We’ve caught a glimpse of spare parts for the Steam Deck going on sale, but it turns out that iFixit jumped the gun in sending these retail listings live, and they’ve been yanked down – though presumably it won’t be long before the relevant bits of kit will be available again.
You may recall that iFixit cooked up a deal with Valve to be the official supplier of replacement parts for the Steam Deck, and as the company tweeted to clarify, it mistakenly published these product pages, complete with pricing.
Earlier today we published some pages related to our upcoming parts launch with Valve. These went live earlier than we planned, so we ended up taking them down. If you did get a parts order in, we'll honor it. 💙 Stay tuned for the real launch soon!May 21, 2022
Assuming that these are the correct prices, and not placeholders – on what were apparently ‘test’ pages, according to an iFixit rep on Reddit – the price tags for various parts were revealed as Gaming On Linux spotted, and many are pleasingly reasonable.
A replacement screen runs to $100 or £90 for the top-end anti-glare display (and $65 or £60 for the basic screen), with a new fan costing $25 or £20.
Most of the prices seem nicely pitched on the affordable side, but if you want a new motherboard, you’re looking at a substantial $350 or £290 outlay. That’s not far off the cost of a new Steam Deck, of course, which runs to $399 or £349 for the entry-level model.
Analysis: An immediate rush on fans…
Do note that iFixit made it clear that some orders were placed before the listings were removed, and anybody who got an order in will have it honored.
As you might imagine, there were a number of people who bought replacement fans – there have been complaints about some overly noisy models blighted by a high-pitched whine – and in fact the fans sold out before the listings were actually taken down, going by reports online. (Valve is addressing this particular gremlin in the works, or is trying to, with beta software updates, mind you.)
Some other folks are looking at the array of parts which were available and speculating about being able to buy all the components needed to make their own Steam Deck – but doubtless that’s going to work out expensive, even if theoretically possible (which we don’t know yet).
More realistically, there may be Deck owners out there who are looking not just to perform basic repairs on a wonky thumbstick, or maybe a problematic fan, but perhaps upgrade a lesser model Steam Deck to the better screen on the top-end version. And seeing the price of the replacement display will likely be heartening to anyone with enough techie chops to be able to open up their device and switch out the screen.
Via Tom’s Hardware
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