I had my LCD Deck for the past year so I thought it was high time I embark on the dreaded SSD upgrade as well as replacing the thermal paste with PTM7950 (Thermal Grizzly Phasesheet but as far as I can tell they are the same thing).

Funnily enough I decided to go with the Crucial P310 over the WD SN770M because they cost pretty much the same and the Crucial is quicker (the lower endurance should not matter for gaming). It arrived the day Micron decided to exit the consumer market.

I debated whether I need the upgrade from 512GB but the discount on the drive plus the looming SSD shortage made me pull the trigger (the old 512GB can retire to my homelab for side project torture).

While I was opening the whole thing up I thought why not also replace the thermal paste in hopes of lowering the fan noise. I really do not like how loud it gets at full load (even after undervolting) so all the reviews I read about PTM7950 convinced me that it is worth the €12 entry with the Thermal Grizzly Phasesheet (no other reliable vendors that I could find that were selling it). It ended up being exactly the amount I needed for the Deck + my PC CPU.

The whole process went very smoothly. I took it apart, cleaned it, replaced the paste and NVME, put it together and installed SteamOS with no issues. When I got to the login screen suddenly my backlight was gone (the screen worked though). So then ensued 3 hours of trying to figure out what I messed up, plugging and unplugging mobo connectors and refreshing software (with the flashlight on my phone :D).

What seems to have fixed it is that if I do not plug in the battery 100% to its socket but only about 98% and do the same with the screen mobo connector right above the SSD. I am not even sure how that could solve it or why it was an issue in the first place.

Ever since then I pushed it through a lot of tests and installs (the new download before sleep feature came in clutch) and I have no issues at all.

I am not 100% sure but the new SSD does feel a bit quicker than the previous one but I never paid close attention so do not take that as truth.

The thermal paste replacement has already helped noticeably. It is about 1 degree cooler and the fan is about 300 rpm slower. I am looking forward to further improvements as the Phasesheet burns in.

I thought I'd share in case someone faces the same issues, because the solution seemed very random to a probably self imposed issue. This whole thing was high risk, low reward, probably I would not have done this if I did not have the €350 variant of the Deck but the OLED at €650.