Steam Deck: Valve warns against installing larger M.2 SSDs – can “considerably” shorten service life

A Valve designer is currently warning of a Steam Deck mod that will include a larger M.2 SSD to increase storage space.

On Twitter, Valve’s Lawrence Yang reacted to this, among other things, in an article by GameSpot that described the procedure.

Please, dont’t try that

“Hi, please don’t do this,” he wrote in response. “The charger IC gets very hot and the nearby thermal pads shouldn’t be moved. Also, most 2242 M.2 SSDs draw more power and get hotter than what the deck was designed for. While this mod seems to work, but will significantly reduce the lifespan of your deck.”

By default, the Stem Deck supports 2230 series M.2 SSDs. Twitter user TheSmcelrea recently published images of a modification of the device to use larger SSDs.

For this purpose, however, thermal pads were moved within the system, which Yang warns against.

While the Steam Deck offers several options to expand the system’s internal storage, in many cases these options are slower than an M.2 SSD. But rather a slightly slow save than a broken Steam Deck, right?