Nintendo Switch gets an iFixit teardown

Prasad, 05 March 2017

iFixit got its hands on the new Nintendo Switch and managed to tear it down promptly. The console, the two Joy-Cons, and the dock, all got the teardown treatment and in the end the system got a very good score of 8/10 for repairability.

Some things of note from the teardown:

  • The console does use tri-point screws, which are less common and most people likely won't have a screwdriver for it. But apart from that there are no further complications in the design and everything then comes off easily if you have the right screwdriver.
  • The Switch has a fairly comprehensive cooling system inside, consisting of a copper heatsink, a fan, and a metal backplate for diffusing the heat. During portable use the fan likely won't spin up much since the system gets down clocked but it will be running full blast in docked mode, which is when the vents at the top will also come in handy.
  • The Switch has a sizable 3.7V 4310mAh battery inside.
  • A microSD card slot is present augmenting the built-in 32GB eMMC storage for storing your game files.
  • The NVIDIA X1 based SoC is accompanied by 4GB LPDDR4 DRAM.
  • The Switch has stereo speakers inside.
  • The display is not fused to the glass, which should make repairs easier and cheaper should you break the glass on the outside.
  • The Joy-Con controllers are different even on the inside; the right controller houses an additional NFC antenna for your Amiibo and there is also an IR camera and IR LEDs that works in some games by detecting hand and facial motion.
  • Both controller units have an advanced vibration motor for precise haptic feedback. There is also a 3.7V 525mAh battery inside each.
  • Lastly, the dock has a simply board with two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, HDMI port, and power input. It plugs into the console using a USB-C connector. The dock only enables the console to run at a higher GPU clock speed and does no processing of its own.

You can find the complete teardown below.

Source


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Reader comments

  • AnonD-646597
  • 09 Mar 2017
  • xuH

Actually its an APU ... CPU with internal GPU

  • Al
  • 07 Mar 2017
  • XNt

Glad to see the tear down here. Wish GSMarena would allow us to zoom in on the pic

  • AnonD-634681
  • 06 Mar 2017
  • 3DR

well then I guess that battery size needs increasing

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