What Was Valve Hiding? - Steam Deck Teardown Reaction

when valve invited me down to their headquarters for a preview of the steam deck they not only refused to allow me to open it but they wouldn't tell me anything about the internal configuration other than what i was able to ascertain for myself using a thermal camera well that all changes today valve published a do as we say not as we do tear down of the steam deck and i haven't intentionally avoided looking at it all day and i'm going to be watching it together with my co-host anthony to see what we're going to learn and what still remains to be seen and the whole thing is sponsored by ifixit is your battery not lasting as long as it used to looking for a new project i fix it's got you covered stay tuned to the end of this video to learn more about their battery replacement kits okay we ready let's do it hi this is a video about opening up a steam deck to replace one or more of the components inside it i love the glove specifically we're going to cover the thumb sticks and very interesting the thumbnail says don't do this and the video opens with here's how to do this well they gotta cover their butts right they do but i gotta say i absolutely respect that valve is directly addressing what gamers have been asking about it because we all know the biggest issues with handheld consoles which excuse me with handheld consoles that are to be unnamed is joystick drift and for me personally if i'm investing this kind of money into a handheld device knowing that it can be quickly and easily repaired is a big deal the ssd well we'll see how quick and we'll see how easy it is this is a how-to video but in another way it's a why you really shouldn't do this that's because even though it's your pc or will be once you've received your steam deck and you have every right to open it up and do what you want wow you have every right to open up and do it wow i've only ever heard that from fairphone what a strong also framework but what a strong statement maybe system 76 what a strong statement for a device manufacturer to make when you buy it it belongs to you how is that controversial and yet here we are blown away by it it's 20 21. valve really don't recommend that you ever open it up the steam deck is a very tightly designed system and the parts are okay i take issue with that don't recommend that you ever open it up because that's going to suck in some dust you're going to want to clean that out maybe some compressed air will do it but you'll probably want to clean out the whole thing inside and the thing is most people are not going to be opening this thing for fun they're going to be opening it because there is an actual need to do it whether it's to replace a thermal compound or whether it's to clean it or whether it's to replace a defective component that's why people are going to open it i mean i could see myself opening it as ssd capacities get dramatically larger and you can get these tiny little what is it a 30 millimeter unit they've got in there 40. i think it's 20 i guess we'll see i'm not entirely sure i saw it briefly there yeah we'll we'll see they're not widely available in the consumer market right now but they may be coming but the highest cap ssd that you can get your steam deck with today is one terabyte and we know we're going to get bigger ssds in this form factor in the future you might wait do they have a one terabyte model i thought it was 64 256 and 512. m.2 2230 ssd it is 512. wait technically shows steam deck 64 gigabyte to be upgradeable to one terabyte of storage for less than the official 512 gigabyte version however and then it goes on to say other things here we go but there is a one terabyte m.2 2230. kiosks makes one but i think it's oem only apparently there is a dell that you can get for 200 canadian revenues on dell.com i mean the performance of this thing who knows it's probably the qlc with no dram cash so like yeah it's more than enough for the steam deck given that it can apparently run on emmc and memory card like microsd cards yeah and they told me when i was down there that they couldn't tell me which of the games on my unit were installed on the internal ssd versus the microsd card but they that i probably wouldn't be able to tell and i couldn't they've definitely done some optimization there so they aren't really designed to be user swappable opening up and replacing parts might mess things up like profoundly yeah for example if you damage the battery the whole thing could catch fire later which would be bad yes but there's entire hobbyist industries that use these batteries i mean not just exposed but in moving mechanical devices that literally fly through the air i mean these are these are the same kinds of cells that you would strap to a drone ripping around at 100 kilometers an hour so yes it's risky and you do need to be careful with them but also if consumers can handle that i think they can probably manage to not puncture this thing opening up their steam deck so be forewarned and leave this kind of thing to professionals unless you really feel like taking big risks with your property and with your life which could end if what okay i mean a fire could kill you if it caught fire in your pants yeah if it caught fire anywhere while you're sleeping you could die oh yeah i mean this is this is fair and this is the kind of device that would be very likely to be stored in your backpack yeah you know in some kind of combustible material yeah like imagine you're on the highway on your motorcycle with that in your backpack and it blows up so you know what i'm a back valve on this don't screw around with it if you don't know what you're doing but also this is not like opening up a pc power supply where literally a slip of the hand is the difference between you're alive and you're dead if you do this wrong just saying also the warranty doesn't cover any damage that you do fair enough however they didn't say that the warranty doesn't cover the device if you don't damage it act of opening it up voids the warranty yeah so if the act of opening it up doesn't void the warranty that's very good on valve but we'll find out there was a however here before i paused it having said all that we also wanted to make this video to simply show you what's inside the steam deck taking things apart and putting them back together is cool especially powerful handheld gaming computers that last part is a really mixed message yeah they spent a minute telling us not to do this and then they were like but it's cool i think i get it i think they're trying to be like edgy but it really does actually undermine some of the legitimate safety warnings that they gave us a little bit yeah please note the screws that secure the housing are what's called self-tapping screws and they're embedded in plastic bosses they can be removed and reinstalled but it's much easier to strip or over torque screws of this type compared to standard ones so be aware that they're very sensitive and either the screws or the housing can be damaged that's a really good point and i did notice that they used two different lengths of screws here so you're going to want to keep careful track of which ones went where you don't want one poking through the front of your steam deck when you put it back together and i mean for that matter though couldn't they have used like uh metal sunk into plastic to prevent this kind of self-tapping issue they could have it would have increased cost they probably would have had to press fit some kind of threaded inset yeah and that not only adds the cost of the metal pieces which is fairly negligible but it adds the labor of putting those in that compared to just putting a self-tapper into a molded piece of plastic very different ball game and given how aggressive they've gotten on the price i don't even begrudge them something like that it really isn't intended to be taken apart i say fair play valve yeah okay that makes sense to me as we've gotten more into manufacturing products for ourselves i've gained a lot more understanding and respect for the difficulty that manufacturers go through to make things actually make any sense at all from a cost perspective it does help prevent damage a torque wrench okay now hold on a second you don't need a torque wrench to avoid stripping a self-tapper in plastic you just need to your fingers are the only torque wrench you really need you go until two fingers can't get it in anymore and that's it at that point it's not just gonna fall apart it's in there enough and you're not gonna overdo it um these screws seem to be sunken into the plastic though so you'll probably need something maybe three fingers then if you can't tell then don't take it apart opening the case immediately weaknesses notice how many times the host has straightened those screwdrivers above the steam deck yeah and they're still cracking is that a joke are they meaning and makes the product less drop resistant there's no way to avoid this so just know that the structural integrity of your deck will be lessened somewhat by doing any of this interesting static electricity can easily break your steam deck permanently actually it's harder than you'd think yeah it's it's okay so it probably won't break it permanently in a fundamental way but it might cause things like oh well now voltage regulation isn't quite what it used to be and you're not going to turbo as high and you might lose performance kind of thing or just might not do anything like we saw in our video with electroboom okay here it is that's it backs off this is it he did show taking the back off that's um that's not very um satisfying yeah i was expecting a reveal shot i guess what that tells us is there's no ribbon cables attached to the backing or anything like that probably if the if their goal is to show that they're taking this apart and you can take it apart the other thing is too one of the joysticks is missing oh wait yeah so this is pretty far in they pulled the oh no you can see the daughter board for it in the top of the frame yeah i think that's it it's packed tight it is cooler there's all kinds of boards cooler right dead center yep i see what appears to be actually no i'm a little confused through the right hand what are we looking at there it kind of looks like a grill or something but it can't be because that's the front of the unit oh is it speaker chrome that might be a speaker yeah cause i think we're seeing the table below it so where's the speaker then is it just below his hand or hold on move it a little bit spark jumps from you to one of the integrated circuits on the board it'll probably fry some of the parts forever i mean yes but also if you're unfamiliar wait what with preventing malaria static discharge you should probably stop doing this and turn it over to a pro yes yeah that is right yeah but why didn't they just shoot a quick pick up man why like this the production values on this video i'm sending an email to my valve rep because this is the kind of thing that would have been completely preventable if they had just worked with us on this maybe they wanted it to look really amateurish so like anybody can get into it and anybody can do it valve is known for doing things for a reason first remove these four screws wait we just did that we just did that they're literally out so start keeping your screws organized to help you okay it comes time to reassemble everything okay this is good advice after the screws are out you just need to pry the case there we go yeah yeah try not to break what is that do they have a special jig for assembling these things is that what i was looking at oh oh that's cool that is so cool so it doesn't put any pressure on the screen you don't scratch the screen it doesn't put any pressure on the joysticks yeah it keeps it nice and flat flush with the table i like it yeah your fingernail that hurts okay there here it is our first unobstructed look so that was a battery a bit of writing on the battery that we were seeing got it look at all the ribbon cables and daughter boards so many pcbs this is some pcb next level pcb tetris right here i'm surprised because given how big it is compared to the a neo which didn't need this many daughter boards if i recall correctly i would have thought it would have a bit more of a kind of contiguous internal layout but then valve also did squeeze in more i o or okay i shouldn't say more i o the aneo has like dual usb c ports but but more buttons which take up a huge amount of internal space the other thing is that could be good for repairability because then you could just get a module to replace out if like one of the buttons was decided like there was a broken trace or something that's true which may not be a thing that'll happen often but if you drop this thing a lot of things can go wrong it looks like a combination some kind of heat shield slash emi shield that's over top of the cpu or i guess i should call it an apu that's going to help keep skin temperature down on the back of the device you actually have to do that for regulatory reasons i wonder if that's also providing an air path for that fan because the uh the intake and the exhaust are up there on that on that entire plane i think note that this video shows pre-production hardware and there will be some differences between what you see here and the steam deck that you own this is the battery points to the stairs this is the battery okay before proceeding it's important to disconnect it do that by unplugging these wires here disconnect it with okay the first component we're going to replace is the thumb stick this part is easy to remove oh wow this that was very jarring yeah he didn't actually show well we see it here there's three screws maybe we're gonna go back in time be aware that the whole assembly is custom the stick the board and the cap replacing these will require matching the custom parts exactly stay tuned in the coming months for a source for replacement parts thumbsticks ssds and possibly more what wow we're in sync here but i mean i think that reflects how strongly we agree that this is a good guy move that shouldn't be a good guy move but it is valve should not stand out in the industry for providing easy access to resources and replacement components and yet here they are a multi-billion dollar corporation that doesn't have to give to us about what you think because you'll buy it anyway and they're doing it well the other thing is too like these parts if they manufacture more of them so they have spares and they can sell those spares that's going to drive down the cost due to economy of scale it'll be a little bit more in terms of logistics yes but it's it should probably just work out and you get good guy points because nobody else is doing this for some reason okay lift this left there the clothes are back on unplugged they did it they went back in time again these are much better instructions for how to remove this ribbon cable than what they provided for removing the battery connector which by the way is connected again well here remove these three screws and then take the stick assembly out to be clear i don't want to hate on the host here no it's just an amateur video that's all well okay be nice no i'm sorry i'm i'm that's what i mean that's no that's not what i mean what i mean is that it's it's intentionally designed like from the perspective of somebody who's just like hey i'm going to show you how to take this apart now here's how it goes not like welcome to the valve steam deck disassembly more like light light-hearted like casual tone yeah yeah okay i thought you were calling them amateurs no amateur means for the love of okay all right all right that's it now just reverse all that to put another one back in let's move on to the ssd we don't recommend replacing the included drive yeah what we do recommend for increasing your storage capacity is the handy microsd card slot so much easier and plenty fast that's fair and there's already like cad files floating around in various subreddits of people designing like external usbc storage packs that would like clip on the back and plug into the usbc port there's gonna be lots of options to expand your storage if it was me man i'd upgrade the internal ssd but i'm also just a big nerd and i can afford to break my steam deck that's the question you have to ask yourself i'm not sure if they mentioned in this video but i heard somebody saying that there's actually like an emi reason for why you shouldn't replace that ssd um just vaguely when i saw it going through on my twitter feed okay so let's have a look maybe it has a custom shield on it or something please note before attempting an ssd replacement an off-the-shelf ssd could cause problems okay one power consumption yep an off-the-shelf ssd can draw more power than the original drive which could cause overheating and reduce battery life two electromagnetic interference yeah our ssd is located very close to our wireless module and was specifically chosen and tested to not interfere with wi-fi and bluetooth an off-the-shelf ssd might have a different emissions pattern and could compromise wireless performance okay three mechanical that's fair we place components on the motherboard underneath the ssd and a different one might mechanically interfere with these components so the main reason that might happen is if you have nand packages on both sides of the ssd which could be a very legit strategy for boosting up the capacity of an extremely small 30 millimeter long m.2 yeah i think it's actually pretty common especially during vibration four assembly at least one screw which holds down the thermal module onto the apu is also used to hold down the shield can removing this screw can impact the thermal performance of the thermal module here we go first we're working on removing this outer sheet now that's an area where i could see them bringing out their torque wrench again you want to make sure that if you are installing a cooler you are screwing it in evenly on both or all four sides and the reason for that is if you got your cpu die or apu and you've got your cooler on top of it and it's sitting crooked one side of it could get less cooling or even in some cases if you have an air gap which is effectively an insulator no cooling that's a big problem yeah and if you've ever at home you've probably not done this but if you've ever tried to install a threadripper cpu without their torque wrench um that's real difficult too because you can either over tighten it and like flatten out the um the lga pins so that it doesn't make contact anymore or under tighten it uh and not make contact that way like it's it's actually just actually a really good idea to have a torque wrench for this kind of thing if it's a well-designed cooler it'll probably have stoppers and you just go until it stops but this is valve's first attempt so depending on the oem they're working with shield as you've just seen these two screws come first two more screws under here okay now you can actually remove the shield but be super careful to not disturb the whole thermal setup very important to make doubly sure that the battery is disconnected before proceeding so the battery was under that can yeah so this whole time pull it out to the side yeah to the side yeah okay okay yeah that is very close to the wi-fi module look at those antennas they're right there they're right freaking there boy is packed there's your dram yeah the fat boy heat pipe one heat pipe yep now disconnect the drive note that all steam deck models use the m.2 connector for internal storage only 2230 and size will fit yep that's correct yeah give the community time uh yeah i mean there's no reason yeah you there's no reason you couldn't have an extension ribbon extension man do you guys want to see it on lttstore.com okay steam deck m.2 ribbon extension we find some other place to jam a 2280. i honestly don't know i don't think we'd be able to probably have to do it externally yeah including the 64 gigabyte model to actually remove the ssd so the 64 gigabyte emmc is a nvme okay module so interesting that was not what i expected we knew the 64 gig emmc model wasn't going to have the same performance as a full-fledged ssd using the nvme protocol also the flash is just not as fast if i recall correctly no but what we didn't know was if it would plug into the m.2 interface or if it would be soldered to the board or something and then you could expand that with an m.2 ssd it looks like it is either emmc or an ssd you can't stack them because it was looking like the the smart play assuming that you didn't need i think it's the better screen that comes with the 512 gig or something yeah it's got the uh laser etched yeah screen if you didn't need that it was looking like the smart play was to take the emmc model and then upgrade it so you'd get even more storage but it looks like that's not a thing here that's it cute we haven't filmed the entire reassembly process but as we mentioned with the thumbsticks that's the whole thing it's basically doing this whole thing again but backwards remember if you have followed these directions correctly you've done absolutely that was it that's as far as they're gonna go like i kind of expected to see a little bit more um not only that but i did notice that the ssd had cans on both sides for emi so they're very very concerned about emi on that ssd now what we don't know is if we could reuse that emi shield as long as whatever ssd we get is in a similar kind of form factor and it wouldn't surprise me to see someone like uh kyocio who already works in within these kinds of constraints to bring out an ssd that's specifically compatible with the steam deck i mean we're already seeing it with the playstation 5. it's not like ssd manufacturers aren't on this you know oh yeah game consoles getting ssd upgrades that's a thing i think it's i think it's a matter of time or maybe even with you know a pre-installed shield or doing their own validation or whatever now the question there becomes if other companies are doing their own validation and their own ssds how long before valve actually has an official support list i don't think they'll do it no i think it's just more hassle than it's worth i guess yeah why are they taking on that responsibility there's literally no money in it for them and it's in their best interest for people to not break these things and even though i think at least for our users the vast majority are not going to break their steam deck by opening it the odds are definitely greater of breaking it if you open it versus if you just don't well by that same token why would they say that it's yours to open is it just that they're very libertarian about it or yeah it's just that you can but clearly the odds of it generating a return or some kind of false warranty claim from someone who accidentally damaged something are definitely greater if people open them people make mistakes happens to the best of us i remember an incident with an imac probe once a very long time ago yeah but the difference here is that you'd actually be able to buy these spare parts that you need to repair it yes that's that's something that valve has just said well they just came out and said just now they haven't committed to every spare part joysticks yes what else did they actually commit to providing i don't know that they're going to provide main boards they may not so if you spill your coffee while you're working on an ssd upgrade that's going to generate a support ticket to valve which even if they don't cover it because it's not covered by warranty does add cost i could see batteries i could see maybe maybe displays maybe but probably not motherboards probably not personally i'd like to see valve go the whole mile and make it so that for it would cost more obviously because you'd have all this extra packaging and extra logistics cost but you i would like them to make the entire steam deck available in exploded form to build one so you could just buy every part and put it together yourself if you like were a masochist and you really wanted to i challenge you valve take it one step further it would cost more to put it together yourself with no warranty that is an interesting concept yeah i mean i don't think many people would take them up on it but it would mean that literally everything is available as a replacement part if you needed it yeah i'd be down for that no of course you would well yeah i mean i'm gonna take this thing apart i don't care hashtag biased did you pre-order one i did yeah me too oh wait hold on i heard back from valve uh full teardown and additional content make sure you're subscribed guys i heard back from valve and we are definitely gonna have some interesting stuff going on once they jump through some internal hoops but you're more informed now about what's inside your steam deck that we are anyway thanks for watching and that's fair we are and so are you and you're informed about our sponsor ifixit ifixit wants to help you keep your devices powered like they are brand new they have a wide range of products including their battery replacement kits for your mobile devices they've got kits for laptops cell phones tablets smart watches and even nintendo switches you don't even need to be an expert to repair your devices with ifixit they've got beautiful step-by-step guides with tons of photos to walk you through your replacement and of course the kit includes everything you need so why pay for someone else to do it when you can pay to learn a new hobby while also saving yourself some time and money and i really do mean saving yourself time the time it takes to coordinate with a repair shop and like drop stuff off and go pick it up unless it's a very simple fix honestly could in many cases be better spent just doing it yourself so don't wait check out ifixit.com ltt to find the fix kits for your devices today hope you guys enjoyed this video if you're looking for another one maybe check out our preview of the steam deck if you haven't already seen it we got to play games we even did a little bit of casual benchmarking thermal camera it's a pretty good video

Channel: Linus Tech Tips

Views: 1,369,186

Rating: 4.8967872 out of 5

Keywords: steam deck, valve steam deck reaction, valve steam deck teardown, teardown, valve, half life 3, steam, portable gaming teardown

Id: nnyqww4-76A

Length: 26min 16sec (1576 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 07 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/LordGraygem]

What's interesting is that the Valve guy specifically mentions that any damage done by the user while it's opened up will NOT be covered by the warranty. I saw quite a few people here flat-out say that if they fucked up their 64GB replacement, they'd just RMA it and try again. Guess that part of the plan is out now, because I'm pretty sure Valve can tell the difference between "this is our fault" damage and "this is the user's fault" damage when they look to see what happened.

[u/LaserTurboShark69]

Really curious about this hardware replacement resource they mentioned. Can't wait to see if it's strictly for replacement parts or if they'll sell different joysticks and other new parts.

[u/Think_Natural_1574]

After this... very little chance I will open this up lol

[u/TF2SolarLight]

linus deck tips

[u/figmentPez]

"I think consumers can handle this." Says the man who routinely breaks the electronics he works on.

Some consumers will be able to handle this; a lot of consumers will not be able to handle this.* There is overlap between the group who think they can handle it and the group who will not be able to handle it.

* Seriously, a lot of people cannot handle dealing with disconnecting ribbon cables or not stripping screws. Have you dealt with the technical capabilities of the average person? Granted, a lot of those people with no technical capability will also have no interest in opening their Steam Deck, but I cannot overstate how many people I know who cannot handle this, including people who play video games.

[u/Anomaly1134]

Hype is building. Starting to feel better again about my 64 GB model. I wanted to save money and didn't mind longer loading times, but if even he can't tell which games were playing on the SD card, then I am very stoked!!!

[u/CnxUk]

I understood the “nothing” joke during this my second viewing which is ironic as they missed it

[u/Franz_Thieppel]

Good video. Just a shame all subtle humor was completely lost on them.

Yes, I'm sure Valve was aware you probably won't literally lose your life opening the steam deck. I think the exaggeration might have been intentionally ridiculous.

The best joke was "if you followed these steps correctly you didn't do any of this" and they cut it mid-phrase with an awkward pause smh...

[u/TONKAHANAH]

I take apart this kinda stuff all the time but honestly I'll never take it apart unless I a) accidentally break something, like dropping it and cracking the screen, or b) I need to replace the battery.

im getting the 512gb model, thats WAY more than enough storage for me I think, especially if I get an SD card. I plan on playing mostly indi games and they'll be fine on either the ssd or the sd card.