Valve's Steam Frame VR headset is easier to fix than it looks, according to a full teardown from iFixit.
One journalist's own teardown attempt stalled partway through, out of worry about wrecking the only review unit on hand. iFixit's Shahram Mokhtari went further, prying open the core module (home to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, optics, and sensors) after releasing three magnetic switches and six Torx screws. Inside sit 16GB of SK hynix LPDDR5X memory and 256GB of SK hynix storage, both removable with basic tools. The battery comes out just as easily, held by a handful of screws, a press connector, and some glue that peels away without much drama.
This matters because Valve keeps doing something most hardware makers skip: building devices owners can actually open up. The Steam Controller, Steam Deck, and Steam Machine all passed similar repairability checks, and Valve is already working on a Frame strap with swappable batteries. For a standalone VR headset, a category where rival hardware tends to be glued and epoxied shut, that's a meaningfully different bet on how long the thing should last.
iFixit's one real complaint: the cooling fan, the single part most likely to wear out, sits buried deep enough that fixing it means nearly disassembling the whole headset anyway.