Steam Deck Owners Urged Not to Use Mod to Install a Bigger SSD
Valve made the Steam Deck easy to take apart and repair, but that also led to a storage mod appearing which could drastically shorten the life of your handheld PC.
The Steam Deck uses an 2230 M.2 SSD, which means it can easily be replaced with another 2230 drive. However, Twitter user Belly Jelly (@TheSmcelrea(Opens in a new window)) managed to install a slightly larger 2242 M.2 drive in their Deck and everything seemed to work fine.
The larger drive is desirable because they can be cheaper than 2230 drives while also offering faster read-write speeds and more storage options, e.g. a 1TB drive. However, as VGC reports(Opens in a new window), Valve designer Lawrence Yang responded to a GameSpot article(Opens in a new window) covering the mod and asked Steam Deck owners to "please don't do this(Opens in a new window)."
As Yang's tweet explains, "The charger IC gets very hot and nearby thermal pads should not be moved. In addition, most 2242 M.2 drives draw more power and get hotter than what Deck is designed for." Yang concludes by predicting the larger driver will "significantly shorten the life of your Deck."
The Steam Deck is available with three storage options(Opens in a new window). The $399 model includes 64GB of eMMC memory, the $529 model uses a 256GB M.2 SSD, and the $649 model doubles that to 512GB. Currently, Valve estimates Steam Deck orders placed now won't ship until October or later due to demand combined with component supply restrictions.
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