Steam Deck homeowners who need to set up Home windows 11 on the moveable, relatively than working with SteamOS, will likely be happy to listen to that Valve has fastened one of many main issues with going this route – particularly the audio facet of the equation.
As we’ve seen with many complaints from of us adopting Microsoft’s OS on Valve’s compact gaming PC, there was a problem with sound drivers which implies that with Home windows 11, you don’t get audio – not except you employ Bluetooth audio system (or a USB-C headset).
However now, Valve has supplied Home windows audio drivers (two of them) which treatment the issue, so that you’ll now get sound by way of the Deck’s built-in audio system (or you need to use headphones with the audio jack, relatively than counting on a Bluetooth pair).
Directions are supplied together with the drivers on Valve’s Home windows assets web page, and observe that there’s an APU driver right here which you should set up first to get audio assist working.
Evaluation: A step in the correct route – nevertheless it is only one step
It’s clearly good to see that Valve is not only pushing ahead with work on the Steam Deck as-is – doing loads of tinkering so as to add helpful options just like the lately carried out per-game efficiency settings – but in addition contemplating those that would possibly need to take an alternate route like putting in Home windows 11 on the hand held (and even Home windows 10 for that matter).
That stated, for those who’re mulling over sticking Home windows on the Steam Deck, even with one of many rougher edges now smoothed out within the type of audio drivers, it’s nonetheless a relatively suspect proposition to put in Microsoft’s OS on the moveable gaming PC.
Why? For starters, it’s nonetheless within the very early phases of growth, with Home windows assist solely having formally arrived for the Steam Deck a number of weeks in the past – so there’ll likely nonetheless be driver and different technical points floating round (certainly, it’s attainable that these newly launched audio drivers might nonetheless be glitchy for some).
Plus as we’ve identified earlier than, SteamOS is purpose-built for a slick and streamlined expertise with the Deck, however for those who enterprise into Home windows territory, that’ll be a really completely different matter. Moreover, putting in Home windows on the Steam Deck isn’t a trivial train for the much less tech-savvy – however for those who do need to give it a whirl, we’ve received a full information on find out how to set up Home windows 10 and 11 on a Steam Deck.
Through Tom’s {Hardware}
