With the launch of the Steam Deck, the ability to take your games library just about anywhere is an absolute godsend as no longer are you tethered to a giant gaming laptop with about as much battery life as the length of a fart. You now have the ability to throw a considerably more compact device for your games in your backpack making gaming on the go easier than ever for PC gamers, but with great power comes a great need for a large amount of storage as even the highest tiered model of Steam Deck only comes with a 512GB hard drive. Thankfully, Sabrent was ready in the wings and quickly released the newest variant of their fantastic Rocket NVMe hard drive – but now in the 2230 form factor so you can give your Steam Deck a much-needed storage injection.
Sabrent Rocket 2230 1TB SSD
Manufacturer: Sabrent
Platforms: PC (Installed in Steam Deck)
Price: $269.99 USD
If you need a quick instructional video, feel free to watch me awkwardly install the 2230 drive in my Steam Deck below. Yes, I know, I put the heat spreader jacket on backward, but I fixed it right after I watched this back and realized I made a boo-boo. The process is surprisingly easy, and I was able to quickly walk my stepkid through upgrading his 64GB Steam Deck to the 512GB drive that I removed from my own Steam Deck to put this bad boy in.
Sabrent’s drive is amazing for a whole bunch of different reasons. Most importantly, Sabrent always seems to be one of the first to the punch whenever there’s a specific need for hardware that caters to gaming enthusiasts. I’ve done multiple drives for the PS5 here, and the Sabrent drive was not only the first one that I was aware of that came with a PS5-specific heatsink. Samsung and Kingston also made drives that were compatible with the PS5, but they didn’t have it in mind until much later than Sabrent did, and we’re in the same boat even now. Sabrent sent me this drive back in January, long before anyone else produced a Gen4 2230 hard drive that was compatible with the Steam Deck and it still remains one of the only Gen4 drive upgrade options by a recognizable brand on the market today.
To the average consumer, you wouldn’t think that replacing the hard drive in the Steam Deck would be a big deal, but it’s quite a noticeable upgrade. Not only did I double my storage size by installing this drive (and it’s mostly useable showing around 980GB of writeable space!) but this drive also performs quite a bit faster than the stock drive that my Steam Deck shipped with. While I didn’t measure any exact specifics, I would guess I saw anywhere from 10-30% performance increases both in loading time to launch games and slight increases in actual gameplay as well thanks to the faster read/write speeds of the Rocket 2230.
If you’re a new Steam Deck owner, recommending Sabrent’s Rocket 2230 is an absolute no-brainer for upgrading the base storage. It does everything better and faster than the stock hard drive the Steam Deck ships with, and you’ll have a bunch of extra space to load up on big games for maximum enjoyment without having to constantly rotate what’s currently “on deck“. Couple this up with a nice large Micro SD card and you could have a fat 2TB of storage space in your Steam Deck for around the same cost as a laptop with half the drive space.
Right now you can actually scoop this drive for $159.99 on Amazon, which is a crazy great deal saving you $110 off the retail price, and if you partner this with a 1TB Sabrent Rocket MicroSD, you’re looking at picking up a base level Steam Deck (10% off right now at the time of publication) with 2TB of storage space for about $15 less than the top level Steam Deck. That’s a crazy good deal if you’re not concerned with the tempered glass screen (you could always use the money saved to buy a tempered glass screen protector for the Steam Deck.) Had I not bought my Steam Deck at launch, this is 100% the path I would have taken.
The Sabrent Rocket 2230 SSD is available in 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB variations – and is available at Amazon and other retailers. The 1TB version used in our review was provided by Sabrent. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here.
