"The motherboards are incompatible and we have overhauled the internals significantly": Valve's product designer shuts down the prospect of upgrading your OG LCD Steam Deck with a custom OLED screen — but is it actually impossible?
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Upgrades to Valve's portable PC gaming handheld are welcome, but can those who bought the first version manually install an OLED screen?
  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Following a relatively short wait for a mid-generation refresh, the recent Steam Deck OLED announcement details better battery life, lighter overall weight, and all the visual enhancements that come with this modern display tech.

    Contrary to the company’s original statements of being “harder than you think” to step away from its traditional 7-inch LCD screen, it seems that graduating the Steam Deck to an OLED alternative was a higher priority for Valve than initially implied.

    Self-installed improvements began to surface shortly after the Steam Deck launched, primarily to expand the storage of the affordable entry-level 64GB with an M.2 2230 solid-state hard drive like the Sabrent Rocket, generally up to 1TB (1,000GB.)

    With a bit of careful DIY, it is possible to increase the storage capacity and cooling performance of a day-one model, alongside replacing the Steam Deck’s LCD screen without destroying it in the process.

    However, current owners of a first-edition thinking about upgrading their screen to create a homemade Steam Deck OLED are so far out of luck, as Valve’s Product Designer Lawrence Yang pointed out on X (previously Twitter.)

    The concept of engineers painstakingly selecting each component inside the Steam Deck to maximize efficiency and prevent overheating is primarily why Valve advised against oversized SSD replacements in the first place.

    The original article contains 722 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!