Building a Budget Customised PSP Go ‘BigBoi’

When I first discovered Retro Handhelds, one of the first questions I ever asked was “Can I play Final Fantasy Tactics: The Lions War on a pocket-sized handheld”. Considering this was back in the days of the RG351P, the answer always came back, “Just Buy a PSP Go”.

So I did.

While it has a screen that is showing its age, the PSP Go is still a little bit of a marvel of technology. That much power in such a small device, and with an amazing sleep function meant the device could remain on standby seemingly forever. Yet at the time, I didn’t take to it. The ergonomics of the device aren’t amazing, with the device being too thin to be comfortable, and while it could stay in sleep forever, the battery life wasn’t great for actual game time.

Also for my serotonin receptors at the time, as a person who was discovering RetroArch and Save States for the first time, a device that didn’t run RetroArch and which didn’t have uniform saves hotkeys didn’t seem as novel and shiny as the latest Anbernic device.

All the required parts

Later, I joined the RH Discord. On there, many community members were showing off examples of their “bigboi” customized PSP Go.  These had improved storage, improved battery life, and improved ergonomics. Many times these would be recommended as their favorite pocket handheld, second only to a larger device for use in the home, in their personal preferences.

As someone who loves to tinker, I made a promise to myself that day I’d get one too. That time is now. However….. just to make things interesting, I challenged myself to build one for less than £200, and document my experience here, which as a challenge to myself, might need more explanation – maybe a how, what and why…

Budget and Price Conversions

In case it’s not obvious, I live in the UK. While the exchange rate fluctuates, it roughly ends up being 80 UK pence to a dollar. However UK prices include 20% VAT (kind of like sales tax) as part of the listed price, so the listed price in £ tends to be the same as a listed $ price in the US pre-sales tax. Similarly in the UK, we need to pay a 20% import tax on anything coming into the country, which doesn’t apply to the US. So while I’m listing prices in £ to replicate my experience, I’m hopeful that the same number in $ will be listed for my American friends.

What Is the Point of a PSP Go In 2024?

My main motivation to build the BigBoi is simply “because I can”.  I love to tinker with my devices (I believe the more you customize something, the more it becomes “yours”), and building this especially while completing my own spending challenge, will give me joy.

Once it’s built I’m hoping to have 2 uses for my Go:

The first use will be as a bedside device. I don’t know how many readers know of the struggle to try and game in bed without disturbing your partner. The answer is the PSP Go. While there will be a click when the Go is opened or closed, the controls themselves are essentially click-free and much quieter than any other handheld I’ve come across.

The second was used as a device to take to music festivals. I love music festivals and go to 3 or 4 a year, which mainly involves camping, where battery banks charge it at a premium. Most times there are some bands I want to see that don’t appeal to my friends, and so having a handheld to pull out for 10 or so minutes before a band starts while standing on my own keeps the boredom at bay.

Why Do You Call It the “Budget BigBoi”?

Within the RH discord, a community member called Slystral makes and sells his own modded PSP Go. The standard of his work is much higher than what I’m capable of, and his customers essentially receive a premium device. While I am not confident near a soldering iron, he hand solders wires to allow the inclusion of a much larger battery than I have access to (his devices have a battery life of up to 52 hours, which is frankly ridiculous).

He also installs new screens and new cases, with a variety of new colorways available, and makes his own rear shells to a higher standard that I have access to – mostly I’m reliant on the condition of the PSP I buy. I think he prices his devices fairly, given the time & materials included and the 3-year warranty (including free shipping) he provides. However, I’m looking to build something cheaper. I think Slystral also has issues shipping to Europe because of the size of the included battery.

The Build

Ingredient One: The PSP Go Itself – Cost £90

The listing showing the price of the PSP

In the UK we have a high-street store selling used stock called CEX. While it can regularly be considered a price gouge, there are some times when it is better than buying from Facebook Marketplace. In this case, I’ll know the device is in decent condition, without any scratches on the screen, and (while it’s not important here) with the battery remaining in good condition. I’m spending an extra £10 to get the white one, which is my personal preference as I’ve owned a black Go previously.

Getting Inside the Go

In order to perform the required surgery on the Go, 6 screws need to be removed. Four on the back case (highlighted in the first picture in orange) and two from the top of the device (highlighted in the second picture in purple).

The rear case can then be removed using a prying tool or guitar pick.

Ingredient 2: M2 Storage Adapter – £20

receipt for the purchase of the adaptor

The PSP Go was designed to use Sony’s proprietary M2 memory cards. These only came in limited storage sizes (up to 16GB), and are disproportionally expensive, even used. Seeing as 16GB is no good for Retro Gaming in 2024, the project is going to use a Micro SD card instead. For this, we’ll need an adapter, and these come in two flavors, one with a straight ribbon cable and one with an S-shaped ribbon cable. I prefer the S shape, as it guides the micro SD card away from the Go’s battery.

Price-wise, this one was the most painful purchase. While the adapter itself only cost £10, I had to pay another £10 in shipping and import tax, as the only places I could find to buy them were Etsy stores based in either the US or Ukraine. Since the shipping price was similar, I went with Ukraine as I’ve got a lot of sympathy for what they’re going through and maybe any purchase in an Etsy store helps. Anyone in America looking to replicate what I’ve done will pay less to get this in their hands.

Ingredient 3: 128GB MicroSD Card – £12

While it is technically possible to install a bigger card, using more than 128GB has been seen to cause massive delays in boot-up. The reason behind this is that the PSP Go indexes all bytes of the attached storage during boot-up, at 2009 speeds. Not wanting to have to deal with this, I stick to the 128Gb recommended widely across the sorts of places that would know. Looking for something reliable, I end up with a Samsung card from Amazon.

Not wanting to have to deal with this, I stick to the 128Gb recommended widely across the sorts of places that would know. Looking for something reliable, I end up with a Samsung card from Amazon.

Installing the Upgraded Memory

Even though the back cover is off, the memory card slot cover must be opened during installation.

The micro SD should be inserted before anything else. Once that is done the ribbon cable for the adaptor should be inserted into the M2 slot. This needs to be done very carefully as the cable is fragile. Having recently cut my fingernails, I ended up needing to use my screwdriver to push the adaptor in. The adaptor should click in place in exactly the same way that MicroSD cards usually sit into sockets.

Once the cable is inserted, and while the adaptor is still hanging out of the side, it’s worth powering up the Go, formatting the storage, and checking it is being recognized correctly. The card can be formatted by selecting Settings>System Settings>Format Memory Stick. Once formatting is complete, the card should show up under Game > Memory Stick. If that option is highlighted, after a couple of seconds, it should show 119GB, if it does, everything is being recognized correctly.

Once you’ve confirmed everything, the ribbon cable needs to be gently bent back towards the motherboard and tapped in place below the battery. Some purchases come with some Yellow Kapton tape to secure it in place, and that’s properly the better option, however, my purchase didn’t. So I just used scotch tape – it’s practical even if it’s inelegant. The main thing to remember is not to tape the adaptor to the battery since that’s going to be removed in the next step.

Taping doesn’t need to be pretty

So I just used scotch tape – it’s practical even if it’s inelegant. The main thing to remember is not to tape the adaptor to the battery since that’s going to be removed in the next step.

Ingredient 4: Replacement Battery – £17.50

The PSP Go only comes with a 920mAh battery, good for up to 4 hours of use. As luck would have it, however, the PSP Go uses the same battery connector as the original OLED PS Vita, meaning that some larger 2200mAh batteries made for the Vita can be used in the PSP Go. These should be good for 10 hours of playtime.

When looking for a suitable replacement battery, I saw online that the correct search terms to find compatible batteries are “Cameron Sino Vita 2200mah”, however I am very much passing on received guidance, and I’d strongly recommend every does their own research to make sure the batteries the find are compatible. Exploding batteries are bad and very much a risk. I ended up finding one on Amazon, although similar to the storage adaptor, this had to be imported into the UK, this time from the Czech Republic.

Ingredient 5: Replacement Back Shell – £25

The only problem with the improved battery is that it’s too big to fit back within the PSP Go Shell. This means that, as part of the project, a replacement shell needs to be obtained. There are two real options for this. A kind soul has provided free-to-use templates to allow a larger shell to be 3D printed, or else they’re sold on AliExpress.

As I don’t have access to a 3D printer, I go for the Ali option. These replacement shells can be found by searching for “PSP power armor”. When I came to buy, most of the white options were unavailable, and since I didn’t want to end up with a dragon on the back of my PSP, I bought one that says “XP” like it’s 2001 and I’m trying to install Windows.

The “power armor” comes in two parts, the batter holder and the shell itself. The batter holder is the one main advantage of buying from Ali. Using the 3D printing method required the batter to be taped in place to the rear of the replacement shell

Installing the Battery and “Power Armor”

Replacing the battery is the only slightly difficult step of the whole upgrade. Before the replacement battery can be installed, the stock battery needs to be removed. The battery is under a Sony seal sticker which needs to be peeled away. I found it hard to extract the battery and ended up having to gently put the cable out by the cable – again not ideal but I couldn’t remove it using a pry tool.

gently pulling out the battery

Before getting to the battery holder, I connected the new battery, just to make sure there would be no cable management issues and that the battery would be correctly orientated. In order to give myself some breathing room, I ended up removing the ribbon connector for the shoulder button (I’ve highlighted this in orange in the image below). The screw by the battery also needs to be removed (I’ve highlighted this in purple in the same image), as this is used to keep the battery holder in place.

Once that screw is removed the battery holder is can put in the gap where the original battery was located, and the screw replaced, (over the top of the battery holder, holding it in place) the battery can just be clicked into place in the holder, with it being supported above the motherboard. The micro SD card adapter should remain under the new battery and holder, and should not touch any supports.

The replacement case can then be installed. This should be an easy case of making sure the buttons on the top of the Go are in place, clicking the new shell onto the back, and then screwing everything in. When clicking in the place, there are some screw holes which need to be properly aligned with the two screw holes in the top of the device.

I used the original screws which I took out of the Go in the first step to hold everything in place, although the power armor did come with its own screws. After that, it’s a case of making sure everything is working – turning the device over and making sure it all powers on (remember the battery might need charging).

Ingredient 6: Screen Protector – £3.50

I’m not going to lie, this purchase was a mistake.

The final step is making sure that the front of the Go remains protected in day-to-day use. Since the rear connector is essentially 3d printed I don’t feel the need to protect it since it’s easy to replace if damaged. I want the front protected however, and my first idea to protect the front was to buy this combination screen protector and white case from ebay, however, when it turned up, the whole case turned out to be silicon and ugly as sin.

silicon case, it was cheap but it was ugly

I ended up binning it after taking the photos for this article. I did use the included screen protector, although (as is my way) I ended up applying it badly. A replacement pack of screen protectors has since been ordered. I ended up throwing the silicon case in the bin as soon as I’d finished taking the pictures

Ingredient 7: Metal Shell Case – £15

I promise this is the equivalent of about £15

Another item that needed to be imported into the UK – this time from France. After the bad experience with the silicon cover, I decided to only consider the sort of metal case that Slystral uses in his premium builds. Due to the age of the PSP Go, these have become harder to find and are now priced at a premium. I did end up finding a couple of metallic blue shells for £6 each, but I ended up deciding to go for silver since I couldn’t find anything closer to white and just paying the premium price listed on the ebay buy-it-now listing I found. At the time of writing, there’s only one more left under £25.

the go in the silver metal case

And then, with the metal case being the finishing touch, the build is complete. I intend to invest in an original song pouch for the Go, in order to provide further protection when it’s in my pocket, but when that arrives, everything should be good to go. The finished device is definitely heavier and is about twice the thickness, but I really like the new form factor.

Total Cost: just under £185. Within budget. Due to the amount of components that I needed to import, it should be cheaper to complete a similar build in America.

More Resources

The video guide I followed when installing the micro SD adapter can be found here.

Now that the PSP Go Bigboi is finished, it’s time to hack it to play emulators. In order to hack mine, I followed the video made by my fellow Brit, Tech James. I strongly recommend that reader upgrade their PSPs to the latest firmware before following the instructions.

I also used Tech James’ emulator pack in order to install some of the best available emulators for the Go as quickly as possible.

Final Thoughts

One thing I want to consider in the future is seeing if I can find someone to help me with soldering in order to put the connector from the original battery onto an identified potential replacement, however that’s going to be for another day.

The last thing to thing I’d like to mention is to make sure anyone looking to hack their PSP Go tempers their expectations. The Go can run up to SNES via emulation as well as natively run PS1 and PSP games, however, these are achieved through older emulators and there is no using RetroArch or other familiar favorites.

When playing PS1 and PSP games, there is essentially only one save state available (this is through misuse of the space designed to hold a suspended game if the Go’s battery ran out) and any PS1 games need to be converted to the e-boot format in order to run (instructions can easily be found online).

What did you think of this article? Let us know in the comments below, and chat with us in our Discord!

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