IFixit: battery, SSD and thumbsticks of ASUS ROG Ally can be easily replaced
IFixit has published a video teardown of the ASUS ROG Ally. ASUS’s handheld would be relatively easy to repair. iFixit praises the modular design and believes that the battery, thumbsticks, fans and SSD are relatively easy to replace.
In the teardown an iFixit employee demonstrates how the backplate of the ASUS ROG Ally can be removed via six screws. The 40Wh battery is held in place with screws and not with adhesive strips, as is the case with the Steam Deck. The M.2 2230 SSD can also be easily removed and replaced.
The thumbstick modules contain the thumbstick itself, vibration motors, various connections and the associated PCB. This is a modular design and the thumbsticks should be easy to replace. The ROG Ally contains two fans and a heatsink. The fans can each be replaced separately, but it is also possible to remove the cooling system as a whole. The speakers and fingerprint scanner can also be removed and replaced, as can the RGB rings placed around the thumbsticks.
The display is the only part of the ROG Ally where iFixit would have preferred to see it differently. The panel is held in place by glue and can be removed with difficulty. iFixit also notes that there are no spare parts available for the ROG Ally for the time being. Users looking to make repairs will either have to look for spare parts from third-party manufacturers or look for parts from other handhelds.
ASUS released the ROG Ally on June 13. The device has an AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme chip on board. A cheaper variant will follow later with a ‘normal’ Ryzen Z1 chip, which has fewer CPU cores and a GPU with fewer compute units. The Z1 Extreme CPU contains eight Zen 4 cores, sixteen threads and a boost clock of up to 5.1GHz. The integrated GPU is based on the RDNA 3 architecture and has twelve compute units for a total of 768 stream processors. The chip has a total of 24MB cache and a variable TDP from 9 to 30W. The non-Extreme variant of the Ryzen Z1 has six cores and a GPU with four compute units. The ROG Ally Extreme costs 799 euros. It is not yet known how much the cheaper variant will cost.