Disassembly of $3,000 Steam Deck Prototype Reveals Discrete GPU Support, Compact Joysticks, and Circular Touchpads in Concept Units

Sure thing, here we go:

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So, get this—there’s this wild YouTube creator, right? Somehow, they snag an early Steam Deck prototype. Yeah, I’m talking engineering sample 34. And naturally, they just had to tear it apart on camera. Because, why not? Oh, and Jon Bringus, from Bringus Studios, was the maestro behind this whole dissection, thanks to a loan from SadlyItsDadley. Quite the name drop there, but hey, it makes you think this Jon guy was practically destined to immortalize this peculiar bit of gaming lore.

Now, here’s where it gets spicy. The prototype’s got a quirky little paper tagged “POC2-34 Control 163.” Kind of sounds like some secret agent stuff, doesn’t it? Anyway, this label whispers, or maybe it shouts, that this console is proof-of-concept numero 34. Jon didn’t just eyeball it, though. Nope, he tried throwing some games at it too. Imagine, a sneak peek into how Valve played with the whole portable gaming idea before hitting the big leagues.

And the look of this thing? Man, it’s like a blast from almost the past. Those touchpads are full-on circles. Yeah, circles. Big difference from the sleek rectangles they’ve got now. Can we talk about the dinky joysticks? Plus, those palm rests are a bit wonky compared to the final product. BIOS nerds, take note—it’s rocking an AMD Ryzen 7 3700U and 8 gigs of RAM. Toss in a 256GB SSD and an Intel Wi-Fi chip, and we’re off to the races. Though, the whole GPU support wasn’t exactly put to the test, because Jon couldn’t, or didn’t, really.

Oh, and about that SSD? Jon cloned the original bad boy to a fresh one to keep it intact. And surprise, surprise! It’s loaded with an early SteamOS. It even had three accounts baked right in. But alas, the mysterious ‘34’ account was a no-go zone. Dang, right? Fun fact: this early SteamOS was cobbled together back on September 30, 2020. Yep, about a year and a half before the whole Steam Deck shebang hit the shelves. So, you get a whiff of where Valve’s head was at back then.

Quick detour—Valve kind of kicked off a handheld gaming console renaissance with the Steam Deck. Sure, Nintendo carved out the playbook with the Switch back in 2017 (props to them), but the Deck really got PC hardware makers waking up. Suddenly, everyone wanted a slice of that portable PC gaming pie. Think Asus, Lenovo, MSI—everyone wanted in on the action.

So yeah, there you have it. Go hit that follow button on Tom’s Hardware over on Google News if you want more of these random tidbits thrown your way. They’ll thank you, probably. Or not. Who knows?