this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2025

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Steam Deck

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229

I upgraded my LCD to OLED with DeckSight! Also swapped the case and buttons while I was at it (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 month ago by hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz

42 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The screen swap was easy peasy, the hardest part was getting the old screen out. Mine was already broken, and I wasn't keeping the front plastic, so I didn't have to worry about being too careful, except around the top edge where the mics and ambient light sensor are.

The case swap was a bear, took forever. I'm fairly handy, but the whole process took almost 4 hours. My buddy was doing his in tandem with me and he was over 5 hours, and that's with me lending a hand towards the end.

It looks great, in my opinion, and I'd do it again, I'd just start earlier in the day 😬

As far as the OLED goes, so far it looks good. The stock brightness slider isn't working, it must be a software thing? I have had zero time to look into it. I haven't even played a single game on it since doing the swap. I'll report back when I have time to give it a fair shake.

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[–] filcuk@lemmy.zip 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It is a known issue https://www.shadetechnik.com/decksight-known-issues

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago

Thanks! I thought I was keeping up with development but I guess I missed that somehow. I guess I'll just have to be patient 😬

[–] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Thank you sm forposting about this, I didn't even know it existed.

I think I will wait a few months and see whether or not they make it to custom production and resolve issues like not being able to adjust the brightness properly in Gamescope and then think about whether I actually want to buy it since I don't use my Deck much...

But when I do it's mostly for relatively low-powered games and indie titles so the 1080p upgrade might be rly neat too

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

You're very welcome.

The creator seems to be pretty on top of things, I bet we'll get some fixes before too long.

[–] sexy_peach@feddit.org 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What the hell that's beautiful. How much did the whole setup cost?

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 month ago

Thanks!

The new case was like $35, and the OLED screen is like $140. I bought a deck with a broken screen for $150, so $325 from scratch? Plus taxes and odds and ends 🤷‍♂️ Not bad!

[–] radiouser@crazypeople.online 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Yeash... 4 hours to swap the case? Absolutely striking that off my list. I'll get as far as taking it apart and then I'd have solflocked myself lol. Looks great though!

[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Swapping the back is pretty easy, but my understanding is you have to do 100% disassembly to swap the front.

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago

Can confirm 🫠

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago

Well, I'm sure I could've gone faster, I did stop to help my buddy a number of times. But yeah it's at least 2 or 3 hours, lots of little bits and bobs and they all have to go back in the right spots. It's not hard per se, except for the screen removal, it's just tedious.

Thanks I think it looks great too! 😄

[+] thejevans@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Yes unfortunately. I thought I wouldn't have to, that's half the reason I got the extra case. But the way the steam deck is designed, the internal frame is screwed to the front case with 6 screws that are under the screen 🫠

Edit: Swapping the screen without swapping the case would be significantly easier, you've only gotta go down as deep as the motherboard.

[–] Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's interesting, I had a assumed screen swap/case swap would be equally difficult.

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

Nah, every little button and board are all individually screwed into the front case. So swapping it is literally removing those things one at a time, setting them aside, doing the rest of the work, then putting all those little pieces back in exactly where they go.

The instructions have over a 100 steps, then you do them an in reverse. So over 200 steps to do it all.

I bet you could get fast at it, but first time? Gonna be slow.

But the screen swap is just the motherboard in and out I'm pretty sure.

[–] Damarus@feddit.org 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What is the PWM frequency with DeckSight? I'm pretty sensitive to that and my regular OLED model sadly strains my eyes within an hour. Maybe something like this could be a better alternative for me.

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You know I'm not sure, and I'm not sure how to check. That might be a good question for someone else? Or maybe it's in the documentation? Or if you can tell me how to check I can check,

[–] Damarus@feddit.org 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

While the documentation does list quite a few useful details about the specs of the display, the PWM frequency is unfortunately not mentioned. A reliable measurement can only be done with a specialized device like an Opple Light Master. Here is some more research about the PWM flicker on the Steam Deck OLED: https://old.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/1882kys/analysis_of_the_pwmflickervisual_fatigue_of_the/

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

I've sent a support message to the creator, hopefully he'll have an answer 👍

[–] alerich@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How about the BIOS flash? Is that easy to do?

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago

Easy peasy, he created a tool that does it automatically, with prompts and everything. Literally just double clicking a file from his website, done and done 👍

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I think it'd be really cool if, once there's a bunch of Decks with broken screens and stuff, there's a community around building new devices with them. There's no reason it needs to be the same size screen, or even the same controller format. It'd be cool to have like GameBoy size versions (assuming the hardware can be compacted that small, which it probably can't), or even larger versions. I'd love to see someone print out a Deck case that's scaled for a laptop screen, for example. There's no reason that can't be made easy with parameterized models.

This one is a custom case with a custom screen, except they chose to make it a copy of the Deck. That's great if you want it, but it'd be cool to have options.

[–] thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Is the OLED the same resolution as stock, or is it higher?

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's 1080p, which is unfortunately just a little harder to drive. Apparently the hardware in the new screen technically supports hardware downscaling to 720p, but that isn't implemented yet, and may never be.

[–] thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Ah, dang - I was hoping for a 1:1 replacement.

I mostly just use mine to emulate PS1-2 games, so 1080p isn’t all that enticing - but OLED blacks definitely would be.

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 month ago

While not as enticing, it should be much easier for the deck to handle.

People's concern with the increased resolution is that games that are already marginal, like horizon forbidden West, will slip further down in frame rate.

If hardware accelerated 720p becomes a thing with a software update, I'll most likely bump it down for a net INCREASE in performance 😬

[–] Zoot@reddthat.com 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Man id absolutely love to do this, full screen/shell/battery replacement and maybe even a 1tb nvme drive.

But goodness any time I see the clear shells all I can think of is how they look like a toy/switch afterwards haha

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 month ago

I mean, it kind of is a toy 😬

To each their own though 👍

See my comment below for advice on an SSD swap, it's super easy

[–] ouRKaoS@lemmy.today 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I swapped my 64gb LCD to a 2tb in about an hour, including reflashing the OS. Improved load times as well as storage space.

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Yeah SSD swap is one of the easiest upgrades, with the most benefit. Plus if you get an external nvme enclosure and take some time to play with RescueZilla, you can clone your old drive to the new one and you won't have to reinstall anything at all. Pretty slick!

[–] Zoot@reddthat.com 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Now that is seriously good to know! Espevially if you've got slow internet like me.

I splurged originally though haha, I have a 512gb Q3 deck, getting a 2tb or 1tb drive isn't a huge incentive since I just have a bunch of 512gb sd cards, but if I open it up id rather just do it all at once ya know

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

Slow Internet users unite!

Mine could be worse, it's 30/10. Had it for a few years. Before that it was 10/1 though, for like 10 ish years. And before that? For a significant portion of my teenage years, it was 1.5/.5.

Before that, my young childhood was all dialup. DSL existed, we just didn't have it 😬

Right now they're putting fiber in my town though! Soon I'll have access to 8000/8000 if I wanted! That's way too much though, I'm gonna go for their lowest tier, which costs the same as I'm paying now, but gives me 300/300. Plenty fast for anything I need to do these days. Nice to know the capacity is there if I need more 🤷‍♂️

[–] Sunny@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Kudos and thanks for sharing! Looking forward to getting a steam deck myself.

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Thanks! And you should! For $300, it's hard to beat the performance per dollar.

Other handhelds have more oomph these days, but not that much more, and your battery lasts much less time when your cranking those new chips that hard. None have matched the efficiency of the deck, frames per watt. To me, that's what counts.

If I'm out and about, I want efficiency, not raw performance. If I'm at home? Well, I can stream from my PC and get all the performance I need. So what's the point of these other machines?

[–] Sunny@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 month ago

Very good point and couldn't agree more. Im also playing a lot less demanding games these days, so a deck would be a nice compliment!

[–] pepperprepper@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

I use it to stream games (sunshine and moonlight) from my gaming pc, you get amazing battery life and the fans never get up to full speed.

[–] silmarine@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

What case is that?! I've been looking for a clear blue like this for so long.

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Extremerate emerald green

[–] silmarine@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Weird, doesn't look green in the picture.

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

https://a.co/d/5S3ZJTT

It's like a teal, blue green ish

[–] zebidiah@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Very cool! Any issues or drama when booting up or does it just run like steamdeck should?

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

No drama so far, though I admit I STILL haven't had time to play with it. Busy weekend, even now 🤦‍♂️

[–] Evono@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Awesome job, was it hard ?

[–] hereiamagain@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

Changing the screen was easy peasy. The glue is tough to get off, but my screen was already broken. I did my buddies screen too, which wasn't broken, and he wanted to save it, so I had to be more careful. That took a bit more effort to do carefully.

But that's the hardest part, everything else is easy.

The hard part for me was changing the front case, that took significantly more time and effort. A million little parts and screws and stuff. Took hours.

But if you're just changing the screen? Not so bad.

I'd still do it all again though, looks great