I’ve been considering getting a mini PC for my living room, basically only to watch online videos without ads or watch locally stored videos.
Since I have a Steam deck available that I already often dock to my screen for gaming, could I use it instead of buying a new computer?
My main concern is the impact this would have on the battery if it’s plugged in for long periods of time, does it bypass the battery when it’s plugged in and the battery is full ? Will other components be impacted?
You can use it like that, yeah, it’s basically like a “laptop” in that sense, just a fair bit smaller.
Normally I’d recommend getting devices for a specific purpose, like a mini tower custom build for a mini PC with powerful yet efficient and affordable specs - or maybe an older used tower. Though, if cost to performance ratio isn’t as important to you as portability and ease of setup, then a Steam Deck would likely be a good choice.
Wait a few days for CES and see what other vendors will ship with SteamOS. Asus and Lenovo usually allow to limit battery charging. Steam Deck doesn’t.
I’ve been using mine as a Mini PC for almost a year since getting it. It works great. The only issues with it I’ve personally had come with regular issues with Linux itself. The battery is still in great health. I’ve only recently had any sort of problem with it and even then I believe it’s just a reasonable hardware failure more than something caused by using it this way.
Over two years with mine, battery aging isn’t noticeable. I’m pretty sure when plugged in and fully charged, the Deck runs off of external power. I don’t know if it shunts around the battery or not, but it certainly isn’t cycling the battery.
I mostly use my deck in a few fixed locations, so it’s mostly plugged in.
re the shunt: yes it does
I use it as a “laptop” a lot, using a case with a stand and Logitech’s mini Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I like it.
If you want to preserve your battery, follow the same principles for any battery, avoid having above 80% and below 20%. I’m not sure for KDE, but on GNOME I have a GUI utility that lets you set this and enable/disable with a toggle.
on GNOME I have a GUI utility that lets you set this and enable/disable with a toggle.
The charging controller must support that feature. Notebooks by Asus, Lenovo and maybe others do, perhaps even the Ally and Legion handhelds, but if the battery controller doesn’t support that, the toggle will do nothing.
I would say it’s great but would strongly recommend using Bazzite over steam OS even on the deck.
My biggest gripe with the steam deck is that it’s not well equipped to handle user packages in the same way OSTree is. Bazzite solves this while still mostly adhering to the design principles of steam os, so I feel it’s actually better than the stock operating system.
it’s not well equipped to handle user packages in the same way OSTree is
Can you elaborate?
Sure.
Valve’s operating system is read only and, when steam decides to update, any root level file changes will be lost between updates. This is partly good because the system will always be recoverable and update reliably, but comes with the downside that users have to take extra steps to install some base level packages (things like tailscale, syncthing etc. There’s always work arounds, but it’s not a guarantee that these work arounds will continue to work on new updates.)
OSTree is also a read only file system utility that allows packages to be layered, so users can install their own packages. When the operating system updates, these packages are rebased and preserved on the next update so user level changes can be preserved.
There’s more to this than that, but basically steam os is dependent on valve updating packages and generally leave all extensions either hand off or need to work around root filesystem. Ostree/silverblue/bazzite allow user modification by having a slightly more sophisticated updating process.
I’ve installed all sorts of things on SteamOS without “extra steps”.
I can’t say the same for Bazzite.
I’ve been doing this for half a year.
Yes, it’s literally a functional PC,
But don’t expect too much, it’s just a decently basic one, and. It doesn’t work well for heavy tasks like running cyberpunk 2077 or graphics rendering
The Deck can bypass the battery when plugged in. And in fact, does so by default if the battery gets above 90%; it would stop charging the battery and just draw power directly from the USB cable.
With the Decky Loader plugin Powertools you can customize this threshold. I use my Deck as my only PC for work, and have the threshold set to 70%.
For video watching, I can’t imagine having any issues! If you have the OLED model (I think), you can even get Wake on WLAN to work if you plan to store it out of view (although that does feel a bit unfortunate for the poor guy, it has such a nice screen…)
So it does charge above 90% when docked, but does not actually use the battery above that? Because I definitely see the battery charging when I have my SteamDeck OLED docked, would be nice to change that though, I guess I need to look into those plugins.
IIRC the stock behavior is to switch to AC at every charge level, but after 90% charging very slowly to 100 and then doing until it falls below 90 again which it would take a long time to do while still powered.
I worded that initial description pretty poorly, given the default behavior is that it always uses AC power if it’s connected to AC.
Thankfully, with that Powertools plugin you will get to see exactly what the Deck is doing in terms of power and disable even that slow charge above 90% (which I have done), or even force the battery to charge at full rates above 90, should you need to prepare for a trip or something… Give it a try.
I installed it and was not quite sure what option means what, then found this tidbit on the git pages of the plugin:
The PowerTools has an important limitation over the Steam Deck firmware version, though: it only works while the screen is on.
https://git.ngni.us/NG-SD-Plugins/PowerTools/wiki/FAQ
So unless I misunderstand this I am not sure this is useful when docked since the screen is off, unless in Desktop mode where I am also not sure if this plugin would actually be active?
It would work in desktop mode. All Decky plugins do, because Decky itself sets up system level hooks for the plugins. You can also access your Decky plugins by launching Steam in Big Picture Mode while in desktop mode.
But yes, the custom limiter would not trigger if the battery level crosses up past the threshold. It would continued to charge untill the stock behavior of tapering off past 90%.
It would continue to limit your charge if you were above the threshold before the Deck goes to sleep. It would also continue to “idle” the battery of you force it to idle regardless of the charge level. It’s the custom charge threshold limit that won’t trigger if the Deck goes to sleep while still under it.
I’m going to dump a walk of text trying to describe this with an example because I don’t trust my ability to explain this any better otherwise— Realistically, if you, say, set the threshold to 60%. Watch a few shows with it plugged in until it ticks up to 60% and then go about your business, letting it go to sleep, it would not continue to charge your battery. A couple of days later you might return to the Deck at 50% charge or something, even though it is plugged in. And then it would start charging again once you wake it up. Assuming you keep it awake long enough to get it to 60% again. Surely with an hour of tv a week it’ll cost under that 60% mark despite the limitations!
OR, you can just not bother with the limiter at all. Force the battery to be idle all the time. You intend to only use this Deck docked, unlike me or Stampela from the comments, you don’t need to unplug the Deck and play a few games on battery.
Thanks for taking time to write this, I think I got it now!
I see, thanks for the tip, I already got Decky on it so I’ll check out that plugin.
You can use it for absolutely anything. That’s the beauty of Linux. Will it be good for it, as is? No, not really.
A lot of streaming services will limit you to 720p unless you use their first-party apps, which they don’t make for Linux.
Also the interface is not ideal for that sort of thing.
Leaving it plugged in permanently is not really good for the battery, but not a huge deal either. There’s probably some way to enable a “kiosk mode” to keep the battery @ 50%, which would be ideal.
leaving it plugged in is perfectly fine, once the battery fills up, it is bypassed and the deck is powered directly off of the wire
That’s how all chargers work. The problem is that it’s simply not great to have your battery at 100% all of the time.
no, it isn’t. A lot of systems still run power through the battery even after it’s charged. The battery ends up in a state of constant trickle charging.
In the deck, once the battery is charged, and the power cable is connected, the battery is bypassed and effectively disconnected.
And the deck only charges to 100% if it was below 90 to begin with.
Yeah, just to add another voice to the choir, I’ve been using my steam deck primarily docked in desktop mode since launch. Works great, no issues, battery is still great when I need it.
I’ve been wanting to get a deck motherboard to do just this with, but they’re hard to find these days
holy crap. I was going to do this but was lazy but now I totally want to try something. thanks for posting.
You’ll have no issues whatsoever.
The Deck has been my daily driver for a while now. I had an old laptop that bit the dust about a week before my LCD Deck arrived during launch a couple of years ago. I never bothered to replace it, instead I picked up a reasonably priced display and just moved over to the Deck. About 90% of my use has been docked as my main PC, and I absolutely love that it comes with me with built in display and controller when I’m traveling the other 10% of the time.
Me too
I did this exact thing when contemplating getting a mini pc. I got an external drive and turned my Deck into a Kodi box. It’s been great, though it had trouble pushing 4K60, so I have it set up to output 1080. If you’re setting up something like Kodi it’s worth mentioning that the Deck uses KDE, so you can set window rules to always open the application fullscreen.
Thank you all for your detailed responses, I’ll definitely give it a try! It would be great if it turns out to be convenient enough.
