Steam Deck SSD upgrade and thumbstick swap: interactive 3D teardown

All 7 steps

1. 1Eject the microSD card first trap

   Before a single screw comes out, take the microSD card out: press it into its slot in the bottom edge, under the right speaker, until it clicks, let it spring out and draw it free. Then make sure the Deck is switched off and its charger unplugged. Avoid this trap: The microSD slot is in the bottom edge, where the back cover’s rim meets the card’s end. Forget the card, take the eight screws out and pry the cover up from the right grip, and the rim catches the card’s end while its reader on the board holds the other end: the card bends and can snap in half, with your games and files on it. Eject it first, before any screw.

2. 2Turn out the eight back screws

   Turn out the eight screws in the back cover with the Phillips #1 driver. They are not all alike: the four at the outer corners are 9.5 mm long with a coarse thread that bites into plastic, and the four nearer the middle are 5.8 mm machine screws with a fine thread, into the metal frame. Lay the long ones in well 1 of the tray and the short ones in well 2.

3. 3Unclip the back cover from the right grip

   Slide an opening pick into the thin seam between the back cover and the front shell at the end of the right grip and run it along the grip, prying up gently to free the locking clips there. Once those clips let go, lift the cover by that end and draw it up and away: the clips along the long edges let go one after another. Set the cover down behind the Deck.

4. 4Peel the foil tape and lift off the shield

   On the silver board shield a square of foil tape hides a screw by the fan: peel it off in one piece with the tweezers, so it can go back on, and set it aside. With the Phillips #0, turn out that 3.4 mm screw into well 4 and the two 3.7 mm screws along the shield’s left edge into well 3. Lift the shield off: it may stick a little to the thermal pads under it. Leave the pads where they are.

5. 5Unplug the battery by its pull tab

   With the shield off, the battery’s cable can be seen plugged into the board’s right edge, above the SSD. Grip its fabric pull tab and pull the plug straight away from the board, towards the battery, never up. Nothing inside is live once it is out.

6. 6Take out the SSD and move its foil sleeve

   Turn out the 3.4 mm screw at the SSD’s end with the Phillips #0: the drive springs up at a shallow angle. Draw it straight out of its M.2 socket and set it down. Its silver sleeve is shielding that keeps it from upsetting the wireless parts under it: slide it off with the tweezers and onto the new drive. The new SSD goes in when you press Reassemble.

7. 7Free the right stick’s flex and lift it out trap

   The right stick sits at the top of the right grip. Flip up the small locking flap of its ZIF connector with the spudger’s point, then slide the flex out by its blue pull tab with the tweezers and lay it aside. Turn out the module’s three 5.2 mm Phillips screws into well 6 and lift the old stick straight up, its stick coming back out through the front shell. The new one goes in when you press Reassemble. Avoid this trap: With its three screws out the stick looks free, but its flex is still clamped under the ZIF flap on the module’s board. Lift the module and the flex is dragged up taut off the controller board, then tears at the connector: the flex, which stays in the Deck, is ruined and the new stick has nothing to plug into. Flip the flap up and slide the flex out by its blue tab first.

What you need

• Phillips #1 screwdriver · the eight back screws
• Phillips #0 screwdriver · the shield’s, the SSD’s and the stick’s screws
• Plastic opening pick, nylon spudger and ESD tweezers · never metal near the battery
• A single-sided M.2 2230 NVMe SSD · the new drive
• A Steam Deck LCD right thumbstick, Type A or B · to match the Controller ID
• A magnetic screw tray · five lengths, from 3.4 mm to 9.5 mm
• A USB drive with Valve’s SteamOS recovery image · to set up the new SSD

Questions

Safety

Run the battery below 25% and put the Deck in battery storage mode from its BIOS first, as Valve advises; switch it off, unplug it and take the microSD card out. Unplug the battery by its pull tab before you touch anything else inside, and never pry near it with metal.

• Lithium-ion batteries: never bend, puncture or pry a battery with metal. A damaged cell can go into thermal runaway: it smokes, catches fire and can explode. Discharge it below 25% first; if it swells, hisses, smokes or gets hot, stop and move it somewhere safe.
• Static (ESD): work on an anti-static mat with a grounded wrist strap; a spark you cannot feel can kill a chip.
• Power off: switch the device off and unplug its charger before you open it, and disconnect the battery before touching anything else inside.

About this teardown

3D Spatial Reconstruction: Models are engineered from factual hardware measurements to visualize internal layouts, screw lengths, and hidden cable traps before you open your device. Always verify cable routing on your specific hardware revision.

The Deck is Valve’s Steam Deck LCD (2022), at its published size of 298 × 117 × 49 mm, in a plain dark grey with no logos or printed marks. The order and the fixings follow iFixit’s Steam Deck LCD guides: eight Phillips screws in the back, four coarse-thread 9.5 mm ones at the outer corners and four fine-thread 5.8 mm ones nearer the middle; the cover’s clips freed from the right grip; foil tape over the board shield’s hidden 3.4 mm screw and two 3.7 mm screws on its left edge; the battery cable’s pull tab; the SSD’s 3.4 mm screw and its foil sleeve; and the right stick’s ZIF flex and three 5.2 mm screws. A Phillips #1 opens the back, a #0 does the rest.

Where the brief differed, the real Deck decided. There is no thermal pad on the SSD: the board shield sits on thermal pads over the power stages and an inductor beside the SSD’s end (one reason Valve warns against longer 2242 drives), and it may stick to them as it lifts; what wraps the SSD is a foil sleeve, ESD and EMI shielding that moves to the new drive. On the LCD model the battery’s plug lies under the shield’s edge, so the shield comes off before the battery can be unplugged. Refreshed LCD units have a black shield with no tape and only the two 3.7 mm screws.

The Steam Deck OLED (2023) comes apart differently: its eight back screws are all 5.8 mm Torx T6, its battery’s pull tab is reached before the shield, which has two 3.8 mm T6 screws and no tape, its SSD screw is a 3.3 mm T6 and each stick has three 5.9 mm T6 screws.

The outline and thickness, the clips’ number and places, where the boards, the SSD, the card reader and the connectors sit inside, what the inner screws thread into and the 3 mm pick depth at the grip are our reading of teardown photos, so they are estimates; so is just how the cover’s rim meets the microSD card, which iFixit warns can snap in half if the cover comes off with it in. The 3D runs faster than real hands do.

Sources: iFixit: Steam Deck parts (Valve’s LCD right thumbstick $39.99, the Steam Deck Toolkit $19.99, the back plate screw set of 5.8 and 9.5 mm screws), read 27 October 2026, iFixit: Steam Deck LCD SSD Replacement, iFixit: Steam Deck Right Thumbstick Replacement, iFixit: Steam Deck Back Cover Replacement, iFixit: Steam Deck OLED SSD Replacement, iFixit: Steam Deck OLED Right Thumbstick Replacement, iFixit: What screwdriver do I need to open a Steam Deck?, iFixit News: Steam Deck Teardown, Kingston: Replacing the Steam Deck SSD (the inner screws are the shorter ones), Valve: Steam Deck tech specs, Gamers Nexus: Steam Deck OLED vs LCD teardown, GamingOnLinux: Valve designer warns against 2242 drives in the Steam Deck.

The 3D models, drawings and text are our own. Steam Deck and Valve are trademarks of their owners, named only to say which device this teardown is for; iTakeApart is not affiliated with them.