What emerging players? You can’t just whip up a competitive GPU in a jiffy, even if you have Intel money.
Also, unless they are from a different planet that has its own independent supply chain, they’d have to deal with the very same memory shortage and the very same foundries that are booked out for years.
Gaming laptops are notorious for dying from overheating. These things need to be meticulously maintained if you want to use them for their intended purpose for long.
Which is totally fine. Not every game has to support older hardware. Games are allowed to use “newer” tech.
Worth noting that I played Indy at 1600p/60 on an RTX 2080, which is a card from 2018 that I bought used for 200 bucks two years ago. This card can still run every single game out there and most of them extremely well, despite only having 8 GB of VRAM.
The whole debate is way overblown. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t games that could run a whole lot better, but overall, PC gamers with old hardware are still eating good.
This heavily depends on the game. Which game were you testing?
In my experience at least, small Indies and last-gen or earlier ports from console are fine, but games with frequent loading times and those designed for SSDs benefit from being installed to the internal storage.
Expedition 33
I haven’t tried this game on the Deck yet, so I can’t confirm these work, but have you looked at how other people have achieved 30 fps on protondb?
https://www.protondb.com/app/1903340?device=steamDeck
Another option would be to lower difficulty, if you haven’t already. IIRC, the parry window is much wider on easy.
The friends we asked also gave split opinions
Classic too many cooks problem. Best stick to one person who seems like they know what they are talking about. Don’t look at me, I’m just pretending. ;)
but I’m not sure about ventilation then
The more, the merrier. Map out a clear path for the air to travel through the device, from the least hot to the hottest component and out again. Larger fans are quieter at the same amount of air moved than smaller ones. Cable management gets more important the smaller the case is, so make sure to pick a modular power supply and tuck everything that can be tucked away neatly out of sight and out of the way of the airflow.
Without SteamOS it seems I’d need a keyboard/mouse out for every boot too.
You can configure Steam to immediately launch in Big Picture mode on any operating system it supports. There are many ways of achieving this, but here’s a simple script for Windows:
https://github.com/jazir555/GamesDows
For couch PC gaming, I would also recommend getting one of 
(I have amassed several over the years, for some reason).
I’m also not knowledgable about specs, but I figured when, say, Borderlands 4 is not playable at 4K 60fps, then I could just deal with Full HD 30-40fps, which would be enough.
I would recommend waiting until it’s out and people have thoroughly tested it. Within a few days of it reaching the hands of customers, there should be plenty of videos, articles and forum reports on how well it performs with all sorts of games, including particularly demanding ones like Borderlands 4. Digital Foundry are the best address for this kind of performance analysis.
The closest solution is PS5 Pro or PS6 when it comes out (and they fit on shelf, never checked size)
The PS5 (Pro or not) is absolutely humongous. I would be surprised if the PS6 ends up being any smaller. It’ll probably fit onto your shelf, but not in it.
but, no Steam library then. Or mods, emulation. All in all, it seems I’m in an extremely specific situation where buying SM seems optimal.
Looks like it. This computer will undoubtedly be an emulation powerhouse, just like the Deck. If the price is right and if it doesn’t have any teething issues at launch (which I doubt, given how mature the Deck was right away), then it might just be the ideal PC for you. If it’s pricier than expected for the performance, then you might want to return to me and we can discuss a SFF build as an alternative, if you want.
One thing I would recommend is buying the base model and upgrading storage yourself, since this is likely where Valve will charge more than what it would cost to perform the upgrade yourself. There are no other spec differences between the models and it’s likely that they’ll sell the base model close to cost, like the Deck. Based on what I’ve seen, upgrading storage should be trivially easy, far easier than on the Deck.
Which games are you struggling with on the Deck?
What kind of issues did your friend have building a PC? It’s a rather straightforward process, really. You can make mistakes, of course, but if you prepare your build carefully, maybe get a second or third opinion from people with experience and knowledge, read a tutorial or two, then few things can really go wrong. I’m willing to help with the selection of components and some tips on the building process, if you want (I’ve been building PCs for decades, if that counts).
I get the appeal of the “Gabecube” (I hope this name sticks) for you though, but keep in mind that it is a relatively limited system in terms of power, quite a bit below current-gen consoles by current estimates and especially limited by its relatively small amount of VRAM. It should be able to play every Linux-compatible game for now (the most demanding at low settings only), but sooner or later, the limited GPU (which can not be upgraded, unlike on a normal PC), will result in games just not running well enough or not even booting, similar to certain newer games on the Deck. It is considerably more powerful than the Deck though.
It really depends on the price whether or not it’s a good low-end gaming PC. Hardware prices are not exactly ideal at the moment (RAM is the current sticking point, but GPUs aren’t cheap either), so if the Deck manages to be more affordable than a comparable budget build - kind of like the base-model Steam Deck has been a very impressive value proposition - it might be worth it.
There are games, but few exclusives (just 18 the last time I checked). If you want to play modern games and don’t want a PC, it’s fine for that, without really being special in any way. It is a difficult value proposition for owners of the previous gen, since the jump in visual fidelity is much smaller than between prior generations (an inevitability that isn’t Sony’s fault) and since the previous generation is still being at least partially supported and was strongly supported for a very long time. However, over time, most have clearly made the jump and with the release of GTA VI (timed exclusive for PS), the system will see another significant boost.
Mods are not really a factor on consoles. Very few console gamers care about them. Xbox has slightly better support with fewer restrictions, but there are only a handful of games with support (mainly Bethesda RPGs). It clearly hasn’t helped the competition from Redmond.
Die USA haben aber leider gerade inkompetente Vollpfosten von Kriegsliebhabern an der Spitze.
Wird schon vermehrt gemacht. Hat nur leider viel zu lange gedauert.
Both games released and even the N64 port of Daikatana is more fun on original hardware than Star Citizen ever will be.
They are, unfortunately.
That’s a single risk you (hopefully) willingly accepted when you decided to use an extremely niche browser.
Been there, done that, eventually discovered the errors of my ways and returned to Firefox.
I hope you aren’t literally still using an actual HDD.