ASUS’ ROG Ally has been successfully modified to support full-sized 2280 M.2 SSDs

Modder fits a huge 4TB SSD into ASUS’ ROG Ally PC Gaming Handheld

Out of the box, ASUS’ ROG Ally Windows-powered PC gaming handheld ships with a 512GB SSD, using a tiny M.2 2230 solid state drive for storage. This makes ASUS’ ROG Ally similar to Valve’s premium Steam Deck model, and like the Steam Deck, many users are not happy with the amount of storage that’s available within ASUS’ ROG Ally. 

While M.2 SSDs are available with up to 2TB capacities for the M.2 2230 form factor, there are those of us who demand more. One of these users is EmotionalSoft4849 on Reddit, who has successfully modified their ROG Ally to fit a full-sized M.2 2280 SSD into their ROG Ally. This allowed EmotionalSoft4849 to fit a 4TB SSD inside their system.

To fit a 2280 M.2 SSD inside their ROG Ally, EmotionalSoft4849 needed to make some modifications to the device. The Ally’s WiFi antenna needed to be moved, and a few cuts needed to be made to the device’s plastic shell. This allowed a full-sized M.2 2280 SSD to be fitted inside ASUS’ ROG Ally, and EmotionalSoft4849 has reported that their ROG Ally has worked flawlessly after the mod was completed.

(Image from Videocardz)

With many modern games occupying more than 100GB of storage, it makes sense for devices like the ROG Ally and Valve’s Steam Deck to support large solid state drives. Simply put, 512GB of storage (or less) is not enough for a modern gaming system, and it is strange to think that ASUS’ ROG Ally can fit larger SSDs without many modifications. Perhaps ASUS can add official support for larger M.2 2280 SSDs with future versions of their ROG Ally device, as the system clearly has enough space for larger storage solutions. 

While this ROG Ally SSD mod is awesome, we do not recommend that you do this to your own ROG Ally system. For starters, mods like this will void your warranty, and a lot of care needs to be taken to ensure that you do not damage or negatively impact your system in other ways.

With 2TB M.2 2230 SSDs being readily available at retailers, it makes little sense to modify your ROG Ally to utilise larger M.2 SSDs unless you are willing to void your warranty and are very confident with your ability to modify electronics. Most ROG Ally users would be better off installing a supported 2TB M.2 2230 SSD if they want to upgrade their device’s storage.  

You can join the discussion on the modder who managed to fit a M.2 2280 SSD into ASUS’ ROG Ally handheld on the OC3D Forums.