Confident enough to repair your Steam Deck? Replacement parts go on sale this summer
DIY’ers who are tech-savvy could save money on repairs, but Valve doesn’t recommend opening its device
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Steam Deckreplacement parts could be stocked by iFixit in just a few months’ time, according to a new report.
The Vergespoke to Kevin Purdy, an editor at iFixit – the tech site which publishes teardowns of hardware and scores devices for repairability – who indicated that said parts would be made available from this summer.
As you may recall, in February,Valve revealed that iFixitwould be one of the authorized sellers of replacement parts for its handheldgaming PC, but we didn’t know when this scheme would kick-off.
The Verge also probed as to which parts might be available initially, but didn’t have any joy in getting specifics just yet (though the site did point out anemail marketing sign-upyou can use to be notified by iFixit when the officialSteamDeck parts come into stock).
However, Valve has previously mentioned that two elements which will be on sale are set to be thumbsticks andSSDs, both obvious and useful candidates for switching out should anything go wrong with the originals. The firm also mentioned that “possibly more” components would be available to buy, as well.
Note, though, that Valve shared the above details in avideo(from October 2021) where the company stressed that it isn’t recommended that Steam Deck owners ever open the device, and that its components “aren’t really designed to be user-swappable” even if this is possible.
Analysis: Always good to have options…
All that said, Valve’s aforementioned video from last year does demonstrate how to perform jobs like swapping the SSD, and the company doubtless realizes that some folks will open up their devices – but presumes that only confident tech-savvy gamers are going to do so (at their own risk, naturally).
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Clearly, this is a useful facility to have for those who are up to the task, and if a thumbstick does go awry, or the drive, it’d be great to be able to replace it and keep your Steam Deck going without paying for the hardware to be sent away for repair.
We’ve already seen in the early days of the Steam Deck thatthere have been reports of stick drift– meaning a direction is registered on the thumbstick when it’s not being touched – but Valve quickly fixed this up via an update, as it was a software-side issue, not a problem with the hardware itself, fortunately.
Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).
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