The Steam Deck: A PC Console with Power and Possibilities

When it comes to media playback on this device, I have to say that I'm really impressed. The 1440p 144Hz monitor is just incredible, and right now I did want to show off a little bit of 4K 60 playback from YouTube. In fact, when I went into the stats for nerds up in the top left corner, it was clear that this thing handles media playback really well. You can stream your favorite apps or play back content from an internal or external hard drive - it's all pretty seamless.

Of course, we're not here just to talk about media playback. We're here to test out the Steam Deck as a gaming console, and I've got a bunch of PC games lined up for that purpose. I've also added a few emulators directly to Steam, which means I can launch them from this very menu. There are tons of ways to go about this, but in this video, we'll be testing out some Wii and PS3 emulators.

One thing that's clear is that the Steam Deck has some serious power under the hood. We've got a 5700 series APU at work here, which is no joke. Injustice 2 at 1080p low with no FSR is running really well, like it sits not bad at all. And from any of these games, I can always access the menu - go to exit and it'll bring us right back into the Steam Deck UI or game pad UI.

However, there are a few things that I need to mention before we get started with the gaming tests. For one thing, I'm having a really hard time playing racing games with the Steam controller. This is really crazy - this is the first time I've ever tried to play a racing game with it and I really need to spend a few days with it just to get used to it. So, for now, I'll just let these tests run out.

It's worth noting that we're working with Vega graphics here, which might seem like an issue given the Steam Deck's specs. But what I've learned is that this CPU will walk all over that GPU - and it's got eight cores and 16 threads at its disposal, with a max clock speed of 4.6. This means that emulation is absolutely amazing on this setup.

In fact, we've had some incredible results with the Dolphin Emulator for Wii emulation. I'm using it to play games like Super Mario Galaxy at 1440p, and it's running smoothly. The Vulcan backend is also working wonders here - Skate 3, anyone? I've got it running at full speed with that Vulcan back end, which is just incredible.

Of course, not every game will work out as well as this one does. There are some harder-to-emulate games for the RPCS3 emulator that might struggle a bit. But something like Skate 3 requires higher clocks and more cores and threads - and that's exactly what we've got here.

Overall, running Steam OS 3 on this system has been a real pleasure. I didn't have to do any kind of modifications for Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, which is just great. And the sound works out of HDMI, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi - everything functions very well indeed. Of course, I would love to see a little more power with a dedicated GPU and a form factor like this - maybe next-generation apus based on RDNA 2 or RDNA 3 will help us get there.

For now, though, the Steam Deck is an incredibly powerful console that can handle most everything at 1080p even if it's playing in medium settings. I'd be totally fine with that - and that's all for this video. Thanks for watching! If you're interested in learning more about the Steam Deck OS or checking out my initial review video, I've left a link to both of those in the description below.

If there's anything else you want to see running on this console-sized PC just let me know in the comments below - and don't forget to check out MSI's website for all the details on this incredible device.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's going on everybody it's ETA Prime back here again today we're going to be putting together a Linux powered gaming console and for the operating system we're going to be using Steam OS 3 otherwise known as Steam deck OS now usually when I do a video like this I'll do a small form factor build but recently MSI released an awesome little PC known as the mag Trident s5m as you can see it's not much bigger than the Xbox series line consoles and actually with the standoff it is smaller than the ax so yeah I'm a huge fan of this console style PC I love the form factor and I recently did kind of a first look review of it it does come out of the box running Windows and it also comes with this MSI controller if you're interested in seeing how this thing performs with Windows I will leave a link for that video in the description but for this one here I'm going to be installing Steam OS 3 actually the same exact operating system that's running on the steam deck right now and in turn we're going to transform this Con console size PC into a new steam machine so like I mentioned I really do like the design of this it's actually super easy to get into it's powered by a ryzen 75700 g and they're really pushing you know cloud gaming and mobile gaming on this with their new apps they have installed with Windows but there's nothing really stopping us from installing Linux on this unit all I really need to do is either add a 2.5 in drive here or just replace the m.2 SSD and that's exactly what I'm going to be doing there's a single screw on the back of the unit and this this all slides out we can easily access our hard drive bay our m.2 and our RAM and as you can see it's got a pretty beefy cooler for being such a thin system now when it comes to the specs this is using the ryzen 75700 G they're also offering this with a couple different CPU variants or Apu variants you can pick it up with the 5300 G or the 5600 G but we've got the higher end model here and with that Apu it's got the built-in Radeon 8ig GPU up to 2,000 MHz this system also has 16 gab of ddr4 running at 3200 MHz we also have Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 4.2 and when it comes to the drive I'm using for Linux I've just installed 1 tbte Western Digital nvme SSD I've just left the standoff so we can put it in the horizontal position it does come with a few rubber feet that you can put on the bottom and it also comes with this MSI controller but since we're running Steam OS I figured I'd go ahead and use a steam controller here and uh you know I'm actually not really used to using the steam controller especially for racing games but let's go ahead and boot this up does have RGB up front here and in Windows you can control it unfortunately in Linux I just can't control this RGB I wish there was kind of a physical switch that would allow me to at least change the colors there's actually a couple ways you can go about installing Steam os3 and what I'm using Here is known as Hollow ISO I've done a couple videos showing you how to install it but since then they have updated it and it's a lot easier to install now I'll leave a link to their GitHub in the description they explain everything over there but it does work out really well especially on AMD hardware and on this PC everything seems to work right out of the box I didn't have to do any configuration for the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to work it does come with an Intel chip so it's working right out of the box we've got our steam overlay we've got our performance overlay and if I head over here to settings you can see that we've got that 5700 G 16 GB of RAM and that Radeon 8i GPU and this is actually going to be running at 65 watt so we can get some real good clocks on the CPU and and the GPU at the same time if you wanted to do some overclocking with the 5700 G it does pull a lot more power but at 65 wats it can sustain those clocks on both the GPU and the CPU side of things with this operating system we do have systemwide FSR unfortunately the TDP control and the manual GPU control here doesn't work with these apus but we can use the performance overlay known as mango HUD so we can see everything that's going on with the PC while we're gaming and another thing that works that comes in really handy is that system wide refresh rate switcher so if you've got a higher end game and you can only run it at about 40 FPS we can go ahead and lock the whole system to 40fps with that game and of course going into this I'm trying to come up with a console style device but we do have desktop mode just like we do on the steam deck so you can use this as a full-fledged Linux PC so if you did need to get some work done you can do it right here in desktop mode we've got the Discover Center here we can go through download more apps if you want to get a photo editor or something like that but where this little setup really does shine is emulation and we'll take a look at at least Gamecube or Wii and PS3 by the end of this video you can set this up to launch it directly from Steam deck UI or from Steam it's really up to you and media playback on this device is great by the way this is a 1440p 144 HZ Monitor and right now I did want to show off a little bit of 4K 60 playback from YouTube stats for nerds up in the top leftand corner but when it comes down to it this 5700 G handles media playback really well you can do streaming from your favorite apps or native playback from an internal or external hard drive so yeah when you're not in gaming mode you can always swap over to the desktop but we're really here for gaming and I've got a bunch of PC games that we're going to be testing out I've also added a few emulators directly to steam and we can launch them from here there's tons of ways to go about this but in this video we'll be testing out some Wii and PS3 at the end of the video but with all that out of the way let's see how this performs with Linux games and we'll just go with Injustice 2 all right here's Injustice 2 at 1080p low with no FSR uh we do have systemwide FSR but it's not on here is running really well like it sits not bad at all and from any of these games we can always access the menu here go to exit and it'll bring us right back into the steam deck UI or game pad UI makes it really easy to just use everything with a controller and let's go ahead and test something out outs next up we've got project cars 2 at 1080p low looking really good here it is a playable experience but I'll tell you what I'm having a really hard time playing racing games with the uh steam controller this is really crazy this is the first time I've ever tried to play a racing game with it and I really need to spend a few days with it just to get used to it so I've got a couple more games to test and then we'll move into some emulation I'm just going to let these play out got about 20 seconds of gameplay for each of them for oh hell new Season's coming hell yeah and he's in it ser so one thing you got to keep in mind is we're working with Vega graphics and when it comes to the steam deck it actually does have a more powerful GPU but this CPU will walk all over that steam deck CPU right now this has eight cores 16 threads and we've got a Max clock up to 4.6 so emulation is absolutely amazing on this setup here we have Wii using the Dolphin Emulator at 1440p and this system is capable of running this emulator at 4K I've just got a 1440p monitor here got that Vulcan backend going and we're at full speed so when it comes to emulation on this system you've got PSP you've got Dreamcast there are some Xbox games that are going to work really well even Yuzu for switch works great at 720p on the 5700 G and even with these emulators we can press that menu button we can exit right back into the steam deck UI PS3 is fully playable on the 5700 G even in Linux here looking really good here with Skate 3 using the Vulcan back end now when it comes down to it there are some harder to emulate games for the rpcs3 emulator that might struggle a bit but something like Skate 3 does require higher clocks more cores and threads and as you can see it's running at full speed with that Vulcan back end so overall running Steam OS 3 on this system does work out really well I didn't have to do any kind of modifications for the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or anything else to work we've got sound out of HDMI Bluetooth Wi-Fi everything functions very very well of course I would love to see a little more power with a dedicated GPU and a form factor like this but right now with the 5000 series apus we're kind of still stuck on Vega so maybe next Generation with the newer apus based on rdna 2 or rdna 3 coming out we little PCS or console siiz PCS like this that can handle most everything at 1080p even if it was medium settings I'd be totally fine with that but that's going to wrap it up for this video really appreciate you watching I did have a few people asking about checking out steam deck OS on this thing so I figured I'd go ahead and make a quick one if you're interested in learning more about this or checking out my initial review video I'll leave a link for that in the description along with links to MSI website and if there's anything else you want to see running on this console size PC just let me know in the comments below but like always thanks for watchingwhat's going on everybody it's ETA Prime back here again today we're going to be putting together a Linux powered gaming console and for the operating system we're going to be using Steam OS 3 otherwise known as Steam deck OS now usually when I do a video like this I'll do a small form factor build but recently MSI released an awesome little PC known as the mag Trident s5m as you can see it's not much bigger than the Xbox series line consoles and actually with the standoff it is smaller than the ax so yeah I'm a huge fan of this console style PC I love the form factor and I recently did kind of a first look review of it it does come out of the box running Windows and it also comes with this MSI controller if you're interested in seeing how this thing performs with Windows I will leave a link for that video in the description but for this one here I'm going to be installing Steam OS 3 actually the same exact operating system that's running on the steam deck right now and in turn we're going to transform this Con console size PC into a new steam machine so like I mentioned I really do like the design of this it's actually super easy to get into it's powered by a ryzen 75700 g and they're really pushing you know cloud gaming and mobile gaming on this with their new apps they have installed with Windows but there's nothing really stopping us from installing Linux on this unit all I really need to do is either add a 2.5 in drive here or just replace the m.2 SSD and that's exactly what I'm going to be doing there's a single screw on the back of the unit and this this all slides out we can easily access our hard drive bay our m.2 and our RAM and as you can see it's got a pretty beefy cooler for being such a thin system now when it comes to the specs this is using the ryzen 75700 G they're also offering this with a couple different CPU variants or Apu variants you can pick it up with the 5300 G or the 5600 G but we've got the higher end model here and with that Apu it's got the built-in Radeon 8ig GPU up to 2,000 MHz this system also has 16 gab of ddr4 running at 3200 MHz we also have Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 4.2 and when it comes to the drive I'm using for Linux I've just installed 1 tbte Western Digital nvme SSD I've just left the standoff so we can put it in the horizontal position it does come with a few rubber feet that you can put on the bottom and it also comes with this MSI controller but since we're running Steam OS I figured I'd go ahead and use a steam controller here and uh you know I'm actually not really used to using the steam controller especially for racing games but let's go ahead and boot this up does have RGB up front here and in Windows you can control it unfortunately in Linux I just can't control this RGB I wish there was kind of a physical switch that would allow me to at least change the colors there's actually a couple ways you can go about installing Steam os3 and what I'm using Here is known as Hollow ISO I've done a couple videos showing you how to install it but since then they have updated it and it's a lot easier to install now I'll leave a link to their GitHub in the description they explain everything over there but it does work out really well especially on AMD hardware and on this PC everything seems to work right out of the box I didn't have to do any configuration for the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to work it does come with an Intel chip so it's working right out of the box we've got our steam overlay we've got our performance overlay and if I head over here to settings you can see that we've got that 5700 G 16 GB of RAM and that Radeon 8i GPU and this is actually going to be running at 65 watt so we can get some real good clocks on the CPU and and the GPU at the same time if you wanted to do some overclocking with the 5700 G it does pull a lot more power but at 65 wats it can sustain those clocks on both the GPU and the CPU side of things with this operating system we do have systemwide FSR unfortunately the TDP control and the manual GPU control here doesn't work with these apus but we can use the performance overlay known as mango HUD so we can see everything that's going on with the PC while we're gaming and another thing that works that comes in really handy is that system wide refresh rate switcher so if you've got a higher end game and you can only run it at about 40 FPS we can go ahead and lock the whole system to 40fps with that game and of course going into this I'm trying to come up with a console style device but we do have desktop mode just like we do on the steam deck so you can use this as a full-fledged Linux PC so if you did need to get some work done you can do it right here in desktop mode we've got the Discover Center here we can go through download more apps if you want to get a photo editor or something like that but where this little setup really does shine is emulation and we'll take a look at at least Gamecube or Wii and PS3 by the end of this video you can set this up to launch it directly from Steam deck UI or from Steam it's really up to you and media playback on this device is great by the way this is a 1440p 144 HZ Monitor and right now I did want to show off a little bit of 4K 60 playback from YouTube stats for nerds up in the top leftand corner but when it comes down to it this 5700 G handles media playback really well you can do streaming from your favorite apps or native playback from an internal or external hard drive so yeah when you're not in gaming mode you can always swap over to the desktop but we're really here for gaming and I've got a bunch of PC games that we're going to be testing out I've also added a few emulators directly to steam and we can launch them from here there's tons of ways to go about this but in this video we'll be testing out some Wii and PS3 at the end of the video but with all that out of the way let's see how this performs with Linux games and we'll just go with Injustice 2 all right here's Injustice 2 at 1080p low with no FSR uh we do have systemwide FSR but it's not on here is running really well like it sits not bad at all and from any of these games we can always access the menu here go to exit and it'll bring us right back into the steam deck UI or game pad UI makes it really easy to just use everything with a controller and let's go ahead and test something out outs next up we've got project cars 2 at 1080p low looking really good here it is a playable experience but I'll tell you what I'm having a really hard time playing racing games with the uh steam controller this is really crazy this is the first time I've ever tried to play a racing game with it and I really need to spend a few days with it just to get used to it so I've got a couple more games to test and then we'll move into some emulation I'm just going to let these play out got about 20 seconds of gameplay for each of them for oh hell new Season's coming hell yeah and he's in it ser so one thing you got to keep in mind is we're working with Vega graphics and when it comes to the steam deck it actually does have a more powerful GPU but this CPU will walk all over that steam deck CPU right now this has eight cores 16 threads and we've got a Max clock up to 4.6 so emulation is absolutely amazing on this setup here we have Wii using the Dolphin Emulator at 1440p and this system is capable of running this emulator at 4K I've just got a 1440p monitor here got that Vulcan backend going and we're at full speed so when it comes to emulation on this system you've got PSP you've got Dreamcast there are some Xbox games that are going to work really well even Yuzu for switch works great at 720p on the 5700 G and even with these emulators we can press that menu button we can exit right back into the steam deck UI PS3 is fully playable on the 5700 G even in Linux here looking really good here with Skate 3 using the Vulcan back end now when it comes down to it there are some harder to emulate games for the rpcs3 emulator that might struggle a bit but something like Skate 3 does require higher clocks more cores and threads and as you can see it's running at full speed with that Vulcan back end so overall running Steam OS 3 on this system does work out really well I didn't have to do any kind of modifications for the Wi-Fi or Bluetooth or anything else to work we've got sound out of HDMI Bluetooth Wi-Fi everything functions very very well of course I would love to see a little more power with a dedicated GPU and a form factor like this but right now with the 5000 series apus we're kind of still stuck on Vega so maybe next Generation with the newer apus based on rdna 2 or rdna 3 coming out we little PCS or console siiz PCS like this that can handle most everything at 1080p even if it was medium settings I'd be totally fine with that but that's going to wrap it up for this video really appreciate you watching I did have a few people asking about checking out steam deck OS on this thing so I figured I'd go ahead and make a quick one if you're interested in learning more about this or checking out my initial review video I'll leave a link for that in the description along with links to MSI website and if there's anything else you want to see running on this console size PC just let me know in the comments below but like always thanks for watching\n"