Valve made Linux gaming actually possible thanks to steam deck. I want to thank them for all the efforts are making, still keeping everything open source
^ +1 . For handheld gaming, I believe battery life is the most important. Imagine gaming on an ARM chip with a linux OS and getting +20 hours on a AAA title
@@peppefailla1630 ROG Ally's are notorious for frying the MicroSD slot and MicroSD cards due to heat from the power delivery system iirc. That is a design flaw that should have been detected and corrected during prototyping.
I bought the Steam Deck for it's price and the fact that it's absolutely loaded with buttons, joysticks, capacitive touch sensors and an awesome key mapping tweaking tool in SteamOS.
I bought the SD oled because it seems the overall most balanced of the handhelds + SteamOS, valve support/compatibility effort on the OS, trackpads, nice design and ergonomics, battery life for few hours of casual gaming on the go without the worry of carry extra weight of power banks, remember to charge them, etc. I will mostly play platforms like Ori and single players like Control + emulation, where I feel more confident with joypad input than M&K. If I want to play fps and other pvp games at high fps I do it on my PC anyways, with M&K, so I don't think I will miss out on the higher performance of Ally/Legion go. The steam deck is, to me, more for a casual experience on the couch or on the go with platform games that I rarely play in front of the PC (Ori, Sonic, etc) and single players/story from Steam (Control, GTA5/RDR2, etc) and emulators (Emudeck/Batocera). I will consider also a small pocket form factor handheld for pure emulation in the future, there are many options of gameboy/gamegear looking handhelds "on steroids" running custom OS. An option and a nice project could be a diy handheld with a Raspberry Pi.
Honestly where I was sitting the whole time. Like, this guy clearly has the skills to make awesome things and that dock is absolutely amazing for sure, but all I see is a much heavier, more expensive alternative to the Deck. Especially considering the efficiency gains of the OLED Deck, there's not much of an upside to this mod. The only thing I can assume is the title is clickbait to get the Deck owners in here and angry because he doesn't seem to say this is better than the Deck anywhere.
windows compatible games less loop arounds and elbow grease i allot of my games from ubisoft my ac games and splinter cell games work out of the box game pass work out off the box honkai star rail works out off the box
wel for lower budged gaming its worth buying but for newer games its worthless it really shows anyone denying that are basicly the fan boys i had fun with my steam deck it s now on a shelf its been a good year for gaming but not for steam deck
Steve from GamersNexus made a whole video about it. Asus have some of the worst customer service. Do not buy their crap until they start treating their customers with respect.
Warning!!!!! Do *NOT* use liquid metal like he shows. It will leak and ruin your system. He only protected the CPU from shorts, he didn't install a barrier to prevent it from getting away from the CPU. Usually it's a type of foam that completely fills in between the CPU and heatsink. (For testing purposes on a flat PC test bench it may not be entirely necessary, but this is a mobile device. You have been warned.
Metal, dense & expansive under heat, liquid, deformable & innertially bound to shift locations: yep, metal on PCB if you dropped that thang while carrying it in your backpack
He does also mention that none of his thermal upgrades acheived much so probably not worth it for that reason too - though putting the insulation between the SD card and heatpipes would be a good idea
@@Hellspooned2 as a SD user since launch i hardly ever use the track pads sure they are great to have as a maybe use at some point but for me i dont use it
Valve has the pull to influence game manufacturers to get optimizations for games specifically for the steam deck . In that regard the steam deck is an appealing option
Yup, I have a powerful PC as it is, but I'm using the steam deck as the ideal optimization factor for my games, if I can play it smoothly on my steam deck, I should be able to play it smoothly on my ally as well.
Not just optimization for games on the steam deck, but also for linux, since thats what the steam deck runs on. Thats one of the reason i like the steam deck so much
I bought a Steam Deck 64gb on the Spring sale for like $349. I then upgraded it with a 1tb Corsair SSD for $80. Less than $500, I have a 1tb handheld that runs everything I like to play, including MW2 through Windows 10 dual boot. The Ally is cool and all, but when the SD exists for the price it is, I'll always recommend the Deck.
tbh the performance of the deck is so bad for someone like me that I'd never buy it. If I was going handheld I'd get something better or just get nothing at all. The games look quite bad on the deck considering a lot of them you're running at 720p on medium low settings at sub 60 fps.
@@ramsaybolton9151 everything I've played so far runs well at 40 FPS, some could go higher but 40 seems to be the sweet spot. From someone who actually has one and uses it daily, it's plenty for such a small screen. I understand where you're coming from but you wouldn't know unless you've actually used one. For example what I play most on deck: spider man, GTA 5, MW2 (win 10 dual boot), deep rock galactic, 7 days to die, among many others that don't come to mind ATM. For the price tag, it's the best on the market imo. Sure there are several better but you're paying double
@@zach7384 i learned that some people are very sensitive to fps changes and "low" (under 80) fps motion-sickness. maybe zac is this way too? i don't personally have this issue and prefer anything i play at or above 24fps. vr is great for example, as low as 14fps for nearly 10 hours a session and i dont even notice, i can see that its low fps but i cant feel it lol i have real motion-sickness though, cars, boats, planes, if it moves and im not paying attention to the movement i get sick and throw up, in games or on screen i don't have this issue at all.
@@elliottwood5423 I'd rather just wait to play at home for a better quality experience. This is like watching a pirated came quality movie vs paying $10 to see it in 4k IMAX but instead you need to pay some pretty decent $$$$ for the cam quality.
I feel like you're making a pretty good case for buying a Steamdeck. None of these alternatives that also came out recently are truly complete packages, and always have caveats. Personally, I'd rather use a GPD Win, because I like the format and keyboard.
I got a 7840U GPD Win Max 2, and it's friggin' incredible. I use it like a giant handheld often, and it completely replaced my laptop while offering a BETTER typing experience within the shell of a 10.1"-screen device. The battery is better than the Deck in 35w mode, and when I run it in a battery saver mode, it lasts like 8-10+ hours, which is just bonkers. I loaded it up with 6.5TB of storage, too. My Deck mostly collects dust now - not because it's bad, I still love the Deck, the WM2 is just enough of a step up to render it nearly obsolete. Deck's more ergonomic with better controls, though!
@@nickstarlingch My 7840u Win Mini arrived 2 days ago and i am currently ignoring my 3080 rig lol. AAA games on my 3080 for sure but i am tinkering the heck out of my mini for the past 3 days
@@nickstarlingchMy 7840U has been an amazing experience as well. I can play most titles on the system, not to mention the Emulati g performance. Portable PS3 was not something I was expecting for a long while.
Nothing he’s doing is necessary, I have been emulating ps3 on a bone stock z1 extreme ally for a while with no issues, battery life is about an hour at full tilt but I’m always near an outlet when I’m using it anyways.
I have an 8" generic Windows 11 Tablet with a keyboard dock thats similar and i can vouche for this form factor is amazing. I use it 80% gaming PC 20%. So thank you for the confirmation. GDP win will be my next gamign handle. Never will I say, I wish my laptop was closer, I don't want to surf the web using htis. If iits anyhthing like my significanly weaker windows tablet, I'd expect With GDP win's full keyboard. on Windows 11 in tablet mode, using a mouse is toally optional. only the keybaord is sort of missed here, except its built in so its a full package. and clamshell so i don't have to buy a case? yes please! @@nickstarlingch
I think the reason the Steam Deck is a solid choice is the support from Valve, developers, and the modding community, and the growing ceiling for a user customized experience. Since launch, so much has been improved, most of my massive Steam library is now verified, performance in tons of games has been improved, and you generally see a lot of titles either launching or making changes to titles to make them run well on the Deck. For unofficial plugins/ apps, i added a custom theme that makes the UI much more clean and customizable, How Long to Beat stats displayed on game pages with plugins, SteamDB compatibility ratings displayed on game pages, added a super easy to modify and load system of emulators, installed and added all of my non-steam launchers directly to my game view with a single installer, got an app for remote play from PS5 with HDR and touchpad support, and thats only scratching the surface.
@SuperFlashDriver they definitely serve different purposes, not to mention different price points. I've got a nice gaming laptop and a steam deck, and I generally use them for different things. Laptop is for AAA graphics heavy titles or Kb and mouse focused titles when I'm away from my PC, and Steam Deck is generally for everything else, as it's way more convenient to use, generally. Rather than having a laptop on a lap pad, with an external mouse, plugged into a power brick, I can pick up a handheld, kick back, and play. For someone wanting the full gamut of a PC experience on a non desktop PC device, I don't think you'd want to go any lower than a gaming laptop, but, for a handheld experience, I think the Steam Deck holds its own pretty well.
@@ethanrox333 Mmm, I see. It's just that I've been using my laptop for a while that I don't know if I would ever find any use for the Steam Deck myself.
Valve's support, not cooking my SD card, and not needing to burn time customizing/working on the deck. I don't have time right now to mess with it, but I can turn it on and play right out the gate super easy. That's why.
You forgot - The ROG ally has bad battery life, worse 1% and 0.1% lows when gaming compared to the steam deck having a more consistent frame rate meaning its less stuttery. Having windows so you run into all the stupid windows problems every time Microsoft does an update. Overkill screen resolution which you will never be able to actually play most games at 1080p so you will run games upscaled from 720p rather than native which looks worse. Too high refresh rate that most games cannot even reach that fps limit. The ROG ally unlike the OLED steam deck has a lack of HDR support and worse colour accuracy which is actually important for better visuals in gaming and does not have a performance cost. Even if the ROG ally was the same price as the steam deck OLED for example the steam deck OLED would be the better value still. Still many I have missed but either way, the ROG ally is a laptop tablet with joy cons glued to the sides NOT a gaming console like the steam deck is. Edit: Some people will have a use case or valid reason for buying it still though but a smaller range of people compared to the steam deck. People say stuff like windows doesn't trigger anticheat as often with the ROG ally but who plays competitive multiplayer games on a handheld? Its a bit inconvenient in my opinion.
@@stevenlee3661 I went the steam deck oled route, hopefully it arrives by next week. For my taste, the ally is quite ugly too and the white color is already a no go for me at least. The Legion go looks better, but the detachable controllers on a big heavy device like that seems a weak point in the long run to me. I like Msi desktop products, but their claw handheld is out of discussion to me. Both Ally/legion go are very power hungry and require more planning/attentions before take it on the go even for half a day imo, they can't play very long with a full charge, compared to the SD (if you take them with you in a rush/last minute without accessories). You can always carry kilos of powerbanks and accessories ofc, but it requires more planning and attentions like everything needs to be fully charged, bigger travel bags etc.
@@Anomalyy666 it's not there are many more computers that are desktop or tablet for factor that are much smaller with full windows 10 or 11 on them. For example any mini pc on Amazon (you can even find pc sticks) and many windows tablets some terrible and some great. There is also the ayaneo flip ds which is a lot smaller but a bit fatter than the rog ally but very expensive. Many other ayaneos are smaller than the rog ally but I wouldn't recommend them as they are even worse value than the rog ally. The rog ally has the advantage of it allowing proper egpu support. The bad thing about this though is that it uses a proprietary connector that makes it so you can only use a few gpus made by Asus that are very expensive rather than allowing anyone to plug in any GPU they want.
-"I don't understand why people buy Steam Decks" -procedes to use tools and materials less than 0.1% of people of the people watching own or have access to or even the money to pay a professional to do it (let alone all the people who have actually bought SDs)
The SD Cards are NOT "frying". The SD Card controller chip is burning out, causing the actual card to become corrupt and or damaging the card. That is why the ROG Ally eventually stops recognizing ANY card inserted into it.
@@fredsvv I don't. I tried installing some thermal insulation between the SD card slot and heat pipe/fan inside the unit, thinking maybe that would keep the card slot and controller chip cooler since it would block some of the heat radiating off the heat pipe that's right above the SD Card slot, but that actually made the temperature inside the SD card slot higher by about 10 degrees fahrenheit, which is the opposite of what I was trying to do.
@20:00 Heat is a big killer for batteries. It causes a breakdown in the capacitance layers. Folding the battery will cause thermal issues while charging or during high current draw downs. I would think you'd need a thermal pad in the middle of the batteries with side fins of some sort to dissipate the heat from the 2 center cells... Stacking the batteries was a sure fire way to an early end of life for the 2 center cells.
I found the equivalent of the wood working videos that tell you how to build a $40 night table with a couple thousand dollars worth of tools and supplies. Good job
My reason is the steam deck is more affordable it has amazing track pads it’s comfort to hold and valve support teams are quick and really understanding for replacements for defects and great with repairs and the amazing OLED panel and great battery life Amazing video These are just my reasons I stay with the Steam deck
i barely use mine anymore wouldnt say its more comfortable i do like the touch pad but meh newer games struggle with it due to linux and hardware so i use the ally more only use the steam deck for older games basicly xD
"I don't understand why people still buy Steam Decks..." and the dude proceeds to do all this aftermarket modding, soldering, etc...maybe people buy Steam Decks so they don't have to do all of this. There, the obvious answer to your question has been given.
Yeah, even from the first few minutes you can tell the title is kinda... *clickbaity.* But it was an interesting video nonetheless. Would have been better-served not using the clickbait and to let the video stand on its own, but it takes even the most popular UA-camrs a really long time to realize that clickbait doesn't actually help, it just turns people off of your channel.
@@DimiArt idk where i live it's 30$ difference but steamdeck vs ally i had enough asus and shady companies in my life i'd rather have something from a company that won't brick my device with a bios update which they did to my new laptop and i assume did to many others as well
"significantly more powerful than the steamdeck" should have a HUGE asterix next to it. Because, it is only more powerful at 15W and above.... Below, the Steam Deck is running circles around the ROG Ally. :) Nice project non-the-less, very nicely done. :)
This makes me wonder if its possible to undervolt the Ally, and I don't mean under clock. Just tune the voltage in such a way that very demanding games like cyberpunk become unstable. It is a common and proven way to get more performance out of GPU's, since they rely on algorithms that take temperature/wattage/frequency into account. Each GPU chip (the actual silicon) is slightly better worse than the other when it comes to the frequency/voltage needs. To make sure every chip will meets the target frequencies the voltage curves on these chips are all set to the same standard. I wouldn't be surprised if you can easily reduce the watt usage by 5% while maintaining or even getting higher/longer boost clocks. Leading to higher fps and longer battery life. I mean he is already running a custom bios to increase the voltage, why not try to go in the opposite way and make the chip run leaner by adjusting the total power curve.
@@LazyJesse yeah. aren't there also problems when it comes to the software? i think i have heard people complaining about that with the Ally and the vid "only" has hardware upgrades
Ah yes, the infamous 10W AAA gaming where delusional Steamdeck fanatics are the new sect spreading gospel of "stable 20 FPS is great!!" and try to gaslight everybody else into it))) And if you are playing indie titles every handheld will handle that virtually the same at 5-8W TDP... P.S. Gotta love all those 0 FPS that Steamdeck shows in all of my Gamepass titles. But hey, same fanatics pretend that Gamepass doesn't exist and that it's not the greatest deal for PC gaming ATM.
I bought the steam deck because the cheapest deck is not functionally different than the $650 option. It was $360 instead of $700 and i already had an extra 1TB 2230 SSD on hand. SteamOS is awesome for the games that it supports so far. Emulation is simpler than it’s ever been with Emudeck. If the game doesn’t work on SteamOS I use dual boot into Windows. The only reason people buy more expensive handhelds is it looks better on paper.
no it is better period, the screen,performance,quality,form factor,heat production... it's okay to have preferences but don't act stupid, the fact are the facts
@@Yuuki_Asuna People can buy whatever they think is best for there needs and for you maybe the only stat that matters is the highest FPS number for others it might be that they want more than an hour of on the go gaming. There's no one best in all areas, its which ticks the most important boxes for you
@@Yuuki_Asuna ...You do realize they're talking about the cheapest Steam Deck model vs. the most expensive Steam Deck model, right? Because they're correct. There is no performance difference. Hardware-wise they're the same thing beyond storage, and the difference storage speed makes has been shown to be so minimal that it hardly counts.
@@Yuuki_AsunaPrice, battery, o.s, trackpads, display oled in steam oled vs rog ally power and Best display lcd, no trackpads in windows??? Really Asus?
As someone who has done this mod it's awesome to see it covered! The only things I would suggest doing differently is not wrapping the battery like that and instead of cutting the stock plate of the ally is using the 3D backplate model that Yesitskira has designed for this specific mod! She has done an amazing job with it! Also big shoutout to Tekgnome who runs allymods and came up with this idea! The extra battery life is absolutely amazing to have especially considering the total weight of the device is as much as the steam deck now. It's really impressive!
yeah i found it strange he 3d printed everything but did a jank job with the back cover also i really dont see a point with the battery mod either. feelslike diminishing returns that strapping a small power bank behind it with velcro couldnt solve and be hot swappable great video nonetheless
@furythree ya that was my initial thoughts to. But the weight distribution is key with this mod. Strapping a power bank to the back doesn't feel nearly as good in the hands. The other benefit of this mod is having the only usb port available for other accessories.
What is the weight of the new battery? I purchased a Xiaomi 20k battery bank and can say its weight is like the Rog ally itself!!! i.e. double ally weight is really frustrating, I can't handle the device for 5 minutes.
@@furythreeyeah I think the back cover looks nice design wise, but a full back shell replacement would have looked much cleaner and not as disconnected
Yes, the made-for-windows is both prominent on the Asus and contradictory to the form factor. Then there's things such as the hours one will get off a slightly smaller battery on the deck and general care for software of Valve for a better out-of-the-box experience.
I don’t really miss the steamOS. Definitely good for people who don’t want to mess with windows at all, but I found myself in desktop mode a lot on the Steam Deck so that I could get certain non steam games and emulation working. Armory crate does the job just fine and anything I have in steam I can just launch steam in big box mode, which is basically all the SteamOS is
I *specifically purchased steam deck because I support GNU/Linux and I want to help Valve kill Windows* . It's not only that I love the gamepad and holding literally any other gamepad, apart from perhaps playstation gamepads, now feels like an awkward, obsolete relic (think of how NES gamepads feel), or that 12 years of experience with GNU/Linux makes SteamOS far more useful, powerful and convenient for me than Windows is. It's that Valve has demonstrated a willingness to help GNU/Linux erode the Windows market share among gaming PCs in ways no other company has ever shown the slightest intention of. The non-exhaustive list of hallmarks of this includes: - shipping products ROOTED out of the box - shipping them with FULLY UNLOCKED boot menu that you can use to erase and replace the stock OS with literally anything you want - allowing that stock OS to very easily download and run ANY UNSIGNED CODE out of the box - releasing 99% of the source code of the entire stock OS including the entire graphics stack and exposing their self hosted gitlab repositories updated with the complete history of the code for every current and past release of the OS - _even within the stock OS_ , making the application formed from that 1% of the code that is proprietary (Steam) 100% optional and possible to _turn off_ with 5 clicks (Steam->Power-Switch to Desktop->Steam->Exit). It only takes mentioning "Google" to fight anyone who insinuates this is NOT an outstanding good faith attempt by a proprietary company to _more_ than compromise with open-source extremism. - of that 1% of the code that is proprietary closed-source, intentionally writing 99% of it in the most easy-to-reverse-engineer languages ever (Javascript and Typescript), _unobfuscated_ , which immediately allowed thousands of modders to write endless community features for it - reserving that tiny, remaining 0.1% of the stock OS that's formed from closed-source native binaries, for its arguably most logical intended purpose, the Steam DRM to enforce account licensing of games from their store, their actual bottom line that's the one thing they would indisputably lose money by removing. They don't even make any attempt, legal, practical or technical, to stop anyone from using their real-world direct competitors' stores, Epic, Blizzard and Origin. This degree of love for the customer is unparalleled by almost any other corporation in history, let alone in the video game industry.
@@slamshift6927 I can attest to that! I bought an ASUS Vivobook back in 2021 and had so many black screen issues for the next 2 years. I thought it was a dying iGPU or maybe Windows (bcuz Windows does that, too) But it turns out that it was the SSD that came with it. One day when I was watching UA-cam, my laptop just turned off and instantly went to the BIOS screen where it said "No Storage Device Detected", confirming that it was the SSD I'm just glad the part that came defective was a replaceable part. You can only replace RAM and Hard Drive in laptops
@@slamshift6927 wait, that's actually a thing? i thought i had a bad luck with my asus tuf laptop because it's dying after 2 years, because it's m.2 slot are burnt for some reason and now i had to switch sata slot and soon after that the keyboard is broken as well.
@@Art-pj8zqnah. Asus is famous because it likes to cut corners for hilarious things. Plus the TUF Laptop lineup before 2022 was famous for it’s bad build quality
@@Yuuki_AsunaThe steam deck came out before the ally for one, two the steam deck has better controls, three, the steam deck was to the mobile PC market. What the ally is to the steam deck when it released. It performed two to three times higher at at less than a quarter of the cost of most handhelds when it was released.
@@Yuuki_Asuna Why make something smaller if it mean sacrificing ergonomics? The other thing is that the Ally is a computer that you can carry around. SD is a handheld console that can also be used as a computer. Ally is nowhere near as thought out as the SD is, not to mention Valve's amazing software support.
Even if it didn't raise performance, those are really impressive thermal gains. And honestly it's reassuring to know that the ally is basically already operating at peak efficiency.
The biggest factor in why performance is not improved is its memory bandwidth limited like all mobile devices reliant on LPDDR memory. ROG Ally only gets 100GB/s memory bandwidth AND it has to split that paltry 100 with the CPU. If you look at all devices that get superior gaming performance they all have higher memory bandwidth stats/figures then the Ally and all these console/desktop/laptop GPUS get access to GDDR or on the rare ocassion.... HBM memory. Manufacturers are stuck between a rock and a hard place, GDDR has much higher energy consumption, and HBM is significantly more expensive. Tech advances (Node shrinks) on RAM are also slowing with RAM manufacturers finding it increasingly difficult to make breakthroughs and to further shrink capacitors which are necessary to store memory.
19:00 something is very wrong here. I get 15200 Points in Cinebench R23 with my STOCK ally, no mods, no tweaked bios. So, with a permanent 54W limit, liquid metal, additional fans, you should get over 16000 points!
1. Native linux install, which allows valve to do specific things that you cant do on windows, like custom DE, compositor and kernel tweaks. 2. Did I mentioned native linux? Cause this is a huge deal, no longer being forced to run windows for games is a godsend. The steam deck has propelled the Proton / Wine / DXVK / VKD3D projects into developers eyes, since now they have a standardized platform to target with minimal effort required on their part thanks to the previous projects I mentioned. The only reason to run windows is either you have an nvidia card (sucks to be you), you play games like valorant which basically have anti cheats that resembles spyware (honestly not much was lost), or the game you want to play isnt available on steam, epic or GOG (heroic game launcher covers GOG and Epic). 2. The steam deck has been made in such a way thats easily repairable. 3. Parts can be acquired from Ifixit thanks to valve partnering up with them. 4. Long support. Till this date new updates for the steam controller have been released, valve tends to offer support even after they discontinued production. 5. The steam deck offers better performance on the go when it comes to battery life (which is the main use for this device). Also Asus has been doing some nasty things with their motherboards and products in general, like refusing RMAs and releasing bioses that fry CPUs and the QC of the rog Ally hasnt been great.
As an owner of an Nvidia card it very much does suck on linux, although there's work that should be making this less sucky as early as this summer. Also you can absolutely play non-steam games on the steamdeck, and while you DO have to go into desktop mode and use some (really nice and easy) 3rd party tools the desktop experience on the steamdeck is better than the Ally's (unless you're hardcore entrenched in windows and refuse to adjust to any other OS or DE) anyway and after your done they show up in your library and you can happily play them without going into desktop again.
You say native Linux, but the game isn't even running native, there's nothing good about running a game under a translation layer. You can say linux this, linux that, in the operating system aspect, but the rest is just fanboy bullshit. Only the system is running native, it lost the entire point because you don't play the operating system, you play the games. Trying to come up with an excuse that anti cheats resemble spyware, it's just a way to ignore a downside of current Linux, another fanboy bullshit that even the real hardcore Linux people understand and see the problem with, there is a disparity between them and the fanboys who simply inflame the Linux community with stupidity, creating an operating system war that doesn't even help them.
@@eroncross5873 What are you talking about, its running native under x86_64 instruction sets, there is no emulation being done. The only thing being replicated is the windows file system and structure. Projects like DXVK and VKD3D translate DX calls to the vulkan equivalent ones. This is especially true when talking about DX12 and vulkan, which share very similar implementations, most likely thanks to mantel, the progenitor low level API. Emulation would imply that its using a completely different instruction set, which would need to be replicated, but thats not whats happening here. Projects like Proton / Wine are vital because it allows developers to target one platform and build one binary, saving them time and effort, while still allowing them to target niche platforms like desktop linux. This is especially great, since linux is not a static platform, distros dont always package the same dependencies or have the same directory structure, having an abstraction layer that automatically takes care of that is great. Not only that, you're forgetting that there are countless games that will never be ported over to linux and even fail to launch on windows. Proton / Wine doesnt only provide a way to abstract the differences between windows and linux, it helps game preservation by giving access to a versioned compatibility layer, which is constantly being updated to support a growing list of games, allowing for older titles to run without issues, a problem that has been slowly plaguing windows as of late. Additionally, these translation layers arent relegated to linux, part of their code can be easily used to fix games on windows. There are plenty of people using DXVK / VKD3D to fix issues in older titles and even intel has made use of these compatibility tools, to improve performance in older titles. Finally, having a ring zero anti cheat for a game, which basically might as well be a root kit, is something beyond an over escalation, especially for an issue that could be solved by better abstracting certain data from the client and monitoring player input server side. The best way to prevent cheaters in online competitive games, is by taking preventative measures, not by installing a root kit client side that can and will be overcome eventually, be it through software or hardware manipulations. Also, do you trust todays gaming companies to properly maintain their root kits? I for sure dont, since they can barely manage to release a working game that doesnt suffer from major bugs, performance and stability issues. That said, its a god damn game, not a bank app. To conclude this wall of text, yes games are running under linux natively, since they're running on the x86_64 instruction set, which they were designed for and yes proton / wine is a good thing, Lastly, yes kernel level anti cheats are bad.
@@eroncross5873 The translation layer barely affects performance, you will find it's reaches parity with windows or is even faster. Nah real linux users would never fucking install kernel level spyware on their computer and no dev would even think of crippling linux with ring 0 black boxes lmao. Go shove your shitty OS up your shitter box
It's great that you were able to heavily mod your Ally, but you can't expect everyone to but that amount of afford and risk into modding, just to have a better product. And yes, I consider support as part of the product. That is something the Ally lacks.
It indeed has a more powerful hardware than steam deck, but steamdeck comes with a linux build that is optimized to run games from steam library, while the rog ally is using the memory and all resources hungry Windows, so it's not like the Steam Deck is in an actual disadvantage.
I will say the things I love about the steam deck are minor to others but for me personally are deal breakers if I don't have them after using the steam deck. First are the touchpads, I know people probably think these are useless and probably don't work very well if you are trying to use them as a mouse or joystick replacement. But for me its the fact that I can use them with steam overlay and get a virtual menus that make it great for emulation or games that involve a lot of button combinations to do certain things. I also love that it has four back buttons rather then just two, for me the more buttons the better since I can place macros or other stuff that makes gaming easier or more enjoyable, again due games needing you to press a bunch of button combinations to do certain things. I also like the symmetrical joystick layout, I just cant get used to the offset layout and it just feel uncomfortable in my personal opinion. Now I am an asus fan boy and this device is pretty awesome since it can also use the GPU attachment they sell so you can up the performance. If asus were to release a new version with four back buttons, symmetrical joysticks, and atleast one touchpad while retaining the ability to use there GPU dock I would definitely pick one up!
Steam deck was actually a gift, but aside from that it allows me to play Divine Divinity smoothly and with minimal issues, something that I have not been able to do since Windows 7 (roughly 10 years). That was a huge bonus for me. It allows me to play older games without emulation or virtual machines (both of which I am not confident in setting up).
Was there even a steam deck in the entire video? Zac's content is interesting, making a BS title like this is really off-putting. I don't know why but I really fucking hate that shit.
That was completely awesome. I'm not a huge ally fan because it has the same battery size and double the power consumption of the Deck, but I'd totally dig a 90 wh battery Ally. Although the cooling didn't do much it was really fun to watch that process unfold.
It hurt to watch an ally getting cut and modded but this video gave me a strange satisfaction that it's stronger and more of a robust. hand held console now!
"I don't understand why people buy Steam decks"......proceeds to make a video Frankenstiening an ROG Ally and say it's better when it isn't better. 🤣🤣🤣
I like the Steam Deck's UI which was made for a console-like gaming experience on a handheld. I think the other handheld PCs would become more viable options whenever Valve makes it available to everyone.
Wanted to commend how well you told the story here while also going in depth and teaching me about your thought process, without it sounding condescending at all. Learned lots, SWEET mod, and really nice result. Congrats on the project, and cheers from a fellow Torontonian!
I know I'm late to the party but thought I'd might as well point out something I noticed: The 90° NVMe adapter looks cool. But one thing to keep in mind if used to swap to a bigger/cheaper 2280 drive: Make sure you check power usage on the new drive. A fast PCIe 2280 drive might use quite a bit more power than the 2230 model the ROG Ally ships with. I think the original NVMe drive sips around 3.5W during "regular use", whilst the less power efficient models of 2230 drives I've seen use over 6W. The non-power-efficient 2280 desktop models can be significantly worse still. There's a reason some of them ships with a cooler on them.
oh my god what a fantastic video! I love these types of videos where people actually modify electronics to make them better instead of a video listing good powerbanks.
@@AlbertoCasanova Well it wasn't really a powerbank though. He made the battery larger, I've seen other people who literally recommend a powerbank for your steamdeck which is way more unpractical.
Amazing. As to the question you asked, "why people buy Steam Decks" - I think you kind of answered your own question. Because there is NO WAY I could do or afford any of that and as you saw, the benefits gained don't seem to be worth the money/effort put in. Also windows on a handheld is just clunky, until they create a mobilized version of Windows, that will always be an issue, the OS on the Deck is just better. But hey, fascinating build, great video!
I think the cooling mod is much better than you give it credit for. I would think that those lower temps would help your battery last longer/possibly give you a longer battery life since the apu isn't demanding as much output? And it would for sure keep your hands from not over heating. Really good video. I know you love walnut, but I'm glad you showed restraint for this one hahah
As a circuit cools down, it's electrical resistance goes down, lower resistance causes higher battery life because the voltage drops in the wires aren't as prominent.
That was wonderfully well-presented. Cool project. I was absorbed the entire time, absolutely LOVED the low-temp solder. That alone opens up new windows for me. Watching you progress through the project, face the challenges when you take on a creative endeavor and complete it, even if it didn't achieve the outcome you hoped for. Gathering the data of Why it didn't meet those expectations and a root cause analysis just put the topping on the pie. And visually spot on. Deliberate composition, kudos to the DP. I'm gonna watch some more.
Thanks man! Each project is an adventure. I never really know where they are going to end up, but I just do my best to document them from start to finish and cut out all the boring bits haha. And thank you for noticing the camera work :) I try hard at that.
"I don't understand why people buy the deck..." Proceeds to spend even more money on an already pricier handheld to upgrade the exact thing that people buy the deck for.
The conclusion at the end of the video with it not having that much more performance gains even with significantly cooler temperatures, kind of makes me feel impressed by Asus. Like they really squeezed almost every drop of performance from this APU that they could in that small package. These handheld PCs really are marvel of engineering...
I would have put a momentary switch in the bottom of the dock so you can flip the main switch you installed and it turns off automatically when you remove the device to streamline the process a little and it gives you the option to turn it off when it is just charging
Was looking around for reviews on Ally & Deck, but i think i will get Deck soon with 2TB and dual boots (SteamOS & Win11). Ally is good at the screen, but others was mainly the same as the Deck. Deck able to find parts easiler and fix it myself easily too. Plus point on Deck is the price and i have many Steam games that i stopped playing after removed my gaming PC (Hustling for adult life). I have yet to get a deck, but i'm still looking around since im playing with my Switch now. Both Ally & Deck are great handheld machines.
Steam deck users: "look at what they need to mimic a fraction of our power". But seriously, great video! I love the passion for your ROG Ally that is clearly shown here. You're going to help so many Ally users with their modding, and that's what's up! As a Steam Deck user and console mod enthusiast, this information is interesting to me and must be empowering to those who own these devices. The name of the video is light-hearted especially since I'm familiar with your channel, and I'm grateful for the work you put into your videos. I won't be running out to get an Ally, but I like seeing the limitations of each handheld gaming PC being pushed!
The Steam Deck is more powerful than that Ally at TDPs less than 15W but anything above that hold true. However I do give you props for trying to solve a major issue of the Ally for those who are tech savy enough to replace the SSD and not afraid to get their hands dirty buy taking off the heat sink. Yeah the Ally and Steam Deck share the same battery capacity which is massive hinderance of both products. However I do like the idea that you can upgrade the battery if you know what exactly you are doing and not afraid to go that far. A+ for all of the mods shown. Props for using liquid metal. Maybe it might work better in the Ally than in the Deck. To Answer your question why users still buy Steam Decks is because they trust Valve because of their excellent customer service and anytime uses had issues with their decks the users had great results with the RMA process. And the OS for the Deck is a million times better than trying to use Windows on a device that it was NOT made for even thought there are tools that were made by ASUS that help somewhat but still cumbersome even with that. Also ASUS hasn't had a good track record because in the past they had issues with their some of their motherboards damaging 7800X3D CPUs and their own board which they said they wouldn't do any warranty stuff with only to backtrack later on after being called out on it. So a lot of trust was lost with that company.
So you're telling me that a few tiny pieces of Aluminum and Fiberglass Adhesive sheets really prevents the SD card from burning? AND ASUS COULD NOT THINK OF THAT??
The reason i live the SteamDeck is that it's a massive step forward in Linux gaming. If people don't care about Linux then i can understand why the SteamDeck is unimpressive, but for us Linux needs it means we can build and run a daily driver gaming computer with Linux installed. Which i just did before Christmas. It's something I've wanted to do since I first started using Linux in 2001.
it's not just Linux. No Windows user is happy of having to use Windows to play their games, open source is going to be crazy in the future and Valve is simply taking the right direction. It's not a secret that driver optimization is messier and messier the more devices you have to optimize for, pushing in this direction also makes it simpler for optimizations to roll out on PC games too
I'm going to have to switch to linux again. I hate windows with a passion. Bill gates is the devil. I started gaming on dos. I have high gaming pc, custom built with custom hardline water cooling. I tried a few times to switch to linux, I loves the os but there was just not enough games. I will have to try again when I get time. Older with a family now so I don't game much anymore. Kids too young to start getting them into and teach them to build and setup water cooling.
Hi Zac :) With regards to the joysticks not being compatible with Hall effect sensors due to the shoulder buttons, you could always just shield the joystick. ie with MuMetal. As for your dock, I think I would've made it without the front lip, as that way you could use it as a secondary screen when hooked up to a monitor :)
@@ZacBuilds you’re welcome :) I’m really enjoying your videos - they are absolutely some of the best, if not the best, diy videos! I love how in depth you’ve gone to be able to make videos for us. It’s nice how thorough you are, and your video skills are very good as well! Just a pleasure :)
You can nickel plate a copper heat sink luckily, however you can just straight up use it on copper, it just has a chance of difusing and a second layer might be needed
Always love mods and DIY videos. This vid is no different! Love it. Also like how you don't try to add unnecessary comedy or gaffs like other youtubers and also, your vid give us enough of the DIY steps to appreciate the process without boring us with tedium. Subscribed!! 👍👍
Wow so much effort for so little performance gains. More battery life is easier achieved with a good powerbank. But it was cool to watch and wow do you have skills! I run an overclocked, shell swapped full white Steam Deck, but this is a different level of customization! Impressive!!
To all the dumbasses in the comments complaining about the title... You realize he won right? This was his goal. Now he has a bunch of comments and views. He wasn't making a statement about which console was better, he just wants to film himself doing something he enjoys and he wants to make money doing it.
Got me curious! How is the SD Card slot holding up? If that heat shielding is all it takes to "fix" this, then you've stumbled across something that has been plaguing the ROG Ally Discord and Reddit since this thing released.
I know the title is bait, but I'll bite. Yeah I wonder why people would prefer to buy a Steam Deck when they could instead buy an Ally, spend probably close to 1000 or more on tools, another 150 on a battery, spend a few weeks to design a new solution to better cool the system and hold the battery and in the end get something that still is not only bulkier and therefore worse as a handheld, but also not as good as a traditional desktop. Even with considering that the title is bait for comments and views. It's obvious that most people would be better served by a Steam Deck or a Lenovo Legion Go if they wanted a handheld PC since those don't need to be torn apart to make them worth it. And even considering it's use as a desktop, well there are cheaper options that still have a small form factor. I think the switch mod video you did was pretty cool and could have a legitimate use if one had the resources and tools to make it, but this just seems like kind of a waste imo.
The title aged like fine milk, but in a way, this is a good project? After all, people will trash or mod their ASUS rigs, you just went down the modding path a bit earlier than you had to. Keep it up, my sister's got an Ally a few months ago and I'm afraid I'll have to fix it myself in the not-so-far future and I'll need all the videos describing how to replace every single garbage part ASUS jammed into this pile of e-waste. Let's be frank, the Steam Deck is hard to improve upon, it's not a good DIY project when you've got nothing to DIY on the thing. The Steam Deck would not get you content to make. The ASUS ROG Ally? Now that's worthy of a DIY project video. Really, that's a rabbit hole and not the kind you'd want to get a taste of from Deco*27, but a real nasty rabbit hole you wouldn't even poke at with a 10 feet pole. It's made of the cheapest materials, built in with some great serial errors and is in overall quality: trash. This channel however, is a titan of recycling, except this isn't outdated hardware, this is built to be garbage. You can replace everything in that handheld and improve it. Well, once you finish you're holding either a Steam Deck or a mini PC with a large battery glued to it basically, but let's ignore that for a second. You can always buy the shit one, spend thousands of dollars to make it acceptable. The best thing. You don't have to care about your warranty. ASUS doesn't respect your warranty either, it's just a label they put on overpaid unnecessary "repairs" they want you to pay for! Then send back the device with the original problem still present or just decide that they won't give you back your device, because that's great. See, modding it solves this problem. They can't hold your hardware hostage if you're not sending it to them. See? Infinitely better.
... I would honestly like for him to look into the possibility of making a custom eGPU setup for an Ally. I know Asus currently has it locked to their proprietary attachment, I'm just curious on how hard it'd be to make your own.
My question is did the heat shielding over the microsd card actually solve the sd card getting fried long term? I’d like to know so I can do it myself, but don’t want to do it if it didn’t actually work long term.
I'd be cautious of this personally. It's not as if use of microsd cards won't produce heat in and of itself - under normal use they're more or less ambient heat, but under transfer of lots of data (i.e. installing all your games or copying a bunch of files over) they can get pretty hot and actually can result in killing a card (I've had this happen to me on a few cards including ones from reputable brands) - although this may be more from the reader-writer than the card itself, and I don't know enough as to which part is actually causing the heat, putting the shielding ontop of the slot could actually insulate this heat and increase odds of data transfer killing your card. Large capacity microsd cards are still fairly new and there's really not a lot of info about all this (which is likely why even good brand cards can be cooked to death without being heated by a cpu/gpu) so it's anyone's guess at this point, but I'd strongly recommend making sure all your initial download/installs are done before you attempt this yourself.
Over the last few days I've been watching some of Zac's videos and I can finally confirm: This guy is living the dream. Zac, you probably won't read this, but: thank you for your wholesome content. Not only is your production and content top notch, but you're just a great person.
Thank you for candid results! I think we all look for ways to upgrade our systems without guaranteed results. Knowing the results from your dedicated time is definitely a light in the dark.
Geeeezzzzzusssss...... (but, 1, I sub'd at like 8 minutes in when I saw your shop. You earned that, and for better or worse now I'm in your catalog commenting away. ;p) But, damnnnn, that's some upper level mods when you have to flex and bend copper within specific heat parameters. This feels more like a 'flex' video than a 'how-to', but again, I sub'd and am giving a genuine salute to your patience in such tasks. Buttttt, while you've convinced me to give a ROG Ally a solid look, it's the Steam OS and my second-hand price/snatch of $320 that made me pick the Steamdeck over anything else. I'm not sure I'm ready to break down a retail sticker device over $300 the same way you did. But again, serious salute, and I'm in your sub loop for all the future goodness, for better and worse! ;p
All that said, you're depth in the "liquid metal application" portion was a very good "how-to" for more than just this specific use case. ....where have you been all my life???? Free for drinks later? ;p
16:48 Will robbing that USB port of current, should you flip the fan switch on while in use, cause issues with any devices plugged into it (like an external USB drive)?
20:56 ....I was definitely thinking you'd just say, "jump straight to LN2 and go for broke." ....come on, over 700k views from this... doooo it. The power of Zoolander compels you.
Now I really want an Ally 😂 Absolutely great video, I hoped to see some performance gains but it's also good to see that Asus uses the chips potential!
Valve made Linux gaming actually possible thanks to steam deck. I want to thank them for all the efforts are making, still keeping everything open source
^ +1 . For handheld gaming, I believe battery life is the most important. Imagine gaming on an ARM chip with a linux OS and getting +20 hours on a AAA title
ASUS QC is also terrible unreliable junk
@@natzzzy9119 wdym
@@peppefailla1630 ROG Ally's are notorious for frying the MicroSD slot and MicroSD cards due to heat from the power delivery system iirc.
That is a design flaw that should have been detected and corrected during prototyping.
@@ElNeroDiablo +1 for steam deck!
I bought the Steam Deck for it's price and the fact that it's absolutely loaded with buttons, joysticks, capacitive touch sensors and an awesome key mapping tweaking tool in SteamOS.
The last thing is really Steam Input (The thing that the Steam Controller also used).
Yep. Steam Controller 2.0 is built right into it.
@@gelbphoenix Steam input is not only for steam controller anymore.
@@tomaslacus8086 I know. Also I said "also used" not "only used".
I bought the SD oled because it seems the overall most balanced of the handhelds + SteamOS, valve support/compatibility effort on the OS, trackpads, nice design and ergonomics, battery life for few hours of casual gaming on the go without the worry of carry extra weight of power banks, remember to charge them, etc.
I will mostly play platforms like Ori and single players like Control + emulation, where I feel more confident with joypad input than M&K.
If I want to play fps and other pvp games at high fps I do it on my PC anyways, with M&K, so I don't think I will miss out on the higher performance of Ally/Legion go.
The steam deck is, to me, more for a casual experience on the couch or on the go with platform games that I rarely play in front of the PC (Ori, Sonic, etc) and single players/story from Steam (Control, GTA5/RDR2, etc) and emulators (Emudeck/Batocera).
I will consider also a small pocket form factor handheld for pure emulation in the future, there are many options of gameboy/gamegear looking handhelds "on steroids" running custom OS. An option and a nice project could be a diy handheld with a Raspberry Pi.
This is a secret advertisement for the Steam Deck.
Weak. Deck
@@mesiroy1234 cheap, and weak, its almost like its for casual gaming or something
@@Jasperthefloof.-kh1rd 🗣🔥🔥
Especially when you consider how much better the steam deck is. Asus has always been horrible.
@tfkoincognito and Valve has never been anti-consumer or anti-competition.
Anyone enjoy the new user agreement?
The love and effort that Valve puts into the Support of their Steam Deck is something that Asus only can dream of. That's why ;)
Also because not all of us can purchase a 700$ console
God yes steam support wins man
And most people don't want to void their warranties like this guy did.
Delusional fanatics pretend that Valve doesn't have A LONG list of abandoned hardware products that were beloved by multiple users...
@@baka_ja_nai only the index and deck were "beloved
I like that you tried this and you did a great job of it.
But I don't see how any of this makes the Steam Deck less worth buying.
Honestly where I was sitting the whole time. Like, this guy clearly has the skills to make awesome things and that dock is absolutely amazing for sure, but all I see is a much heavier, more expensive alternative to the Deck. Especially considering the efficiency gains of the OLED Deck, there's not much of an upside to this mod.
The only thing I can assume is the title is clickbait to get the Deck owners in here and angry because he doesn't seem to say this is better than the Deck anywhere.
Almost like he made a rog ally mod video and gave it a clickbait title to get views...
windows compatible games less loop arounds and elbow grease i allot of my games from ubisoft my ac games and splinter cell games work out of the box game pass work out off the box honkai star rail works out off the box
if anything it makes me want a steamdeck more so that I don't have to do all this lmao
wel for lower budged gaming its worth buying but for newer games its worthless it really shows anyone denying that are basicly the fan boys i had fun with my steam deck it s now on a shelf its been a good year for gaming but not for steam deck
imagine sending asus rog ally for new tumbsticks repair for free and have to pay 200 euro more for things u dont want to be repaired
Steve from GamersNexus made a whole video about it. Asus have some of the worst customer service. Do not buy their crap until they start treating their customers with respect.
"Its better than anything else" Proceeds to tear apart and rebuild.
It is so good that you have to basically redo it from ground up to make it decent.
That does not mean it can (or even should) be better :))
@@sergeikulikov4412 it should have been better, asus was just asus
Warning!!!!! Do *NOT* use liquid metal like he shows. It will leak and ruin your system. He only protected the CPU from shorts, he didn't install a barrier to prevent it from getting away from the CPU. Usually it's a type of foam that completely fills in between the CPU and heatsink. (For testing purposes on a flat PC test bench it may not be entirely necessary, but this is a mobile device.
You have been warned.
He did technically have the conformal coating on the outer edge which may actually create a seal when the heatsink goes on.
Liquid metal is a bad idea in a device thats constantly moved around.
Metal, dense & expansive under heat, liquid, deformable & innertially bound to shift locations: yep, metal on PCB if you dropped that thang while carrying it in your backpack
I have taken a liking to phase change polymer for high performance, service-free, 100% safe cooling.
He does also mention that none of his thermal upgrades acheived much so probably not worth it for that reason too - though putting the insulation between the SD card and heatpipes would be a good idea
I can think of 3 reasons immediately.
1. Price
2. Convenience / support from Valve with their own OS
3. Elegance / design vs Ugly RGB lights
Also great ergonomics vs constant thumb sore
Lol, bro really said "elegance" 😂. That chungous deck is the ugliest shit I have ever seen.
4: the sd card slot won't die from a terrible design
Sorry but Steam Deck is the ugly one here Asus ROG Ally is way prettier.
@@arseniy3763 You had to be joking Steam Deck built in controllers are complete trash
Deck's trackpads are a killer feature for some of us. Can't fix the lack of those (not in an ergonomic way at least).
Yes. SD is by far superious on input side. I didn't even consider junk like that Asus when I ordered my SD quite recently.
Track pads and steamOS are killer features.
Not impressed by the ally at all.
@@Hellspooned2 as a SD user since launch i hardly ever use the track pads sure they are great to have as a maybe use at some point but for me i dont use it
@@jothaincope
@@sgt.vernex6378 yourself
It's easy: the Steamdeck is a) cheaper and b) a way better optimized experience.
Glad I could help.
Can't play all the games though.
Valve has the pull to influence game manufacturers to get optimizations for games specifically for the steam deck . In that regard the steam deck is an appealing option
Yup, I have a powerful PC as it is, but I'm using the steam deck as the ideal optimization factor for my games, if I can play it smoothly on my steam deck, I should be able to play it smoothly on my ally as well.
Not just optimization for games on the steam deck, but also for linux, since thats what the steam deck runs on. Thats one of the reason i like the steam deck so much
Valve have done everything SO right with the launch of the OLED Steam Deck, they have cemented my love for them forever!
Even if I sold my steam deck non OLED and bought a Rog Ally I will 100% buy the steam deck 2 immediately.
Aged like fine milk. 🥂
Steamdeck fanboys are the absolute worst.
I bought a Steam Deck 64gb on the Spring sale for like $349. I then upgraded it with a 1tb Corsair SSD for $80. Less than $500, I have a 1tb handheld that runs everything I like to play, including MW2 through Windows 10 dual boot.
The Ally is cool and all, but when the SD exists for the price it is, I'll always recommend the Deck.
tbh the performance of the deck is so bad for someone like me that I'd never buy it. If I was going handheld I'd get something better or just get nothing at all. The games look quite bad on the deck considering a lot of them you're running at 720p on medium low settings at sub 60 fps.
@@ramsaybolton9151 everything I've played so far runs well at 40 FPS, some could go higher but 40 seems to be the sweet spot. From someone who actually has one and uses it daily, it's plenty for such a small screen. I understand where you're coming from but you wouldn't know unless you've actually used one.
For example what I play most on deck: spider man, GTA 5, MW2 (win 10 dual boot), deep rock galactic, 7 days to die, among many others that don't come to mind ATM. For the price tag, it's the best on the market imo. Sure there are several better but you're paying double
@@zach7384 i learned that some people are very sensitive to fps changes and "low" (under 80) fps motion-sickness. maybe zac is this way too?
i don't personally have this issue and prefer anything i play at or above 24fps.
vr is great for example, as low as 14fps for nearly 10 hours a session and i dont even notice, i can see that its low fps but i cant feel it lol
i have real motion-sickness though, cars, boats, planes, if it moves and im not paying attention to the movement i get sick and throw up, in games or on screen i don't have this issue at all.
@@ramsaybolton9151elden ring on a plane is still elden ring on a plane
@@elliottwood5423 I'd rather just wait to play at home for a better quality experience. This is like watching a pirated came quality movie vs paying $10 to see it in 4k IMAX but instead you need to pay some pretty decent $$$$ for the cam quality.
I feel like you're making a pretty good case for buying a Steamdeck. None of these alternatives that also came out recently are truly complete packages, and always have caveats.
Personally, I'd rather use a GPD Win, because I like the format and keyboard.
I got a 7840U GPD Win Max 2, and it's friggin' incredible. I use it like a giant handheld often, and it completely replaced my laptop while offering a BETTER typing experience within the shell of a 10.1"-screen device. The battery is better than the Deck in 35w mode, and when I run it in a battery saver mode, it lasts like 8-10+ hours, which is just bonkers. I loaded it up with 6.5TB of storage, too. My Deck mostly collects dust now - not because it's bad, I still love the Deck, the WM2 is just enough of a step up to render it nearly obsolete. Deck's more ergonomic with better controls, though!
@@nickstarlingch My 7840u Win Mini arrived 2 days ago and i am currently ignoring my 3080 rig lol. AAA games on my 3080 for sure but i am tinkering the heck out of my mini for the past 3 days
@@nickstarlingchMy 7840U has been an amazing experience as well. I can play most titles on the system, not to mention the Emulati g performance. Portable PS3 was not something I was expecting for a long while.
Nothing he’s doing is necessary, I have been emulating ps3 on a bone stock z1 extreme ally for a while with no issues, battery life is about an hour at full tilt but I’m always near an outlet when I’m using it anyways.
I have an 8" generic Windows 11 Tablet with a keyboard dock thats similar and i can vouche for this form factor is amazing. I use it 80% gaming PC 20%. So thank you for the confirmation. GDP win will be my next gamign handle. Never will I say, I wish my laptop was closer, I don't want to surf the web using htis. If iits anyhthing like my significanly weaker windows tablet, I'd expect With GDP win's full keyboard. on Windows 11 in tablet mode, using a mouse is toally optional. only the keybaord is sort of missed here, except its built in so its a full package. and clamshell so i don't have to buy a case? yes please! @@nickstarlingch
I like that it starts with „conceptually at least“. Products just don’t stop at a concept.
I think the reason the Steam Deck is a solid choice is the support from Valve, developers, and the modding community, and the growing ceiling for a user customized experience. Since launch, so much has been improved, most of my massive Steam library is now verified, performance in tons of games has been improved, and you generally see a lot of titles either launching or making changes to titles to make them run well on the Deck. For unofficial plugins/ apps, i added a custom theme that makes the UI much more clean and customizable, How Long to Beat stats displayed on game pages with plugins, SteamDB compatibility ratings displayed on game pages, added a super easy to modify and load system of emulators, installed and added all of my non-steam launchers directly to my game view with a single installer, got an app for remote play from PS5 with HDR and touchpad support, and thats only scratching the surface.
Look what they need to mimic a fraction of our scalability! Defunct woke products with disgusting lack of standards and degenerate clientel.
Interesting. But again, when you get a gaming laptop, most of the time it would be hard to choose whether to go for Steam deck, or a gaming laptop.
@SuperFlashDriver they definitely serve different purposes, not to mention different price points. I've got a nice gaming laptop and a steam deck, and I generally use them for different things. Laptop is for AAA graphics heavy titles or Kb and mouse focused titles when I'm away from my PC, and Steam Deck is generally for everything else, as it's way more convenient to use, generally. Rather than having a laptop on a lap pad, with an external mouse, plugged into a power brick, I can pick up a handheld, kick back, and play. For someone wanting the full gamut of a PC experience on a non desktop PC device, I don't think you'd want to go any lower than a gaming laptop, but, for a handheld experience, I think the Steam Deck holds its own pretty well.
@@ethanrox333 Mmm, I see. It's just that I've been using my laptop for a while that I don't know if I would ever find any use for the Steam Deck myself.
unless you're australian. the orginal steam deck hasn't even come here yet, and the 64 gb standard model is only 1100 dollars!
Valve's support, not cooking my SD card, and not needing to burn time customizing/working on the deck. I don't have time right now to mess with it, but I can turn it on and play right out the gate super easy. That's why.
You forgot - The ROG ally has bad battery life, worse 1% and 0.1% lows when gaming compared to the steam deck having a more consistent frame rate meaning its less stuttery. Having windows so you run into all the stupid windows problems every time Microsoft does an update. Overkill screen resolution which you will never be able to actually play most games at 1080p so you will run games upscaled from 720p rather than native which looks worse. Too high refresh rate that most games cannot even reach that fps limit. The ROG ally unlike the OLED steam deck has a lack of HDR support and worse colour accuracy which is actually important for better visuals in gaming and does not have a performance cost. Even if the ROG ally was the same price as the steam deck OLED for example the steam deck OLED would be the better value still. Still many I have missed but either way, the ROG ally is a laptop tablet with joy cons glued to the sides NOT a gaming console like the steam deck is.
Edit: Some people will have a use case or valid reason for buying it still though but a smaller range of people compared to the steam deck. People say stuff like windows doesn't trigger anticheat as often with the ROG ally but who plays competitive multiplayer games on a handheld? Its a bit inconvenient in my opinion.
@@stevenlee3661
I went the steam deck oled route, hopefully it arrives by next week.
For my taste, the ally is quite ugly too and the white color is already a no go for me at least.
The Legion go looks better, but the detachable controllers on a big heavy device like that seems a weak point in the long run to me. I like Msi desktop products, but their claw handheld is out of discussion to me.
Both Ally/legion go are very power hungry and require more planning/attentions before take it on the go even for half a day imo, they can't play very long with a full charge, compared to the SD (if you take them with you in a rush/last minute without accessories).
You can always carry kilos of powerbanks and accessories ofc, but it requires more planning and attentions like everything needs to be fully charged, bigger travel bags etc.
@stevenlee3661 it's still the smallest computer on the market which is a good pro.
@@Anomalyy666 it's not there are many more computers that are desktop or tablet for factor that are much smaller with full windows 10 or 11 on them. For example any mini pc on Amazon (you can even find pc sticks) and many windows tablets some terrible and some great. There is also the ayaneo flip ds which is a lot smaller but a bit fatter than the rog ally but very expensive. Many other ayaneos are smaller than the rog ally but I wouldn't recommend them as they are even worse value than the rog ally. The rog ally has the advantage of it allowing proper egpu support. The bad thing about this though is that it uses a proprietary connector that makes it so you can only use a few gpus made by Asus that are very expensive rather than allowing anyone to plug in any GPU they want.
And how about lots of countries where Steam Deck is not officially sold?
-"I don't understand why people buy Steam Decks"
-procedes to use tools and materials less than 0.1% of people of the people watching own or have access to or even the money to pay a professional to do it (let alone all the people who have actually bought SDs)
To get something that might be 5% better, maybe.
The SD Cards are NOT "frying". The SD Card controller chip is burning out, causing the actual card to become corrupt and or damaging the card. That is why the ROG Ally eventually stops recognizing ANY card inserted into it.
Do you know how to fix it?
@@fredsvv I don't. I tried installing some thermal insulation between the SD card slot and heat pipe/fan inside the unit, thinking maybe that would keep the card slot and controller chip cooler since it would block some of the heat radiating off the heat pipe that's right above the SD Card slot, but that actually made the temperature inside the SD card slot higher by about 10 degrees fahrenheit, which is the opposite of what I was trying to do.
Awesome getter to have no sd card function from something I bought vs damaging my cards.
The new models dont have this issue R8 and newer.
@@lucianowod How do I check my version?
@20:00
Heat is a big killer for batteries. It causes a breakdown in the capacitance layers. Folding the battery will cause thermal issues while charging or during high current draw downs. I would think you'd need a thermal pad in the middle of the batteries with side fins of some sort to dissipate the heat from the 2 center cells... Stacking the batteries was a sure fire way to an early end of life for the 2 center cells.
No one is appreciating the threat to life from this foolish "mod".
I found the equivalent of the wood working videos that tell you how to build a $40 night table with a couple thousand dollars worth of tools and supplies. Good job
My reason is the steam deck is more affordable it has amazing track pads it’s comfort to hold and valve support teams are quick and really understanding for replacements for defects and great with repairs and the amazing OLED panel and great battery life
Amazing video
These are just my reasons I stay with the Steam deck
i barely use mine anymore wouldnt say its more comfortable i do like the touch pad but meh newer games struggle with it due to linux and hardware so i use the ally more only use the steam deck for older games basicly xD
@@bionic3500 there is more protons that are not valves to get more modern games working
@@aaww1010 he's just plain lying, in other comments he said that games glitch on the Deck and don't work. He probably doesn't have a Deck at all.
"I don't understand why people still buy Steam Decks..." and the dude proceeds to do all this aftermarket modding, soldering, etc...maybe people buy Steam Decks so they don't have to do all of this. There, the obvious answer to your question has been given.
Yeah, even from the first few minutes you can tell the title is kinda... *clickbaity.*
But it was an interesting video nonetheless. Would have been better-served not using the clickbait and to let the video stand on its own, but it takes even the most popular UA-camrs a really long time to realize that clickbait doesn't actually help, it just turns people off of your channel.
This aged like milk...
"Why do people buy the steam deck when they could buy a product that is twice as expensive for 10% performance increase!?!?!?" we may never know
More than 10%
@@DimiArt idk where i live it's 30$ difference but steamdeck vs ally i had enough asus and shady companies in my life i'd rather have something from a company that won't brick my device with a bios update which they did to my new laptop and i assume did to many others as well
1080p vs 720 is reason enough
Mods 😊
10% ? You are a joke...
"significantly more powerful than the steamdeck" should have a HUGE asterix next to it. Because, it is only more powerful at 15W and above.... Below, the Steam Deck is running circles around the ROG Ally. :) Nice project non-the-less, very nicely done. :)
Just another clickbait...
This makes me wonder if its possible to undervolt the Ally, and I don't mean under clock. Just tune the voltage in such a way that very demanding games like cyberpunk become unstable. It is a common and proven way to get more performance out of GPU's, since they rely on algorithms that take temperature/wattage/frequency into account.
Each GPU chip (the actual silicon) is slightly better worse than the other when it comes to the frequency/voltage needs. To make sure every chip will meets the target frequencies the voltage curves on these chips are all set to the same standard. I wouldn't be surprised if you can easily reduce the watt usage by 5% while maintaining or even getting higher/longer boost clocks. Leading to higher fps and longer battery life. I mean he is already running a custom bios to increase the voltage, why not try to go in the opposite way and make the chip run leaner by adjusting the total power curve.
@@LazyJesse yeah. aren't there also problems when it comes to the software? i think i have heard people complaining about that with the Ally and the vid "only" has hardware upgrades
isn't ally like 10% faster at matched power levels?
Ah yes, the infamous 10W AAA gaming where delusional Steamdeck fanatics are the new sect spreading gospel of "stable 20 FPS is great!!" and try to gaslight everybody else into it)))
And if you are playing indie titles every handheld will handle that virtually the same at 5-8W TDP...
P.S. Gotta love all those 0 FPS that Steamdeck shows in all of my Gamepass titles. But hey, same fanatics pretend that Gamepass doesn't exist and that it's not the greatest deal for PC gaming ATM.
In this age software matters more than hardware. And the ROG Ally runs Windows.
That's why I got a Steamdeck.
I bought the steam deck because the cheapest deck is not functionally different than the $650 option. It was $360 instead of $700 and i already had an extra 1TB 2230 SSD on hand.
SteamOS is awesome for the games that it supports so far. Emulation is simpler than it’s ever been with Emudeck. If the game doesn’t work on SteamOS I use dual boot into Windows. The only reason people buy more expensive handhelds is it looks better on paper.
no it is better period, the screen,performance,quality,form factor,heat production... it's okay to have preferences but don't act stupid, the fact are the facts
@@Yuuki_Asuna People can buy whatever they think is best for there needs and for you maybe the only stat that matters is the highest FPS number for others it might be that they want more than an hour of on the go gaming.
There's no one best in all areas, its which ticks the most important boxes for you
@@Yuuki_Asuna ...You do realize they're talking about the cheapest Steam Deck model vs. the most expensive Steam Deck model, right? Because they're correct. There is no performance difference. Hardware-wise they're the same thing beyond storage, and the difference storage speed makes has been shown to be so minimal that it hardly counts.
@@Yuuki_Asunawhoosh
@@Yuuki_AsunaPrice, battery, o.s, trackpads, display oled in steam oled vs rog ally power and Best display lcd, no trackpads in windows??? Really Asus?
As someone who has done this mod it's awesome to see it covered! The only things I would suggest doing differently is not wrapping the battery like that and instead of cutting the stock plate of the ally is using the 3D backplate model that Yesitskira has designed for this specific mod! She has done an amazing job with it! Also big shoutout to Tekgnome who runs allymods and came up with this idea! The extra battery life is absolutely amazing to have especially considering the total weight of the device is as much as the steam deck now. It's really impressive!
yeah i found it strange he 3d printed everything but did a jank job with the back cover
also i really dont see a point with the battery mod either. feelslike diminishing returns that strapping a small power bank behind it with velcro couldnt solve and be hot swappable
great video nonetheless
I'd love something like this but I don't trust myself to not fuck it up lol
@furythree ya that was my initial thoughts to. But the weight distribution is key with this mod. Strapping a power bank to the back doesn't feel nearly as good in the hands. The other benefit of this mod is having the only usb port available for other accessories.
What is the weight of the new battery?
I purchased a Xiaomi 20k battery bank and can say its weight is like the Rog ally itself!!!
i.e. double ally weight is really frustrating, I can't handle the device for 5 minutes.
@@furythreeyeah I think the back cover looks nice design wise, but a full back shell replacement would have looked much cleaner and not as disconnected
0:44 don't worry, it is ASUS. Your warranty expiered at the time you purchased it.
If this had a good implementation of SteamOS and also had trackpads, then I'd immediately buy it. That's the one thing it's missing.
Yes, the made-for-windows is both prominent on the Asus and contradictory to the form factor. Then there's things such as the hours one will get off a slightly smaller battery on the deck and general care for software of Valve for a better out-of-the-box experience.
I don’t really miss the steamOS. Definitely good for people who don’t want to mess with windows at all, but I found myself in desktop mode a lot on the Steam Deck so that I could get certain non steam games and emulation working. Armory crate does the job just fine and anything I have in steam I can just launch steam in big box mode, which is basically all the SteamOS is
The ChimeraOS community is currently working on full support for the ROG ally.
I *specifically purchased steam deck because I support GNU/Linux and I want to help Valve kill Windows* . It's not only that I love the gamepad and holding literally any other gamepad, apart from perhaps playstation gamepads, now feels like an awkward, obsolete relic (think of how NES gamepads feel), or that 12 years of experience with GNU/Linux makes SteamOS far more useful, powerful and convenient for me than Windows is. It's that Valve has demonstrated a willingness to help GNU/Linux erode the Windows market share among gaming PCs in ways no other company has ever shown the slightest intention of. The non-exhaustive list of hallmarks of this includes:
- shipping products ROOTED out of the box
- shipping them with FULLY UNLOCKED boot menu that you can use to erase and replace the stock OS with literally anything you want
- allowing that stock OS to very easily download and run ANY UNSIGNED CODE out of the box
- releasing 99% of the source code of the entire stock OS including the entire graphics stack and exposing their self hosted gitlab repositories updated with the complete history of the code for every current and past release of the OS
- _even within the stock OS_ , making the application formed from that 1% of the code that is proprietary (Steam) 100% optional and possible to _turn off_ with 5 clicks (Steam->Power-Switch to Desktop->Steam->Exit). It only takes mentioning "Google" to fight anyone who insinuates this is NOT an outstanding good faith attempt by a proprietary company to _more_ than compromise with open-source extremism.
- of that 1% of the code that is proprietary closed-source, intentionally writing 99% of it in the most easy-to-reverse-engineer languages ever (Javascript and Typescript), _unobfuscated_ , which immediately allowed thousands of modders to write endless community features for it
- reserving that tiny, remaining 0.1% of the stock OS that's formed from closed-source native binaries, for its arguably most logical intended purpose, the Steam DRM to enforce account licensing of games from their store, their actual bottom line that's the one thing they would indisputably lose money by removing. They don't even make any attempt, legal, practical or technical, to stop anyone from using their real-world direct competitors' stores, Epic, Blizzard and Origin. This degree of love for the customer is unparalleled by almost any other corporation in history, let alone in the video game industry.
The fact that people nowadays make lack of Linux on a gaming device a disadvantage is kinda crazy
Repairabiliy? Availability of spare parts? Great software and optimization for a handheld?
And the device actually works? ASUS has a hilariously bad reputation for hardware dying.
@@slamshift6927 I can attest to that!
I bought an ASUS Vivobook back in 2021 and had so many black screen issues for the next 2 years. I thought it was a dying iGPU or maybe Windows (bcuz Windows does that, too)
But it turns out that it was the SSD that came with it. One day when I was watching UA-cam, my laptop just turned off and instantly went to the BIOS screen where it said "No Storage Device Detected", confirming that it was the SSD
I'm just glad the part that came defective was a replaceable part. You can only replace RAM and Hard Drive in laptops
@@slamshift6927 wait, that's actually a thing? i thought i had a bad luck with my asus tuf laptop because it's dying after 2 years, because it's m.2 slot are burnt for some reason and now i had to switch sata slot and soon after that the keyboard is broken as well.
And battery life is a lot better
@@Art-pj8zqnah. Asus is famous because it likes to cut corners for hilarious things. Plus the TUF Laptop lineup before 2022 was famous for it’s bad build quality
Buys a handheld to then just put it on a dock in a table for all eternity…
Honestly, the steam deck beats out the rog ally by feel.
I bought a steam deck and tried a rog ally and It just felt too small for me.
since when a product bigger and worse is a good thing, wtff
@@Yuuki_AsunaThe steam deck came out before the ally for one, two the steam deck has better controls, three, the steam deck was to the mobile PC market. What the ally is to the steam deck when it released. It performed two to three times higher at at less than a quarter of the cost of most handhelds when it was released.
@@Yuuki_Asuna Most handhelds are too small to be comfortable.
@@Yuuki_Asuna Why make something smaller if it mean sacrificing ergonomics? The other thing is that the Ally is a computer that you can carry around. SD is a handheld console that can also be used as a computer. Ally is nowhere near as thought out as the SD is, not to mention Valve's amazing software support.
Even if it didn't raise performance, those are really impressive thermal gains. And honestly it's reassuring to know that the ally is basically already operating at peak efficiency.
The biggest factor in why performance is not improved is its memory bandwidth limited like all mobile devices reliant on LPDDR memory. ROG Ally only gets 100GB/s memory bandwidth AND it has to split that paltry 100 with the CPU. If you look at all devices that get superior gaming performance they all have higher memory bandwidth stats/figures then the Ally and all these console/desktop/laptop GPUS get access to GDDR or on the rare ocassion.... HBM memory.
Manufacturers are stuck between a rock and a hard place, GDDR has much higher energy consumption, and HBM is significantly more expensive. Tech advances (Node shrinks) on RAM are also slowing with RAM manufacturers finding it increasingly difficult to make breakthroughs and to further shrink capacitors which are necessary to store memory.
19:00 something is very wrong here. I get 15200 Points in Cinebench R23 with my STOCK ally, no mods, no tweaked bios. So, with a permanent 54W limit, liquid metal, additional fans, you should get over 16000 points!
Guess the reason people buys the steam deck instead of the ally is because they don't have to do this hassle to improve its faulty hardware :)
1. Native linux install, which allows valve to do specific things that you cant do on windows, like custom DE, compositor and kernel tweaks.
2. Did I mentioned native linux? Cause this is a huge deal, no longer being forced to run windows for games is a godsend. The steam deck has propelled the Proton / Wine / DXVK / VKD3D projects into developers eyes, since now they have a standardized platform to target with minimal effort required on their part thanks to the previous projects I mentioned. The only reason to run windows is either you have an nvidia card (sucks to be you), you play games like valorant which basically have anti cheats that resembles spyware (honestly not much was lost), or the game you want to play isnt available on steam, epic or GOG (heroic game launcher covers GOG and Epic).
2. The steam deck has been made in such a way thats easily repairable.
3. Parts can be acquired from Ifixit thanks to valve partnering up with them.
4. Long support. Till this date new updates for the steam controller have been released, valve tends to offer support even after they discontinued production.
5. The steam deck offers better performance on the go when it comes to battery life (which is the main use for this device).
Also Asus has been doing some nasty things with their motherboards and products in general, like refusing RMAs and releasing bioses that fry CPUs and the QC of the rog Ally hasnt been great.
As an owner of an Nvidia card it very much does suck on linux, although there's work that should be making this less sucky as early as this summer. Also you can absolutely play non-steam games on the steamdeck, and while you DO have to go into desktop mode and use some (really nice and easy) 3rd party tools the desktop experience on the steamdeck is better than the Ally's (unless you're hardcore entrenched in windows and refuse to adjust to any other OS or DE) anyway and after your done they show up in your library and you can happily play them without going into desktop again.
Also, native Linux
You say native Linux, but the game isn't even running native, there's nothing good about running a game under a translation layer. You can say linux this, linux that, in the operating system aspect, but the rest is just fanboy bullshit. Only the system is running native, it lost the entire point because you don't play the operating system, you play the games. Trying to come up with an excuse that anti cheats resemble spyware, it's just a way to ignore a downside of current Linux, another fanboy bullshit that even the real hardcore Linux people understand and see the problem with, there is a disparity between them and the fanboys who simply inflame the Linux community with stupidity, creating an operating system war that doesn't even help them.
@@eroncross5873 What are you talking about, its running native under x86_64 instruction sets, there is no emulation being done. The only thing being replicated is the windows file system and structure. Projects like DXVK and VKD3D translate DX calls to the vulkan equivalent ones. This is especially true when talking about DX12 and vulkan, which share very similar implementations, most likely thanks to mantel, the progenitor low level API. Emulation would imply that its using a completely different instruction set, which would need to be replicated, but thats not whats happening here.
Projects like Proton / Wine are vital because it allows developers to target one platform and build one binary, saving them time and effort, while still allowing them to target niche platforms like desktop linux. This is especially great, since linux is not a static platform, distros dont always package the same dependencies or have the same directory structure, having an abstraction layer that automatically takes care of that is great.
Not only that, you're forgetting that there are countless games that will never be ported over to linux and even fail to launch on windows. Proton / Wine doesnt only provide a way to abstract the differences between windows and linux, it helps game preservation by giving access to a versioned compatibility layer, which is constantly being updated to support a growing list of games, allowing for older titles to run without issues, a problem that has been slowly plaguing windows as of late.
Additionally, these translation layers arent relegated to linux, part of their code can be easily used to fix games on windows. There are plenty of people using DXVK / VKD3D to fix issues in older titles and even intel has made use of these compatibility tools, to improve performance in older titles.
Finally, having a ring zero anti cheat for a game, which basically might as well be a root kit, is something beyond an over escalation, especially for an issue that could be solved by better abstracting certain data from the client and monitoring player input server side. The best way to prevent cheaters in online competitive games, is by taking preventative measures, not by installing a root kit client side that can and will be overcome eventually, be it through software or hardware manipulations. Also, do you trust todays gaming companies to properly maintain their root kits? I for sure dont, since they can barely manage to release a working game that doesnt suffer from major bugs, performance and stability issues. That said, its a god damn game, not a bank app.
To conclude this wall of text, yes games are running under linux natively, since they're running on the x86_64 instruction set, which they were designed for and yes proton / wine is a good thing, Lastly, yes kernel level anti cheats are bad.
@@eroncross5873 The translation layer barely affects performance, you will find it's reaches parity with windows or is even faster. Nah real linux users would never fucking install kernel level spyware on their computer and no dev would even think of crippling linux with ring 0 black boxes lmao.
Go shove your shitty OS up your shitter box
It's great that you were able to heavily mod your Ally, but you can't expect everyone to but that amount of afford and risk into modding, just to have a better product.
And yes, I consider support as part of the product. That is something the Ally lacks.
It indeed has a more powerful hardware than steam deck, but steamdeck comes with a linux build that is optimized to run games from steam library, while the rog ally is using the memory and all resources hungry Windows, so it's not like the Steam Deck is in an actual disadvantage.
New title: "Doing everything insurances and manufacturers say will end up bad"
I will say the things I love about the steam deck are minor to others but for me personally are deal breakers if I don't have them after using the steam deck. First are the touchpads, I know people probably think these are useless and probably don't work very well if you are trying to use them as a mouse or joystick replacement. But for me its the fact that I can use them with steam overlay and get a virtual menus that make it great for emulation or games that involve a lot of button combinations to do certain things. I also love that it has four back buttons rather then just two, for me the more buttons the better since I can place macros or other stuff that makes gaming easier or more enjoyable, again due games needing you to press a bunch of button combinations to do certain things. I also like the symmetrical joystick layout, I just cant get used to the offset layout and it just feel uncomfortable in my personal opinion.
Now I am an asus fan boy and this device is pretty awesome since it can also use the GPU attachment they sell so you can up the performance. If asus were to release a new version with four back buttons, symmetrical joysticks, and atleast one touchpad while retaining the ability to use there GPU dock I would definitely pick one up!
Q: Why do people buy Steam Decks?
A: Cheaper + Valves support vs Asuses lack of support
Steam deck was actually a gift, but aside from that it allows me to play Divine Divinity smoothly and with minimal issues, something that I have not been able to do since Windows 7 (roughly 10 years). That was a huge bonus for me. It allows me to play older games without emulation or virtual machines (both of which I am not confident in setting up).
Im all for linux gaming getting better and better! Steam deck opened a whole lot of doors! I guess that's my reasoning
*Wait until he finds out that there are smaller variants of NVME M.2s*
As an engineer, seeing projects like this makes me very happy! The video shows how well the ROG Ally is actually optimized.
wich is the only thing that the steam deck does objectibly better,nothing else, sounds like a minor thing@@Generic_UA-cam_Username_
for 700 bucks, one shouldn't need to fix what the company already knows about
This is definitely one of the most in-depth mod videos I've ever seen on the ROG. This is pretty awesome!
Glad you liked it :)
@@ZacBuildsayaneo 2 s is better
0:42 "Today, we are going to void my warranty."
Great advertisement! 😂
"I don't understand why people buy Steam Decks..."
"Let's fix the Asus ROG Ally"
This man is actually a comedian!
Was there even a steam deck in the entire video? Zac's content is interesting, making a BS title like this is really off-putting. I don't know why but I really fucking hate that shit.
becouse its hella cheap and provides the same experience if not even a better one with the software support
@@youruniquehandle2 your intelligence has noticed that this guy is trying to appeal to the unintelligent.
@@youruniquehandle2it's to get s rise outta people and it worked man lol
@@coinop7278 But the point is that Zac doesn't need to. The content is good, clickbait crap destroys it.
That was completely awesome. I'm not a huge ally fan because it has the same battery size and double the power consumption of the Deck, but I'd totally dig a 90 wh battery Ally. Although the cooling didn't do much it was really fun to watch that process unfold.
It hurt to watch an ally getting cut and modded but this video gave me a strange satisfaction that it's stronger and more of a robust. hand held console now!
"I don't understand why people buy Steam decks"......proceeds to make a video Frankenstiening an ROG Ally and say it's better when it isn't better. 🤣🤣🤣
I like the Steam Deck's UI which was made for a console-like gaming experience on a handheld. I think the other handheld PCs would become more viable options whenever Valve makes it available to everyone.
Wanted to commend how well you told the story here while also going in depth and teaching me about your thought process, without it sounding condescending at all. Learned lots, SWEET mod, and really nice result. Congrats on the project, and cheers from a fellow Torontonian!
Thanks man! Glad you enjoyed it and learned something, thats my goal at the end of the day :)
I know I'm late to the party but thought I'd might as well point out something I noticed: The 90° NVMe adapter looks cool. But one thing to keep in mind if used to swap to a bigger/cheaper 2280 drive: Make sure you check power usage on the new drive. A fast PCIe 2280 drive might use quite a bit more power than the 2230 model the ROG Ally ships with. I think the original NVMe drive sips around 3.5W during "regular use", whilst the less power efficient models of 2230 drives I've seen use over 6W. The non-power-efficient 2280 desktop models can be significantly worse still. There's a reason some of them ships with a cooler on them.
oh my god what a fantastic video! I love these types of videos where people actually modify electronics to make them better instead of a video listing good powerbanks.
In the end, only the powerbank was relevant, tho. Everything else was +5fps worth
@@AlbertoCasanova Well it wasn't really a powerbank though. He made the battery larger, I've seen other people who literally recommend a powerbank for your steamdeck which is way more unpractical.
0:14 This is actually false. Any handheld with a Ryzer 7840U is more powerful than a ROG Ally.
They actually are pretty much the same chipset. What happens is that AMD and Asus use "Z1 extreme" as its name for commercial purpose only.
Wonder how the liquid metal is holding up on a vertical system? Does it not bleed out?
You mean the PS5? I haven’t heard about issues
Amazing. As to the question you asked, "why people buy Steam Decks" - I think you kind of answered your own question. Because there is NO WAY I could do or afford any of that and as you saw, the benefits gained don't seem to be worth the money/effort put in. Also windows on a handheld is just clunky, until they create a mobilized version of Windows, that will always be an issue, the OS on the Deck is just better. But hey, fascinating build, great video!
I think the cooling mod is much better than you give it credit for. I would think that those lower temps would help your battery last longer/possibly give you a longer battery life since the apu isn't demanding as much output? And it would for sure keep your hands from not over heating. Really good video. I know you love walnut, but I'm glad you showed restraint for this one hahah
As a circuit cools down, it's electrical resistance goes down, lower resistance causes higher battery life because the voltage drops in the wires aren't as prominent.
literal 20 degrees colder, and 30 with the dock
@vectorlua8081 It's not drastic is it?
@@DowneyMax It's not a massive increase, but if you're actually paying attention it should be noticable
Best solution is just getting the legion go and problem solved
That was wonderfully well-presented.
Cool project. I was absorbed the entire time, absolutely LOVED the low-temp solder. That alone opens up new windows for me.
Watching you progress through the project, face the challenges when you take on a creative endeavor and complete it, even if it didn't achieve the outcome you hoped for.
Gathering the data of Why it didn't meet those expectations and a root cause analysis just put the topping on the pie.
And visually spot on. Deliberate composition, kudos to the DP.
I'm gonna watch some more.
Thanks man! Each project is an adventure. I never really know where they are going to end up, but I just do my best to document them from start to finish and cut out all the boring bits haha. And thank you for noticing the camera work :) I try hard at that.
Steam Deck: $350
ROG Ally: $600
I bet this thing doesn’t even work anymore copper and Liquid Metal DO NOT MIX
With the performance improvement I have seen, it goes to show how fine tuned the rog ally is ❤, simply love the console
@ChudDinyeh hand held gaming pc, common term is gaming console, but i get your point
"I don't understand why people buy the deck..." Proceeds to spend even more money on an already pricier handheld to upgrade the exact thing that people buy the deck for.
The conclusion at the end of the video with it not having that much more performance gains even with significantly cooler temperatures, kind of makes me feel impressed by Asus. Like they really squeezed almost every drop of performance from this APU that they could in that small package. These handheld PCs really are marvel of engineering...
This was exactly my thought. haha Other than the expanded battery everything else done, didn't really yield any better results.
Man, how have I not come across this channel before! Great work. I look forward to learning more and more with your content.
Glad youre hear now!
i love the 800$ pipebomb tutorial
I would have put a momentary switch in the bottom of the dock so you can flip the main switch you installed and it turns off automatically when you remove the device to streamline the process a little and it gives you the option to turn it off when it is just charging
I did consider this, but the only wrinkle is that I like to leave it in the dock to charge and then the fan would be running the whole time.
@@ZacBuilds I suggested that you leave the switch you already installed and make it the master switch to the fan so you could turn off the fan
Was looking around for reviews on Ally & Deck, but i think i will get Deck soon with 2TB and dual boots (SteamOS & Win11). Ally is good at the screen, but others was mainly the same as the Deck. Deck able to find parts easiler and fix it myself easily too. Plus point on Deck is the price and i have many Steam games that i stopped playing after removed my gaming PC (Hustling for adult life). I have yet to get a deck, but i'm still looking around since im playing with my Switch now. Both Ally & Deck are great handheld machines.
Well u got the deck oled now
We buy steam decks because we like having a working SD card reader and touchpads 😂
give your time fix game rather than playing game
Steam deck users: "look at what they need to mimic a fraction of our power". But seriously, great video! I love the passion for your ROG Ally that is clearly shown here. You're going to help so many Ally users with their modding, and that's what's up! As a Steam Deck user and console mod enthusiast, this information is interesting to me and must be empowering to those who own these devices. The name of the video is light-hearted especially since I'm familiar with your channel, and I'm grateful for the work you put into your videos. I won't be running out to get an Ally, but I like seeing the limitations of each handheld gaming PC being pushed!
The Steam Deck is more powerful than that Ally at TDPs less than 15W but anything above that hold true. However I do give you props for trying to solve a major issue of the Ally for those who are tech savy enough to replace the SSD and not afraid to get their hands dirty buy taking off the heat sink. Yeah the Ally and Steam Deck share the same battery capacity which is massive hinderance of both products. However I do like the idea that you can upgrade the battery if you know what exactly you are doing and not afraid to go that far. A+ for all of the mods shown. Props for using liquid metal. Maybe it might work better in the Ally than in the Deck.
To Answer your question why users still buy Steam Decks is because they trust Valve because of their excellent customer service and anytime uses had issues with their decks the users had great results with the RMA process. And the OS for the Deck is a million times better than trying to use Windows on a device that it was NOT made for even thought there are tools that were made by ASUS that help somewhat but still cumbersome even with that. Also ASUS hasn't had a good track record because in the past they had issues with their some of their motherboards damaging 7800X3D CPUs and their own board which they said they wouldn't do any warranty stuff with only to backtrack later on after being called out on it. So a lot of trust was lost with that company.
So you're telling me that a few tiny pieces of Aluminum and Fiberglass Adhesive sheets really prevents the SD card from burning? AND ASUS COULD NOT THINK OF THAT??
The reason i live the SteamDeck is that it's a massive step forward in Linux gaming. If people don't care about Linux then i can understand why the SteamDeck is unimpressive, but for us Linux needs it means we can build and run a daily driver gaming computer with Linux installed. Which i just did before Christmas. It's something I've wanted to do since I first started using Linux in 2001.
it's not just Linux. No Windows user is happy of having to use Windows to play their games, open source is going to be crazy in the future and Valve is simply taking the right direction. It's not a secret that driver optimization is messier and messier the more devices you have to optimize for, pushing in this direction also makes it simpler for optimizations to roll out on PC games too
I'm going to have to switch to linux again. I hate windows with a passion. Bill gates is the devil. I started gaming on dos. I have high gaming pc, custom built with custom hardline water cooling. I tried a few times to switch to linux, I loves the os but there was just not enough games. I will have to try again when I get time. Older with a family now so I don't game much anymore. Kids too young to start getting them into and teach them to build and setup water cooling.
@@pmclean1980 it's still like that. The Steam Deck is a happy oasis in the linux gaming universe
1 answer: Nobara Linux @@pmclean1980
Hi Zac :)
With regards to the joysticks not being compatible with Hall effect sensors due to the shoulder buttons, you could always just shield the joystick. ie with MuMetal.
As for your dock, I think I would've made it without the front lip, as that way you could use it as a secondary screen when hooked up to a monitor :)
Never heard of MuMetal before, thanks, I'll look into that!
@@ZacBuilds you’re welcome :)
I’m really enjoying your videos - they are absolutely some of the best, if not the best, diy videos!
I love how in depth you’ve gone to be able to make videos for us.
It’s nice how thorough you are, and your video skills are very good as well!
Just a pleasure :)
@@ZacBuilds by the way, if you’re finding that you’d like to spar with someone or need a hand, reach out :)
the liquid metal ate the copper heat sink didnt it?
cause i think you needed to nickel plate it first
You can nickel plate a copper heat sink luckily, however you can just straight up use it on copper, it just has a chance of difusing and a second layer might be needed
Always love mods and DIY videos. This vid is no different! Love it. Also like how you don't try to add unnecessary comedy or gaffs like other youtubers and also, your vid give us enough of the DIY steps to appreciate the process without boring us with tedium. Subscribed!! 👍👍
Wow so much effort for so little performance gains. More battery life is easier achieved with a good powerbank. But it was cool to watch and wow do you have skills! I run an overclocked, shell swapped full white Steam Deck, but this is a different level of customization! Impressive!!
Yeah this was a lot of work for not much of an actual difference.
since I'm also using a powerbank, I do agree with you but only partially. Bear with me on this: 90wh battery mod, PLUS 25000mah powerbank
mmmmm
To all the dumbasses in the comments complaining about the title... You realize he won right? This was his goal. Now he has a bunch of comments and views. He wasn't making a statement about which console was better, he just wants to film himself doing something he enjoys and he wants to make money doing it.
Pretty clickbait title
Lop
How is that clickbaiting? Its not a Steam Deck
Got me curious! How is the SD Card slot holding up? If that heat shielding is all it takes to "fix" this, then you've stumbled across something that has been plaguing the ROG Ally Discord and Reddit since this thing released.
I’m also curious about this!
USB: _looks for the 5v in surprise_
This was super interesting to watch. Have you seen the project by Pitstoptechofficial where he uses a frameworks pcb to make his own handheld?
I havent, but I will definitely go watch that video. Thanks for the recommendation!
I know the title is bait, but I'll bite.
Yeah I wonder why people would prefer to buy a Steam Deck when they could instead buy an Ally, spend probably close to 1000 or more on tools, another 150 on a battery, spend a few weeks to design a new solution to better cool the system and hold the battery and in the end get something that still is not only bulkier and therefore worse as a handheld, but also not as good as a traditional desktop.
Even with considering that the title is bait for comments and views. It's obvious that most people would be better served by a Steam Deck or a Lenovo Legion Go if they wanted a handheld PC since those don't need to be torn apart to make them worth it. And even considering it's use as a desktop, well there are cheaper options that still have a small form factor. I think the switch mod video you did was pretty cool and could have a legitimate use if one had the resources and tools to make it, but this just seems like kind of a waste imo.
The title aged like fine milk, but in a way, this is a good project?
After all, people will trash or mod their ASUS rigs, you just went down the modding path a bit earlier than you had to.
Keep it up, my sister's got an Ally a few months ago and I'm afraid I'll have to fix it myself in the not-so-far future and I'll need all the videos describing how to replace every single garbage part ASUS jammed into this pile of e-waste.
Let's be frank, the Steam Deck is hard to improve upon, it's not a good DIY project when you've got nothing to DIY on the thing. The Steam Deck would not get you content to make.
The ASUS ROG Ally? Now that's worthy of a DIY project video. Really, that's a rabbit hole and not the kind you'd want to get a taste of from Deco*27, but a real nasty rabbit hole you wouldn't even poke at with a 10 feet pole. It's made of the cheapest materials, built in with some great serial errors and is in overall quality: trash. This channel however, is a titan of recycling, except this isn't outdated hardware, this is built to be garbage.
You can replace everything in that handheld and improve it. Well, once you finish you're holding either a Steam Deck or a mini PC with a large battery glued to it basically, but let's ignore that for a second. You can always buy the shit one, spend thousands of dollars to make it acceptable.
The best thing. You don't have to care about your warranty. ASUS doesn't respect your warranty either, it's just a label they put on overpaid unnecessary "repairs" they want you to pay for! Then send back the device with the original problem still present or just decide that they won't give you back your device, because that's great. See, modding it solves this problem. They can't hold your hardware hostage if you're not sending it to them. See? Infinitely better.
Your videos are always sooo satisfying. I love modding like this.
It's ok, I'm glad you came anyways.
damn dude, this video was insane!! thanks for all the work this must have taken a hot minute to shoot, edit, and plan. Appreciate it
bending battery... say hello to fire that burns you're house
... I would honestly like for him to look into the possibility of making a custom eGPU setup for an Ally. I know Asus currently has it locked to their proprietary attachment, I'm just curious on how hard it'd be to make your own.
My question is did the heat shielding over the microsd card actually solve the sd card getting fried long term? I’d like to know so I can do it myself, but don’t want to do it if it didn’t actually work long term.
Yes, he needs to follow up on this but I doubt he actually uses the Ally.
I'd be cautious of this personally. It's not as if use of microsd cards won't produce heat in and of itself - under normal use they're more or less ambient heat, but under transfer of lots of data (i.e. installing all your games or copying a bunch of files over) they can get pretty hot and actually can result in killing a card (I've had this happen to me on a few cards including ones from reputable brands) - although this may be more from the reader-writer than the card itself, and I don't know enough as to which part is actually causing the heat, putting the shielding ontop of the slot could actually insulate this heat and increase odds of data transfer killing your card.
Large capacity microsd cards are still fairly new and there's really not a lot of info about all this (which is likely why even good brand cards can be cooked to death without being heated by a cpu/gpu) so it's anyone's guess at this point, but I'd strongly recommend making sure all your initial download/installs are done before you attempt this yourself.
Over the last few days I've been watching some of Zac's videos and I can finally confirm: This guy is living the dream.
Zac, you probably won't read this, but: thank you for your wholesome content. Not only is your production and content top notch, but you're just a great person.
Thank you for candid results! I think we all look for ways to upgrade our systems without guaranteed results. Knowing the results from your dedicated time is definitely a light in the dark.
You should try this with their eGPU! Maybe it would benefit more having an external graphics card and all these cooling mods!!
Geeeezzzzzusssss...... (but, 1, I sub'd at like 8 minutes in when I saw your shop. You earned that, and for better or worse now I'm in your catalog commenting away. ;p) But, damnnnn, that's some upper level mods when you have to flex and bend copper within specific heat parameters. This feels more like a 'flex' video than a 'how-to', but again, I sub'd and am giving a genuine salute to your patience in such tasks.
Buttttt, while you've convinced me to give a ROG Ally a solid look, it's the Steam OS and my second-hand price/snatch of $320 that made me pick the Steamdeck over anything else. I'm not sure I'm ready to break down a retail sticker device over $300 the same way you did. But again, serious salute, and I'm in your sub loop for all the future goodness, for better and worse! ;p
All that said, you're depth in the "liquid metal application" portion was a very good "how-to" for more than just this specific use case. ....where have you been all my life???? Free for drinks later? ;p
16:48 Will robbing that USB port of current, should you flip the fan switch on while in use, cause issues with any devices plugged into it (like an external USB drive)?
20:56 ....I was definitely thinking you'd just say, "jump straight to LN2 and go for broke." ....come on, over 700k views from this... doooo it. The power of Zoolander compels you.
Now I really want an Ally 😂
Absolutely great video, I hoped to see some performance gains but it's also good to see that Asus uses the chips potential!
If this is all you have to do to make the ROG Ally better than a Steam Deck I can't understand why everyone does not do this.