The Asus ROG Ally is an excellent PC gaming handheld in its own right: a gorgeous full HD screen and great performance, all in a lightweight and stylish form factor. However, a modder sought to improve upon its design and added an extra screen.
You can find the full project on GitHub, courtesy of modder Kira Patel (YesItsKira), as they describe the process of picking out the 7-inch screen as well as attaching it to the system. The modder had to remove the extra HDMI port and headphone jack, use a USB Type-C compatible dock to connect the monitor to the system, and 3D print various parts to connect and attach the screen to the ROG ally properly.
The display itself is a WIMAXIT M728, which is a 7-inch 1024 x 600 resolution IPS LCD touchscreen display. The Type-C dock was used as a replacement for this project due to the screen normally needing HDMI and USB cables to connect. As for the 3D-printed parts, you’ll need a new back cover for the system, a shell to house the display, and a 360-degree hinge support to fold the display against the screen.
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Modding is always a fascinating and fun endeavor
This extra display would be handy for multitasking, as in playing games with one screen while taking care of any productivity work, streaming movies, or web browsing with the other. If you emulate, this would be especially useful for playing DS or even Wii U titles that take advantage of dual touchscreens.
Besides that, it’s interesting to see hobbyists take on projects like these and modify systems. PC gaming handhelds are quite malleable in that regard, since they’re essentially mini-PCs, making them much easier to augment this way. As user YesItsKira demonstrates, you can purchase cheap parts online and 3D print the rest.
Hopefully, this sort of tinkering will become more popular as we see the best PC gaming handhelds grow in popularity and increase the market demand. Not only dual displays but CPU and GPU upgrades, as well as upgrades to RAM and storage.
Not only to surpass the inherent limitations of these systems but to allow buyers to purchase the lower-end versions and then upgrade them without paying an arm and a leg for minimal spec increases. Also simply to see just how far these mods can go in general, which is always entertaining in its own right.