They're 2230 SSDs. It's fine. People have been using this model fine for months. I don't know why people are suddenly so skeptical about replacing parts when that was one of the points of using standard interfaces in a portable PC like this.
The form factor isn't the issue. The person you replied to was referencing the claims Valve made that they went through a lot of testing to ensure that the SSD chosen didn't interfere with other components in terms of EM interference. The WiFi module is underneath the SSD for example.
You say that this model has been used fine for months, can you clarify if you're talking about the specific 2TB SSD which framework is selling or 2230 SSDs in general?
My primary concern would be making the fragile and unreliable WiFi chip in the deck even more fragile and unreliable.
My Steam Deck almost never works on my 5 Ghz network. And even on the 2.4 Ghz network it randomly says that it can't connect to Steam servers. I wonder how more worse it could get with an aftermarket SSD.
If you've got WPA3 enabled on your router try disabling that. I've found a few devices which don't play well with it. If that doesn't help could be a hardware issue.
Nobody is debating whether it offers more features the issue is some clients currently have devastating firmware/driver issues when using WPA3 that make it completely unusable so it's worth trying it out and seeing if that's the cause or not, no?
Unfortunately if it is this is not something the user can fix like simply managing the firewall properly so you may choose to disable it for now in that case. That's fine, particularly for home WPA2 PSK networks where the only risks mitigated are someone DDOSing you off the Wi-Fi (which they can do without management frames via interference anyways) and someone getting your passkey and then decrypting past recorded traffic (future traffic is still a risk even with SAE, they can spoof being your SAE SSID and if your client connects to it you're sending all your data to your attacker, just extra securely now). In the future there may be other problems discovered with WPA2 but it's by no means considered insecure yet.
Anothing thing to try for 5 GHz issues (again, not to be taken as "do this everywhere all the time and just leave it that way regardless if it helps") is try non-DFS channels. They may normally be more open but devices sometimes still have problems with them and the regulatory requirements around what happens when there is interference in certain areas.
My Amplifi wifi started working with my Steam Deck when I lowered the 5 GHz frequency to 20MHz (I was otherwise stuck working around the issue by using a slower 2.4 GHz SSID).
Valve meant that to indicate they'd designed with high frequency signals in mind, not that it's a consideration unique to the Steam deck.
You're likelier to generate interference to radio performance from the display mode or USB devices, and ensuring datarates from common internal storage won't interfere is part of that.
the SSD Valve chose is rated 3.3v 1A, the SSD in question is rated 3.3v 2.5A
one can presume that a device capable of using 2.5x the wattage in an already ultra-confined area is going to face some heat dissipation issues at the very least
This right here is the core of the matter. When a Valve provides a detailed guide to replacing the SSD if you really want to, I trust the devs when they say we wanted to have higher storage capacities but heat dissipation was the constraining factor.
You want a Samsung PM991a, a Sabrent Rocket SB-2130-1TB, or a Kioxia BG4, to keep the draw as close to 1 amp as possible. Or slay your battery and bake your internals. It's your hardware, do what you want.
This is not a new concern, hardware designers almost always have tradeoffs like this. Just because the interface is standardized doesn't mean the interchangeable modules are identical or without trade-offs.
Sure you can swap in a new NVMe module or SO-DIMM into a given device, and while it may still function, you may now have worse performance and/or worse battery life.
Despite having the same physical interface, each NVMe module has different electrical specifications.
You missed the point. It's not the part that uses standard interfaces -- all these SSDs comply with those standards -- it's the part not specified by standards that matters. For example, we know that some drives produce more heat than others, or are faster/slower than others, and sometimes these two are tradeoffs. For a small handheld device like Deck, it's important to choose a drive that fits the form factor.
