plenty of play out of it just go for it. It's a great piece of kit
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I nabbed a "base level" 256GB, as it was valve refurb, so super cheap. Just lobbed a 1TB SSD in it, still cheaper than full price
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Work out your use case. Like many I'm a working Dad, time limited, don't want to be in office every evening playing on PC. Steam Deck allows quick pick up & play, in the living room with the other half. (I always argue watching TV is hardly "spending time together" - but at least in the same room... SD allows that).
I've managed to get more quality gaming in the past 6 months than I have the past 6 years probably.
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Caporegime
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Another way is to have your gaming pc downstairs hehe