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.
I’ve considered doing this. Did you have to remove the old screen even though you were doing a chassis swap?
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.