While many people are trying to outdo Valve in making a better, cheaper Steam Machine, one PC user has found a way to bring back cartridge gaming. Now, nothing against Nintendo’s continued support of the older media, but it doesn’t quite equate to the full PC experience where more powerful hardware may be present with a fully customized setup. Jibril-sama has posted their ingenious idea of repurposing old 2.5″ SSDs into new enclosures with custom printed labels, a dock, and some minor software tweaks to make a cartridge game system. The following is from the Redditor (via Tom’s Hardware):
“Got a couple of used 2.5” SSDs for cheap so I decided to make a Game Cartridge system,”
– Jibril-sama
Steam Game Cartridges
byu/Jibril-sama inpcmasterrace
“Games are actually on those SSDs with a script to auto-navigate Steam to the game’s page. Auto-starting the game right away is also possible,” adds Jibril-sama. Most PC users are aware of the frightening state of memory and storage prices, but more than a few of us probably have some 128GB drives, or maybe even 256GB for those larger game installs, sitting around. The Redditor also states how they obtained the drives for this project for ~$8 each, so folks interested in making their system may try to score a few for themselves. Another perk of this concept is freeing up space on their main gaming drives while also still getting acceptable SATA III speeds, which can support the needs of many games even in 2026. Tom’s Hardware reached out to Jibril-sama regarding how they configured the setup and was told the following:
“All it needs is a systemd template to check for a script on the SSD and launch it. And a udev rule to trigger the system, So basically: Plug in SSD -> udev rule sees the event -> triggers the systemd daemon -> systemd daemon looks into the SSD and finds the script -> execute the script.”
– Jibril-sama
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