Now that my Steam Deck LCD has been relieved of his duties as a daily driver desktop PC, I finally went ahead and replaced the Delta fan with a Huaying one. It turned out to be relatively easy to do ; and lo and behold, it is indeed quieter.

Recent adopters may or may not know there was a medium-sized kerfuffle about disparities in noise profiles of early Steam Deck units. It was proved and narrowed down to a difference between 2 fan models (see Gamers Nexus detailed analysis).

Obviously the one I got was a “bad” one, emitting a high pitched noise when running at full speed. I did not find it unbearable but it was still not ideal, particularly when using the SD in quiet environments.

Took me 2 years to get to the point where I figured it was an acceptable risk to attempt the replacement. How many of you did the same and kicked the Delta out of your unit ?

    • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml
      1·
      5 months ago

      That’s their mini kit. I recommend their pro tech toolkit for most people, has all the bits and accessories you’ll need for most things, and then I also have their Manta kit, but that’s overkill unless you’re really into repair. I have a lot of toolkits though. I have a great Wiha set similar to the pro tech toolkit, and Drivesavers sent me a really nice kit as swag from when I used to outsource customer data recovery to them that I use at work.

    • NeryK@sh.itjust.worksOP
      1·
      5 months ago

      Bought these to make the most out of those shipping costs. I do not tinker all that much, but having adequate tools like those certainly is a big help.

      I also used them to replace the sticks of a Nintendo Switch joy cons with hall effects ones. I saw that similar components are available for the SD, but I currently have no drift problem, so …

  • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
    11·
    5 months ago

    How did the daily driver experience go?

    I did it for a week with an external monitor and I thought it was… fine? Wondering about your experience.

    • NeryK@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      It was OK but not great. I used the official dock and had frequent peripherals issues which could were only solved by rebooting both the SD and the dock. Turning it off and on again is more a Windows that a Linux thing usually, so that was disappointing.

      On the software side, the “flatpak” way of applications delivery usually works well, except when the Discover “store” randomly chooses to offer downgrades instead of upgrades. I used software such as Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, OpenShot, OpenRGB, LosslessCut, LocalSend with no hassle.

      As expected, gaming performance on a 1080p screen was not as smooth as the native SD screen resolution. I would not recommend it for games needing a bit of oomph unless you are fine with sub 30fps.