Steam Deck

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A place to discuss and support all things Steam Deck.

Replacement for r/steamdeck_linux.

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[Discussion] Using my Steam deck as a mini PC ? (self.steamdeck)

submitted 3 days ago by LawfulPirate to c/[email protected]

47 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I've been considering getting a mini PC for my living room, basically only to watch online videos without ads or watch locally stored videos.

Since I have a Steam deck available that I already often dock to my screen for gaming, could I use it instead of buying a new computer?

My main concern is the impact this would have on the battery if it's plugged in for long periods of time, does it bypass the battery when it's plugged in and the battery is full ? Will other components be impacted?

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (6 children)

The Deck can bypass the battery when plugged in. And in fact, does so by default if the battery gets above 90%; it would stop charging the battery and just draw power directly from the USB cable.

With the Decky Loader plugin Powertools you can customize this threshold. I use my Deck as my only PC for work, and have the threshold set to 70%.

For video watching, I can't imagine having any issues! If you have the OLED model (I think), you can even get Wake on WLAN to work if you plan to store it out of view (although that does feel a bit unfortunate for the poor guy, it has such a nice screen...)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (5 children)

So it does charge above 90% when docked, but does not actually use the battery above that? Because I definitely see the battery charging when I have my SteamDeck OLED docked, would be nice to change that though, I guess I need to look into those plugins.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (4 children)

IIRC the stock behavior is to switch to AC at every charge level, but after 90% charging very slowly to 100 and then doing until it falls below 90 again which it would take a long time to do while still powered.

I worded that initial description pretty poorly, given the default behavior is that it always uses AC power if it's connected to AC.

Thankfully, with that Powertools plugin you will get to see exactly what the Deck is doing in terms of power and disable even that slow charge above 90% (which I have done), or even force the battery to charge at full rates above 90, should you need to prepare for a trip or something... Give it a try.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

I see, thanks for the tip, I already got Decky on it so I'll check out that plugin.

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