A Steam Deck Reignited My Love For Homebrew PCs

Building your own PC brings special joys. Of course, this can be frustrating - there's a reason buying a fully equipped PC is easier than building one at home. If you haven't had the pleasure of building your own PC yet, it's not as easy as placing components on a tower, plugging them in, and turning them on. From your processor to the motherboard to the graphics card, there can be so many compatibility issues that you haven't taken into account. Are you going to destroy your processor? Does your system need liquid cooling? Can it support liquid cooling?

I lived this computer life on the edge. I look at sales, switch graphics cards for better performance, look at my monitor while I flash the BIOS and only hope for the best. My computer was an inexhaustible source of frustration, but there was a lot of joy when I caught my breath, plugged everything in and it worked .

To be honest, it's a lifestyle I gave up ten years ago. Eventually, I decided I would rather play on the console, because it usually requires nothing more than turning on the console. I'm tired of making adjustments, of trying to do something. I wanted simplicity and have never looked back since. To be honest, I didn't even get lost.

That is, until I got my hands on a Steam deck. I've written a lot about this fascinating little technology. When I first received it I didn't expect to feel much. I was going to use Steam to catch up on some PC games.

But then I saw someone talking about how they made Xbox Game Pass Ultimate work on the Steam Deck. And let me tell you, I felt like a lighthouse in the night. This harmless little message scared me. What I suddenly wanted to do was figure out how to get as many different platformers as possible into my Steam deck.

Thanks to my husband, I have an Xbox Game Pass Ultima and PlayStation 5 subscription. So I googled it. I don't know anything about Linux, but when I started building my computer and it worked, I didn't know anything about Windows.

Before I tell you how (or at least link to the sources that gave me the instructions, since I'm not tech-savvy enough to figure it out on my own), I warn you: if you are very picky about FPS, response times and graphics quality, or if you are worried about latency in general, don't worry. The games will definitely work, but don't expect super high quality games or high frame rates. To be honest, I'm surprised I haven't had any more problems given how experimental it is, but my FrankenStem could break at any moment. Also, get a mouse and keyboard for your deck. This makes the whole process very simple.

Setting up the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate was straightforward as Microsoft provided the instructions directly. It's definitely a beta version, but it worked well for me even when I was on the go and had a relatively slow internet connection. I've played most of Star Wars: Squadrons without any noticeable lag or other issues.

It is important to note that PlayStation Remote Play was a bit complicated and didn't work outside of my local network. Great Reddit mintcu7000 user instruction article. The only thing I would like to add to this is to run the PSN ID Base64 script on your deck, copy and paste it into Chiaki. (I've tried running and writing to my computer and get errors each time.) I've been playing Stray for about four hours this way and it works better than streaming PS to my iPad (which is jittery, slow, and most importantly, unusable for use).

What surprised me was how much I enjoyed the process, almost the end result. Being able to play most of my game library on my Steam deck is great, but playing on the back of the system and running it is just as satisfying. Whenever I use any of these features, I am proud that I did.

All I can think about right now is what I will get next. Anyone know how to play remotely on Switch?

unexpected | Epilogue | D&D 5e