Upgrade your Steam Deck with this £80 1TB PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD
The 2230 form factor continues to see price drops.
The price of Steam Deck SSD upgrades continues to fall, as Integral's 2230-sized PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD has dropped to £69.95 at Amazon UK. That's a great price for a drive that more than doubles even the highest capacity Steam Deck sold by Valve, and makes a tremendous upgrade for 512GB and 256GB Steam Deck owners too.
This drive operates over the PCIe 3.0 standard, making it well-suited for Steam Deck (which is limited to PCIe 3.0) but a less ideal pick for similar handheld PCs like the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion Go, which can take advantage of the faster speeds brought by PCIe 4.0. However, Integral actually do make a PCIe 4.0 version of this drive, so you can opt for that if you have one of these latter devices or feel like you might upgrade to one in the future. This model costs £80, making it still quite affordable.
To install this SSD in your Steam Deck, it's best to follow along with a guide online. You'll need to take off the rear panel of the Steam Deck to access the internals and disconnect a few items before swapping out (or adding in, for eMMC models) the 2230-sized SSD. iFixit is probably the best-known guide maker, so take a look at their instructions.
If you don't like Integral as a brand for whatever reason, you can pick up some alternatives at a slight premium. WD's SN740 Pyrite is £80 for a 1TB model, while the Sabrent Rocket 4.0 is £85 for 1TB. These drives won't offer any speed advantage over the Integral in a Steam Deck, but they might be preferable for use in handhelds with PCIe 4.0 support.
Of course, this tiny drives will also work in full-size PCIe slots - but if you don't need this smaller form factor, then you may as well get a full-size drive as there is more competition, better value and more physical space for features like DRAM.