I have a Steam Deck that is connected to my TV 90% of the time. I’d like to replace this with a PC that has maybe slightly higher specs than the Steam Deck. Are there any pre-built solutions that are really affordable?
Everybody in a PC community is going to go to “build your own” by default, but it really isn’t the only option.
It is true you won’t match the price-to-performance on the Deck, but if you’re willing to go a bit higher you can try a few things. For one, you can try to buy used. I would like to see a PC in person before I do that, but there may be options, depending on where you live. The good news is that upgrading from a Steam Deck anything with a dedicated GPU should be a nice boost in performance, so you can go for entry level or older desktop parts. If you don’t mind a bit of bulk or have a convenient place to stash it you can also skip the whole mini-PC space, which is typically sold at a premium, and just buy a big old tower.
And then there’s laptops. Used laptops devaluate a lot, which means you can find decent entry-level laptops with 30 series GPUs that will still outperform the Deck by a lot for a few hunderd bucks. Again, I’d like to look at one of those before I buy, but if you don’t care about the screen quality or the cosmetics there are some affordable used options out there. Just… check the noise when gaming, because some of those sound like a hair dryer on high power mode.
As others have said, it depends on your budget and specific use case, but if you’re using a handheld as a console attached to a screen you should be able to cobble something more functional together. Just maybe not as hassle-free or reliable.
If you’re looking for the best bang for your buck nothing beats assembling it yourself. A pre-built is always much more expensive to pay for assembly.
That’s not “out of the box” though
Dock + big ass fan directed at steam deck vents + overclock the steam deck?
Define affordable, and also what you want out of it, 4K? High framerates? 1080p?
In general I’d say, unless you’re willing and able to spend 7-800+, the steam deck is giving you the best value to performance for “out of the box”/prebuilt.
If you want something better with any hope of approaching the price point of a steam deck you’ll have to build your own PC
Yeah, you have to define affordable. For some, that’s $300, others $3000.
Quick answer is just go to pcpartpicker.com and look at other people’s builds for your budget.
Bang for your buck… Just go midrange AMD cpu, don’t worry about core count. Most games aren’t cpu bottlenecked like they used to be.
Motherboard, just grab a reliable brand, don’t overspend.
16gb ram, speed won’t matter much and it’s not that much more than 8gb.
1tb m.2 ssd drive. You can always get more storage later
Cheap case, good quality power supply probably 600 watt would get 90% use cases.
Don’t forget to budget for windows or use Linux if you go that path, your monitor, mouse/keyboard, speakers or headphones.
After all that, than buy the highest end graphics card left in your budget.
You’ll need to define a budget for “really affordable”, but it’s going to be hard regardless to match the price performance of the deck. Is $700-$1000 affordable? That’s probably the ball park for a mid-tier prebuilt. You maybe be able to get lower with an Intel Arc option (HP has some of these at $600)
I’ve always built my own PCs. And from my experience, it’s worth not to be cheap on the parts. There is always a sweet spot or a special offer and the biggest task is to find it for each part.
If you’re going to be cheap, you’ll build a PC that lasts ~2 years.
Its possible to find pre-built that are decent value. Browsing through newegg just now, there are some for ~$800 with a 4060, which is not a terrible value. Just do some research, see what CPU and GPU are good values and available already built. Also you’ll want to determine whether you want ray-tracing, and to focus on getting an Nvidia GPU if you do. Just try to read the descriptions to make sure you get all the features you want, some motherboards on prebuilds are the bare minimum, so no wifi or bt like my example, which apparently comes with a wifi usb adapter lmaoo.
Old Dell workstation. You probably won’t be able to play anything from the last 10 years, but other than that you can probably play it. Those old workstations are like $150 USD usually, sometimes $200.
EDIT: Didnt see you mention you already have a Steam Deck. For something comparable, you will probably end up paying the same or only slightly less, not worth it IMO. Just stay on Steam Deck for now.
