One modder took it upon themselves to turn their Steam Deck into a Steam Brick, a tiny little console that makes me really want a proper Steam Machine.
Yes, I know, the original Steam Machine things failed, but since then Valve have learned a lot. Proton exists now and runs tens of thousands of Windows games, plus the Steam Deck has clearly been a success. With the expansion of SteamOS for more devices, I think it's about time. Valve need to get Steam into the living room properly again. Until then, people are going to do crazy things like the Steam Brick.
Created by crastinator-pro and written up in a blog post, it details how they tore apart a Steam Deck to stick it into a fancy little screenless box. Why? Well "the Steam Deck didn’t fit in my backpack" they said and also "Because I was so preoccupied with whether or not I could that I didn’t stop to think if I should".
This type of hardware modding is obviously a niche thing, and not something I'm going to suggest anyone do. A lot could go wrong and you end up with totally broken hardware. But for this modder they said most of their time was spend either plugged into a TV or using AR Glasses so it seemed to make sense. Even they said "This project was not approved or endorsed in any way by Valve and is generally a very bad idea".
All of this was possible since Valve made the device easily repairable, with the modder noting the help of the various iFixIt guides and they used the OLED Steam Deck for this little project.
The creator notes the casing is "Overture Polycarbonate Pro (PC) which should be heat-resistant enough not to melt while the deck attempts to run Cyberpunk 2077".
See their full post for all the details.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
No screen. No controls. No battery. Throw in a decent bit of storage.
Maybe 200$? Could be genuine competition to those tiny Intel machines but with decent graphic performance on top.
At that price I could see quite a few people just getting one to round out their main console with some PC exclusives. And it could be a new Steam Link alternative as well.
Arehandoro a day ago
You can just build a steam machine now though. Here is the one I built last year https://pcpartpicker.com/b/h7QD4D
Getting SteamOS on it can be finicky: the official recovery ISO is tuned for the deck and finicky on non-deck hardware. SteamFork is the cleanest directly downstream project from SteamOS at the moment. There are also OSs others to choose from that are not downstream, but similar like ChimeraOS or Bazzite. The further away you get from upstream, the more differences you run into, so what you choose comes down to preference.
The only real missing piece is a Steam Controller 2 (the deck, in controller form). The next best thing is the DualSense edge, but cost is prohibitive.
Anyway, I recommend trying out a build!
TheRiddick 17 hours ago
With advancements in rear-re-projection and frame generation, I think it is now possible to have a 120Hz standalone VR headset that can run things like HL Alyx. Assuming AMD has some internal special custom hardware Valve has access to (very likely). (also keep in mind that controls can be disconnected to the rendering pipeline, so latency issues would be very minimal)
Last edited by TheRiddick on 28 Jan 2025 at 6:19 am UTC
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