A Clear Shell Takes the Steam Deck Back In Time

 

Transparent electronics seem to be all the rage again and having lived through the twilight years of things like candy colored transparent Game Boys and PlayStation 2s, I'm welcoming this revival with open arms. What better way to hop back onto the bandwagon by giving my handheld gaming weapon of choice; the Steam Deck a 90s and early-2000s inspired makeover?

Source: eXtremeRate

I sourced my transparent Steam Deck shell from eXtremeRate who are already fairly well known for making shells for other consoles like the Switch. They have a whole slew of color options, all at around $36, including some fairly nice looking metallic satin shells which are a bit more expensive at $46. I opted for straight clear since I didn't want something too "loud" in appearance but still really popped.

I was admittedly not a huge fan of the fully transparent look though. So my goal with the aftermarket shell was to combine the black face buttons and back cover from the standard Steam Deck shell with the new faceplate to create a two-tone look that I thought might work really well. The good news was that the new front plate and the OEM backplate snapped perfectly together, so I was ready to proceed.

Changing out the faceplate requires a full teardown of the Steam Deck which can be a little nerve wracking the first time you do it. There's a lot of components and their corresponding screws to keep track of and a lot of the screws are really quite difficult to remove, even with a properly sized screwdriver. The kit includes a full set of replacement screws though so when you inevitably strip a few of them, you'll have replacements on hand.

Arguably the most nerve wracking part of this teardown is going to be removing the display. Even though Valve designed the Steam Deck with a great deal of user repairability in mind, they still opted to attach the display using adhesives. That said, the adhesive isn't too strong so it's not overly difficult to remove. The kit recommends using a heat gun or an iOpener, then lifting the corners and slicing the double-sided tape with the provided metal pick.

Personally. I've had zero luck with suction cups on this type of work, nor do I trust using something rather sharp like the kit's metal pick to go scraping around the back of the display glass. I instead used a couple of cheap, thin plastic guitar picks to slice the tape while I leveraged the gap open with a double edged razor blade. It's understandably sketchy, but it's the only thing I have on hand that's thin, yet rigid enough to pry that gap open wide enough to shove the pick in.

One other step from the kit that I would also change is removing the heatsink from the APU prior to removing the motherboard - it's simply unnecessary. Unless you plan on changing the thermal compound out, I would not disturb the factory contact. The motherboard will lift out regardless of the heatsink being attached or not, and it doesn't block any of the screws necessary for it's removal.

My other reason for saying this is that I actually had to RMA my deck since it suddenly died roughly 15 minutes into a gaming session after I had removed the heatsink and replaced the thermal compound. Granted, my Deck didn't visibly throttle it's performance prior to shutdown which might mean this was something other than a thermal issue caused by a poor contact patch. Better to be safe than sorry though.

Reassembly is easy enough. Just put everything back where it originally was and take your time reapplying the adhesives. You especially want to take time with the mesh for the speaker grills because they look very prominent on the face of the device and you really don't want them to look crooked. Or maybe that's just my OCD talking. Either way, don't rush.

Once it's all back together, now's the time to drink in the result of all that tedium.

This Steam Deck still undoubtedly a modern device, but the clear shell is a total throwback to a simpler time. The look instantly transports me back to the early 2000s, hanging around with my friends at summer camp, trading Pokémon across a heavily worn link cable on our multi-colored Game Boy Advance systems. Unfortunately, pending my RMA, I'm not going to be able to enjoy my "retrofied" Deck just yet and I'm still going to have to do this work all over again once my replacement system arrives - whenever the hell that is. Until then, I've got plenty more projects to get tied up in.