The Ultimate Steam Deck OLED Upgrade: SSD Swap Guide

hey everyone this is Michael with MTS 4K today in this video I'm going to be showing you how to swap out the solid state drive in the new steam deck OLED model it is a little bit different than swapping out the solid state drive in the LCD steam deck so I just wanted to get this video out there for anybody who has any questions or is interested in doing this so you can kind of see exactly what it looks like inside and what steps you need to do to get this swapped out first things first don't put the steam deck to sleep make sure to actually shut the deck down completely from the start menu just go ahead and choose shut down and then once the steam deck's completely turned off wait a couple seconds and hold the volume up and the power button at the same time to boot into the BIOS menu from here go ahead and click on the setup utility button then power in the left column and then turn on battery storage mode and click yes when prompted by turning this on you're basically telling the steam deck to not power on at all even if the power button is pressed until it's been plugged into a charger just to prevent the steam deck from turning on while you're working on it now let's get into the tear [Music] down one thing I was really excited about with the steam deck OLED was that I was able to move my 2 tbte SSD that I bought from iFixit over to my steam deck OLED from my steam deck LCD the other day and it was just perfect all my games all my save data everything was on there ready to go I didn't have to mess with any drivers anything else I just made sure both steam decks were fully updated before I did the SSD Swap and that was it all my games are now on my new steam deck OLED so very happy to know that they are transferable like that as you can see here all the screws on the steam deck OLED are the same general size and shape and length that I could tell at least I was really happy about that cuz on the original LCD model they were a varying shapes and sizes uh and lengths and I was concerned that I might do them wrong so I I made sure to always put them in the exact order that I took them out of the steam deck in uh just to make things a little bit easier and more organized from here getting the clips undone on the OLED model is not an easy task it's definitely not as easy as the LCD model was they're a little bit tighter a little bit harder to pop off but personally I think that's a good thing for durability uh if you drop your steam deck it's not going to just shatter open which is great and obviously it has the screws holding it in place too the clips are pretty easy to take off just make sure you actually remove your SD card before before you take the clips off because as you can see here I got the SD card out at the last possible second before I ripped it in half so um make sure before you undo your Clips or anything that you do take your SD card out uh so you don't break it but otherwise getting the clips out is pretty easy you want to start on the right side by the trigger and then work your way all around the console and then once you get to the bottom it pretty much just pops right open at this point it's time to take the heat shield off you'll notice there's a ribbon connector that runs across the bottom of the heat shield I've found that it's best to just unplug this ribbon connector on that left side just to make sure it doesn't get bent or damaged at all uh I went ahead and used the iFix it little tweezers here you have to flip up a little plastic cover as you'll see I do here and then just very gently lift that ribbon cable up and out over the little pieces that hold it in place from there that's the only ribbon cable that you need to remove um and now you can actually go ahead and unscrew the heat shield the heat shield is held in place only by the two screws one in the top left and one in the bottom left unlike the steam deck LCD which had three screws one hidden under the heat shield this one just has the two which is really nice but when you're taking it out be really careful as you'll see here in the bottom right corner there's a very small little black prong that can get bent really easily um when you're pulling the heat shield out so just be really careful not to bend it like I did in the video and and try to keep it as flat as possible and then you can just lean the heat shield out of the way but try not to put too much pressure on either of the cables that are down there at this point you can go ahead and just unscrew the SSD it's a single screw and the SSD lifts up slightly and you just pull it right out of place I just gently wiggle it out of place and then you'll see the SSD does have a little heat cover on there I believe it's a heat cover um I personally go ahead and keep the one that came with the steam deck oh lead just to be safe iFixit also comes with their own heat shield cover you can use as well so whatever you prefer but from there we're just going to undo everything we've already done so you put the new SSD back in the steam deck OLED grab that screw and screw that SSD right back down into place again once the SS is screwed back into place then we can go ahead and put that heat shield back over everything just be really careful again with the ribbon connectors and that metal piece sticking out of the heat shield in the bottom right corner that is where one of the back plate screws is going to screw through later so just do your best to make sure it's really flattened out and aligned with the hole so there's no issues installing your back plate screws later just to make sure that the heat shield stayed in place while I attached the ribbon cable this time I did go ahead and screw the heat shield back into place before I put the ribbon cable back in that little connector uh so I went ahead and yeah just put those two screws in there and then the ribbon connector when you're putting it back in try to get a very gentle um but strong grip on it and you need to feed it at an a 45° angle into the connecting piece there's two little tiny pieces of plastic sticking out one on either side so you want to grab that ribbon connector cable and tilt it down slightly and fit the little edges of it around those pieces you can tell immediately once it's locked into place and then you just go ahead and fold the plastic cover down to make sure it's held firmly in place there at this point I did a little extra pushing on the heat shield just to make sure that piece stayed flat in the bottom right corner and I was good to put the cover back on so uh I went ahead and just clicked it right into place unfortunately my mic did block out the audio from the very first click it was super satisfying and super loud so the mic uh rejected it which is unfortunate but um was able to attach all the clips very easily just went around the edges making sure each piece uh clicked into place and then I also do walk back around the edges again just to make extra sure I didn't miss anything uh cuz it can be kind of easy to do especially if ones on either side of a clip are in place and the middle ones not um um sometimes it can look like it's closed and it's not so and then I put the SD card back in the steam deck and I'm going to go ahead and plug it in and make sure everything turns on okay I do this after I've already installed the back cover but I probably would recommend trying to turn it on before you put the back cover on just to make sure that everything is powering on and working so you don't have to undo all the clips again if you need to fix something inside it does take a little bit for the steam deck to actually boot up so I did speed up this footage a little bit it can take up to 30 or 45 seconds for it to boot up all the way so don't freak out if your steam deck doesn't immediately turn on and ask for you to sign in also if your steam deck won't turn on at all before you do anything else or try to open up the steam deck again make sure that the power cable you have plugged into it is securely plugged into the steam deck and is also running to an active power outlet and there's power coming from it the steam deck won't turn on unless there's power charging it because of the battery storage mode we put it into earlier here I did log into the steam deck really quick and check my storage just to make sure that all the games and everything was showing up correctly but from there we're good to just go ahead and install the screws just like before I did speed up this footage again so you don't have to watch me install screws for several minutes but all the screws are the same size again so it's it's really not a big deal just putting them into the place where they came from and then I do go ahead and tighten them just a tiny bit more at the end just to make sure they're very securely in there uh so there's not any issues later with one of them being loose overall I'm just so happy with the repairability of the steam deck and the steam deck OLED from original parts being sold on iFixit website to the SSD you can buy from iFixit that supports up to 2 terabytes of m.2 storage at much faster speeds even the tools that I bought in this and used in this video to repair the steam deck I bought from I Fixit just an amazing amazing product so thank you steam for this and thank you guys for watching this video if you did like the video please go ahead and like And subscribe and I'll see you guys around thank you so much [Music]

Channel: Michael McNulty

Views: 17,055

Keywords: Steam deck oled storage upgrade, handheld gaming, is the steam deck worth it, new steam deck, oled steam deck, portable gaming, should you buy a steam deck, steam deck, steam deck 2, steam deck games, steam deck oled, steam deck oled 1tb, steam deck oled 512gb, steam deck oled first look, steam deck oled limited edition, steam deck oled unboxing, steam deck oled upgrade, steamdeck, steamdeck oled, valve steam deck, valve steam deck oled

Id: ky2uIdkA0fM

Length: 9min 6sec (546 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 28 2023