[@GamersNexus] They Changed Everything: Valve Steam Deck OLED vs. LCD Tear-Down
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The new Valve Steam Deck OLED didn't just change the screen: Almost every part of the device has had some sort of revision, from the screws to the power topology of the motherboard. Some of these changes happened silently in the Voyager platform refresh for the Steam Deck, but the majority of large changes are brand new. Memory underwent relocation and now uses better modules, the cooling solution has had its fan flipped and thickened, and the controller component PCBs have had some consolidation and durability improvements. In this tear-down of the new Steam Deck OLED, we'll compare the new Steam Deck vs. the original, old Steam Deck "LCD" model.
Would be interesting in seeing the thermal and fan noise results.
Whilst I have no plans on buying the OLED edition, it did make me question that decision a couple of times watching these reviews come in. The LCD edition, with its quirks, is serving me just fine.
I'm also impressed with how candid Valve is bring with both their system & repairability improvements. Just wish other corporations did the same.
Valve seems to be firmly within the category of enthusiast run company. The heads of EA, Microsoft, etc clearly don’t game. Valve is clearly run by people who do and want their hobby to have a better environment. It’s the only expectation I have for their consistent pro consumer behavior. That or the fact that it’s been wildly profitable so why stop.
It makes me sad to think what will happen in the distant future when those people are no longer in charge. But for now, we get to enjoy their reign.
A large portion of the stock is held by employees so that may stay consistent for a good long while. Valve isn’t hurting, they’re able to continue to put out side projects like this and none of their competitors have really stood strong in the face of what they’re doing
The crux is that as long as Steam has no real competitor, Valve will have fuck-you-ima-tinker-with-side-projects money. The Steam Store is an infinite money printer.
Their biggest competitor though they could get 30% market share by giving away free games and signing exclusivity deals, instead of, you know, making a good gamestore. I don't think we need to worry to much.
Well, maybe if GabeN retires, but im still hopeful.
Pro consumer behaviour like refusing to sell the Deck in Australia because of our Consumer protection laws?
Is that really why they don’t sell in Australia? I don’t believe your consumer protections laws are tougher than Europe. I can’t find any stated reason for not selling in AU. I suspect it’s just down to market size. They only recently started selling in Japan and they have 5x as many people.
Valve were fined $3M a few years back for lying to consumers about their rights to refunds per Australian law so it is an ongoing joke that Gabe now hates Australia and refuses to sell the Deck here as punishment.
That said it isn’t an entirely business-led decision to not sell here. Australians spend more on PC gaming than Japan.
I highly doubt Newell is harbouring some kind of grudge. Several countries have ruled against Valve in more onerous ways.
I’m not sure where you got the notion that Japan is a larger market than Australia but the Japanese spend around US$26B/year on video games. Australia is around $US$2.6B. Australia isn’t even in the top 10% worldwide. Now factor in expensive shipping, distribution, and warranty support in Australia, and it seems fairly obviously why they haven’t expanded there yet.
I said it was a joke.
I also specified PC games, which is the only market Valve cares about, and in which Australia spends more money than Japan. Add in localisation and other impediments to getting into the Japanese market and no, it’s not obvious at all.
That didn’t really seem like a joke to me but thanks for clarifying. I guess conveying tone is difficult across text.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen them yet but Steam Decks aren’t PCs. They’re handhelds. They compete with handhelds like the Nintendo Switch. I understand there is category overlap with the Deck but to call it a PC is clearly silly.
Anyone spending money on a game to play on a deck is spending money in the “PC” games market.
The benefits of having decent people running a privately owned company is pretty astounding. Once you go public and have a board that legally has and wants to make as much money as possible, it seems like things are sure to go to shit.
Some days, I question why humanity ever allowed public companies to exist. That very concept seems to be creating a lot of societal drawbacks these days.
Seems like a fine idea on paper. Someone has a real good thing going and other people can help bankroll them to expand and share whatever it is all across a country instead of just one little area.
In practice it turned into a hellscape.
The issue is the perpetual ownership.
If I lend you money, you only own me the money I've lended+interest. I'm not going to have a stake on your future businesses, nor have any decision power over you, it isn't in my power to make sure you squeeze the most money possible over your job. You pay the money back and we are done.
The problem with that is lending money to a business that needs money also means you're risking if the business fails that you're never getting your money back. No one wants to risk their $100,000 in hopes of getting back $108,000 a year from now.
Even then you can just add a higher interest rate. You absolutely don't need to held the company hostage until the heat death of the universe.
Are… Are you suggesting that there are potential ways a public company system could’ve actually been handled better, rather than the concept itself being flawed by nature?
I’m not saying I disagree, I’m just saying that possibility never occurred to me for some reason. (Maybe it’s my justice sensitivity complex acting up)
Yesn't?
Like, the whole point of a public traded company is that anyone can come in and give money to the company and, in turn, they get money when the company is doing well, so the money you've paid is, hopefully, not lost.
I don't know about you, but on paper, that sounds like bonds and basically every type of debt in existence.
The difference is the perpetual ownership of the company by shareholders. Consider someone who lent a company 20k, they now have an asset that grew immensely in value, it gives them money quarterly/yearly/whatever, AND they have decision power on the company, despite the fact that they have earned 100x what they lent.
Just changing the idea of stock to be something with an expiration date would remove most of the weirdness of the system, but at that point it isn't really a public-traded company, is it?
Back when corporations were invented, you didn't have the option of trading your stock multiple times a day. Corporations could afford to take the long view, and people held on to the stock.
Taki Udon went pretty in-depth with thermals in their review. The already great thermals have been drastically improved. The OLED runs cooler in general and does a better job of keeping the heat away from your hands. The fan is quieter than the old model. I linked to the part of the video where they discuss thermals, but the whole video is pretty interesting.
This looks like a typcial console refresh. Fix the user pain points, find ways to make it cheaper to make, and maintain compatibility with the ecosystem. It's more for new Deck users than as an upgrade for existing users. And it worked: I want one.
I had hoped the OLED screen would be compatible with the LCD Steam Deck, but I understand why they chose to redesign the internals.
I already dread having to replace the battery down the road, since I've got one of the early Decks with a heavily glued in battery.
I've been repairing crap like this for decades. I haven't done the steam deck battery yet but already know an easy enough way to get it done.
Use a plastic playing card, and you may want to cut one in half so it isn't as wide. Get a shallow bowl of 90 or higher iso alcohol to dip a bit of plastic playing card into.
Dip card, hold deck upside down so no access alcohol goes down into the lcd screen (avoids slight chance of issues) and start wedging the card under the battery to eat and peel away the adhesive. Just keep dipping and pushing the card under.
I would honestly not worry too much.
The glue is a mother fucker, no arguments there. There ARE actually very good reasons for it but... it still sucks.
But as long as you aren't going at it with a butter knife For Content, it is mostly just tedious. Get a plastic pryer/splitter and a heat gun and go to town. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Steam+Deck+Battery+Replacement/149070 is the gold standard guide for that.
I've seen some solvents advertised for specifically this use case (remove glued in electronics parts) but I personally wouldn't trust those without a LOT of reviews. Like, if it were that simple, ifixit and the like would already be selling it.
But also? I doubt it is going to be an issue outside of RMA-worthy problems. The days of batteries failing left and right are gone now that basically every device has logic to not over-charge or kill the zero. Think of the Steam Deck like a phone. It has a 2-6 year life cycle at which point it will be "weak enough" to not run anything remotely new and likely have a replacement with MUCH better everything (Valve best keep that audio jack though....). Now, PC gaming gets weird as I think my most played games at this point are Warframe and Dwarf Fortress (and that goes back to the curses only days...) but... yeah.
Now that was an intersting watch. It appears that not one part of the steam deck was untouched.
The outer shell?
Even the screws were changed.
They do have that special edition clear one. And technically didn't they add metal inserts for the screws to go in? Instead of the self tapping screws in the older model, I'm not 100% on that. I know the screws themselves are different for sure.
The clear one is limited edition, not expecting to ever see one, though yeah fair point about the screws, that is a nice improvement
Changed the Steam and ... buttons, changed the color scheme on the joysticks, and the joysticks themselves. Those may or may not count as "outer shell" But the screw sockets definitely do, and they have metal inserts now.
The grip area actually looks different.
Can't watch the video yet but damn, GN does meme arrow thumbnails these days?
https://dearrow.ajay.app/ might be for you (you can either pay a very tiny amount of money or wait for 24 hours and get a free license automatically).
I guess I don't watch enough videos to have noticed, but are arrows a problem now? I can't imagine them being more annoying than 'thumbnail face'!
Arrows and emojis have just been so painfully prevalent in thumbnails desperate for attention. I don't actually hold it against GN (or any channel), can't really help that it's what people click. It just seems so "not GN" lol.
Their videos are full of those reaction faces, though. No way are arrows worse than the faces.
At least it's accurate and not some sort of clickbait
The real question is do the fans still smell good when they kick on for the first time? Mine lost its new-factory smell