ASUS ROG Ally catches up to Steam Deck thanks to clever modders

Modders have upgraded the performance of the Asus ROG Ally by using some cunning hardware hacks to improve the gaming experience.

The Asus ROG ally was one of the first competitors to Valve’s Steam Deck to emerge, forming the vanguard of the handheld PC boom. Though a capable machine in its own right, it did have some quirks and problems, as detailed in our review. Some smart modders have taken note of these issues and set out to address some of them by applying hardware hacks to improve the speed and capacity of the device.

On a standard model of the Asus ROG Ally, you can expect to find 16GB of LPDDR5-6400 RAM. The modified version created by SlickBuys Mods and Repairs has a capacity of 32GB of LPDDR5-7500 RAM, which is estimated to provide 17% more memory bandwidth, able to deliver a noticeable improvement in performance in many games.

More RAM bandwidth equals better gaming performance

Many handled PC gaming devices such as the Asus ROG Ally utilize an integrated graphics solution This means that memory bandwidth needs to be shared between the CPU and graphical functions since there is no dedicated V-RAM. For these types of devices, RAM upgrades can deliver a huge increase in performance.

As noted in the Dexerto review, the standard RAM in the ROG Ally is soldered in place on the main board. The team at SlickBuys had to utilize considerable soldering skills, as well as the knowledge on how to modify the BIOS in order to replace the default RAM with the upgraded version.

Despite the clear gains in performance from installing this mod, this sort of technical task is probably not in the skillset of many users. The majority of Asus ROG Ally owners will need to content themselves with the easier task of replacing the 512GB SSD.