Introducing the Beth Deck, a 3D-printed gaming handheld that can be 'assembled in 15 minutes' using the guts of a Framework laptop
The gaming handheld market is a rich tapestry of different designs, with some interesting gimmicks, but most of the internals in the best handheld gaming PCs are pretty similar by this point. If you want something totally unique and even quite upgradeable, one creative designer has made a project to wrap around Framework's modular laptop to build your own.
As spotted by Notebookcheck, Beth Le, a user on Printables—a 3D printing blueprint and projects websites—has designed what they call the Beth Deck. With the Beth Deck project, you can take any 13-inch mainboard from Framework, and cram it into a gaming handheld shell to create your own device.
Notably, any of the 13-inch Framework mainboards can work with it, so you can spend exactly as much as you would like to get this device up and running. We're fans of what Framework does here at PC Gamer so it's nice to see an unconventional build really taking advantage of what sets the company apart. With Framework's modular parts, you can build a laptop, essentially from scratch, which means they are easy to repair and upgrade.
As pointed out by Beth, «the whole thing can be assembled in about 15 minutes and disassembled in less than 2 minutes with no soldering and all non-printed parts can be purchased»
On the project page, there are ten 3D print schematics, that, when paired with the following, are all you need to make the handheld yourself:
This is quite a lot of gear (totaling around $150 without the Framework parts or the 3D printing filament) but building something like this could make room for it to be upgraded in the future. It can theoretically work with any 13-inch Framework board so, as long as Framework continues to support 13-inch builds—which it has through four generations of Intel chips, one AMD, and even a RISC-V board—you should be able to swap it out for something more powerful down the line.
As well as this, Framework mainboards go on sale once a new generation comes out, so you can always hold
Read more on pcgamer.com
