Behold, the Steam Brick

rockpapershotgun.com:

Could we perhaps chart the entire course of technological innovation as a story of things not fitting in other things quite as well as some reckless genius had hoped? Something to ponder on, perhaps, as we behold the Steam Brick. As reported by PC Gamer, one Crastinator-pro has documented their journey to transform the Steam Deck into a controller-less, screen-less creature of ineffable bricktitude. Why? Because the Deck didn't fit in their backpack.

“I am not a smart man," begins the disclaimer, before Crastinator-pro documents the process of transferring the innards of Valve's handheld into a custom case, played with a separate controller through a pair of AR glasses. The post is "not a guide, more of a 'how I did it'," they point out.

Their "first hurdle" was finding out whether the Deck would even boot without a screen or peripherals. Tutorials helped them disconnect everything from the motherboard excluding the fan, resulting in….(and I'm making space here out of fear my paraphrasing might rob the next part of its deserved sweet triumph):

"Success! In this state the Deck will boot output display over USB and accept peripherals via an external dock."

What follows is a lot of work that you're better off reading the full Github post for, but after tearing things down to a more compact internal frame, Crastinator-pro 3D printed a custom case in Overture Polycarbonate Pro - "which should be heat-resistant enough not to melt while the deck attempts to run Cyberpunk 2077". The result is an attractive, ungodly brick with the following stats:

"About a 3rd of the size of the Deck, and about 4 times smaller than the Deck’s OEM case. As a bonus, it’s also 24% lighter!"

"Why remove the screen? It wouldn’t have made the build larger!" is one of the listed FAQs. "Keeping the screen would have significantly complicated the build, as you’d need something to keep in in place," writes Crastinator-pro. "More importantly – the brick was built to be tossed in a bag as-is. No case,