One of the great things about the Valve console is the fact that it’s an operating system designed to be lightweight and run PC games in a console-like environment, where we don’t we have no background tasks that take away performance and with an interface that we can comfortably move from a remote control. Which is ideal for playing quietly from the sofa without worrying. Well, you don’t need to have the Valve console to enjoy its benefits. That’s why we’re going to show you how to install SteamOS on your PC.
First of all, let’s remember that the games designed for the Steam Deck were designed to run on a graphics card with RDNA2 architecture, on PC are those that are part of the AMD RX 6000 series And all of them, including the RX 6400, are significantly more powerful than Valve’s on-chip GPU, whether in laptop or desktop. In the case of having a laptop, then all you need is a Ryzen 6000 processor and you won’t even need a dedicated GPU to drive the graphics.
How to install SteamOS on any PC?
For this, we’ll be using HoloISO, which is a Steam Deck “distro” designed to be installed on any computer using an AMD graphics card. So unfortunately this won’t work for you at this time if you’re using a GeForce setup. In any case, if you own a Radeon RX 5000, you can also use it without technical problems in games. If we already talk about the features available in SteamOS on PC then all of them work smoothly except TDP and FPS limiter but apart from that the system is fully functional.
As for the requirements to install it, they are simple:
- Have UEFI active, i.e. do not use BIOS Legacy mode.
- Disable Secure Boot.
- A USB key of at least 4 GB capacity for installation.
Simply, you need to restart the PC from the USB port flash drive, which you can easily configure from the BIOS menu. Once you’ve done that, if you’re dual-booting, you’ll be able to choose to run either Windows or SteamOS once the latter is installed. Make sure you follow all the steps correctly to install SteamOS on PC and now enjoy the same experience as a Steam Deck on your PC
Can’t I really use it with an NVIDIA graphics card?
Well no, unfortunately the latest versions of Valve’s operating system do not work with NVIDIA GeForce and have retired their support. Which is a shame, considering we’re talking about missing 80% of the PC market. In any case, it is not Valve that is behind the fact that you can install SteamOS on your PC, but what we told you about is an unofficial third-party distribution. Keep in mind that the PC it runs on is based on the same hardware architecture as the Steam Deck.
Finally, the day they manage to load custom firmware on Xbox Series or PS5, the first thing we will see working will be precisely SteamOS, more than anything due to the fact that they use, although at a different power scale, the same structure. . That is Zen 2 as CPU and RDNA 2 on GPU.