*** The Official Steam Deck Thread ***
- Thread starter DrCrabHands
- Start date
Associate
Simplest thing to change and no soldering, just unscrew the existing back plate, snap the new one on and screw the new one in its place. The original type of flat back buttons are already screwed onto the replacement back plate but I prefer the slightly longer ones that stick out more, kind of like the Xbox Elite controller. Comes with different button sizes so you can try different ones if you want. Just need to unscrew them and screw the new ones on.
I just use the original screws, between changing the paste multiple times, SSD twice, replacing backplates and thumbsticks I must have taken the back of about 10 times, original screws are still in perfect condition.
They even do the back plate with RGB lights now but I just have the normal one.
Transparent Back Plate for Steam Deck RGB & Vents
【RGB Illuminate Your Steam Deck】Experience stunning colors with our RGB lighting, transforming your Steam Deck. 【See Your Inner Steam Deck】Transparent back cover lets you explore your Steam Deck's hardware. 【Vents Design, Optimal Cooling】Enhance heat dissipation with vent design, thermally...
jsaux.com
Soldato
Steam decks are on sale again, bought myself a 64gb since I miss my old one
Associate
I'd definitely get a refurb is I were going to get one again for anyone else
Soldato
Aye at normal prices I would too, but no stock of refurb unfortunately
Thanks for pointing this out, finally pulled the trigger on one!
Looks like it is centred on the case screw holes, which is probably wise as it if was centred on the fan the edge of grill hole would be very close to the case hole and be at more risk of a fatigue crack starting there.
Associate
Anyone else out there daily driving the Steam Deck in desktop mode as their primary "PC"?
I use the Deck as my primary PC these days because it's so quiet. I don't use desktop mode as it's a bit too restrictive for my use case, unless I disable read-only which I don't want to do.
Instead, I upgraded the SSD to a 2TB and have it as a tri-boot (SteamOS, Windows 11, Arch Linux). I'm currently using Valve's Neptune 6.1 kernel on Arch as it already has the fan control enabled thus behaves the same way as in SteamOS. I found the fan started up quite often with just the standard Linux kernel which was slightly annoying when not exactly pushing the hardware. It is possible to expose the fan control functionality by applying a patch and compiling the kernel, but can't be bothered with that and Valves 6 kernels are fine anyway.
Associate
Nice. I had full intentions of installing Windows, but tried out desktop mode and never looked back.
I run 2 27inch 1440p monitors from it and have no issues. The only limitation is that I enjoy playing online poker and I can't find any of the major poker sites that have clients for linux - but other than that, my use case is mostly web-browsing and discord.
Soldato
If your going to be playing some of the more demanding games on it I'd recommend a bigger nvme so both game and shader cache can be stored on it
Appreciate the info! I'm planning to upgrade the internal storage to at least 512gb, and most likely have a decent sized SD card for retro stuff.
Soldato
Aye that's best way, I got a 1tb nvme for about £60 for mine, combine that with a anti glare screen protector and you've got 512 model for cheaper and more storage
Go for a 2TB internal (mine was £103 delivered) and a 1TB SD card for retro / emulation
Soldato
Got tracking number for my 64gb earlier, surprised steam warehouse is working on Sunday