The Steam Deck is, probably to no one’s surprise, a complicated piece of tech. Like many things small enough to be handheld, it has custom parts crammed into the relatively small shell. Valve has posted its own teardown video of the device that serves as both a how-to, and also a warning to not do it.
Valve also says that just by opening up the Steam Deck, you reduce its drop resistance, and there’s no way to prevent this. Which seems a bit much, because even if you send it to a professional to fix it, be it Valve itself or a licensed third party, it still means that you have to sacrifice some durability.
Also reducing the helpfulness of the video is that, about halfway through, Valve says that the Steam Deck shown in the video is a pre-production model. Which means that there may be differences between it and the model that people can actually buy.
That aside, the video goes on to show the process of replacing the thumbsticks and SSD, both of which are of a custom assembly. If you must repair your Steam Deck yourself, Valve says that it will provide a source to get them some time in the future.
The video ends by saying that not doing anything shown in the video is the correct way to do things. So if anything ever goes wrong with your Steam Deck, the only real option is to send it back to Valve. Assuming the company sends the thing into this region in the first place.
(Source: Valve / Youtube)
