Steam Deck Engineer Says SSD Mods Will Significantly Reduce Lifetime of the Device

A few days ago, reports started flooding the web on a Steam Deck mod that successfully vied to replace the handheld console’s integrated 2230 SSD towards the more ubiquitous 2242 format. The general idea was that the 2242 SSDs could generally provide higher performance and more bang for the buck on the available storage space, which is at a premium on the Steam Deck already, mostly due to its increased footprint compared to the stock 2230 SSD. However, according to a tweet by Steam Deck engineer Lawrence Yang, this SSD replacement carries with it enough caveats that it might actually severely decrease the longevity of the device itself.

According to him, the Steam Deck’s SSD slot is particularly sensitive to fluctuations on power requirements – of which those of 2242 SSDs are usually higher. At the same time, the device’s thermal pads (of which the removal and/or compromise is required to fit in the larger form-factor SSD) are a very necessary part of temperature management for the complex engineering of the Deck – specifically for the power delivery subsystem, which should see worsened temperatures due to the thermal pad removal. It might be better to simply invest in a fast SD card solution – some relatively affordable models offer read speeds of 160 MB/s already, show no performance degradation, and are hot-swappable.

We have to remember that the Deck has likely been precision-engineered to death. In such an ultraportable device as this one – and especially with the sort of processing firepower on hand – every bit of the device, from the number of nuts and bolts down to the length of its cables, the capacity of its cooling hardware and the battery’s maximum discharge rate has been engineered with precision, not only for manufacturing cost reduction, but also for it to be able to offer the balance of battery longevity, graphics oomph, and storage space it does. Your mileage may, of course, vary.