The screen swap was easy peasy, the hardest part was getting the old screen out. Mine was already broken, and I wasn’t keeping the front plastic, so I didn’t have to worry about being too careful, except around the top edge where the mics and ambient light sensor are.
The case swap was a bear, took forever. I’m fairly handy, but the whole process took almost 4 hours. My buddy was doing his in tandem with me and he was over 5 hours, and that’s with me lending a hand towards the end.
It looks great, in my opinion, and I’d do it again, I’d just start earlier in the day 😬
As far as the OLED goes, so far it looks good. The stock brightness slider isn’t working, it must be a software thing? I have had zero time to look into it. I haven’t even played a single game on it since doing the swap. I’ll report back when I have time to give it a fair shake.
It is a known issue https://www.shadetechnik.com/decksight-known-issues
Thanks! I thought I was keeping up with development but I guess I missed that somehow. I guess I’ll just have to be patient 😬
How about the BIOS flash? Is that easy to do?
Easy peasy, he created a tool that does it automatically, with prompts and everything. Literally just double clicking a file from his website, done and done 👍
Kudos and thanks for sharing! Looking forward to getting a steam deck myself.
Thanks! And you should! For $300, it’s hard to beat the performance per dollar.
Other handhelds have more oomph these days, but not that much more, and your battery lasts much less time when your cranking those new chips that hard. None have matched the efficiency of the deck, frames per watt. To me, that’s what counts.
If I’m out and about, I want efficiency, not raw performance. If I’m at home? Well, I can stream from my PC and get all the performance I need. So what’s the point of these other machines?
I use it to stream games (sunshine and moonlight) from my gaming pc, you get amazing battery life and the fans never get up to full speed.
Very good point and couldn’t agree more. Im also playing a lot less demanding games these days, so a deck would be a nice compliment!
I think it’d be really cool if, once there’s a bunch of Decks with broken screens and stuff, there’s a community around building new devices with them. There’s no reason it needs to be the same size screen, or even the same controller format. It’d be cool to have like GameBoy size versions (assuming the hardware can be compacted that small, which it probably can’t), or even larger versions. I’d love to see someone print out a Deck case that’s scaled for a laptop screen, for example. There’s no reason that can’t be made easy with parameterized models.
This one is a custom case with a custom screen, except they chose to make it a copy of the Deck. That’s great if you want it, but it’d be cool to have options.
Is the OLED the same resolution as stock, or is it higher?
It’s 1080p, which is unfortunately just a little harder to drive. Apparently the hardware in the new screen technically supports hardware downscaling to 720p, but that isn’t implemented yet, and may never be.
Ah, dang - I was hoping for a 1:1 replacement.
I mostly just use mine to emulate PS1-2 games, so 1080p isn’t all that enticing - but OLED blacks definitely would be.
While not as enticing, it should be much easier for the deck to handle.
People’s concern with the increased resolution is that games that are already marginal, like horizon forbidden West, will slip further down in frame rate.
If hardware accelerated 720p becomes a thing with a software update, I’ll most likely bump it down for a net INCREASE in performance 😬
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Yes unfortunately. I thought I wouldn’t have to, that’s half the reason I got the extra case. But the way the steam deck is designed, the internal frame is screwed to the front case with 6 screws that are under the screen 🫠
Edit: Swapping the screen without swapping the case would be significantly easier, you’ve only gotta go down as deep as the motherboard.
That’s interesting, I had a assumed screen swap/case swap would be equally difficult.
Nah, every little button and board are all individually screwed into the front case. So swapping it is literally removing those things one at a time, setting them aside, doing the rest of the work, then putting all those little pieces back in exactly where they go.
The instructions have over a 100 steps, then you do them an in reverse. So over 200 steps to do it all.
I bet you could get fast at it, but first time? Gonna be slow.
But the screen swap is just the motherboard in and out I’m pretty sure.
What case is that?! I’ve been looking for a clear blue like this for so long.
Extremerate emerald green
Weird, doesn’t look green in the picture.
It’s like a teal, blue green ish
Very cool! Any issues or drama when booting up or does it just run like steamdeck should?
No drama so far, though I admit I STILL haven’t had time to play with it. Busy weekend, even now 🤦♂️
