$3,000 Steam Deck Prototype Disassembled: Concept Units Featured Discrete GPU Support, Smaller Joysticks, and Circular Touchpads

So here’s the deal—some YouTuber got their hands on this super early Steam Deck prototype. You know, one of those things that only like, three people have ever seen in person? Anyway, it’s engineering sample 34 or something. Spicy, right?

So, this Twitter X guy, SadlyItsDadley (what a name), basically tossed it over to Jon Bringus from Bringus Studios. And Bringus, being the nonchalant hero he is, decided to rip it apart on his channel. Not literally—though that’d be kind of fun. Nah, he disassembled it respectfully. Side note: why do I suddenly crave nachos?

Okay, stay with me. So, they open this sucker up and there’s this weird paper thing inside saying “POC2-34 Control 163.” Sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, right? Oh, and this thing was a Proof of Concept number 34. Whatever that means. Honestly, I’m just impressed they didn’t lose it in some lab.

Bringus also tried shoving some games into this handheld—because why not? It’s Valve’s old toy, after all. Turns out, they’ve come a looong way from whatever tinkering was happening back when dinosaurs roamed.

Oh, oh, and about the look of this gizmo. Kind of a blast from the past. Those touchpads? Big ol’ circles—what were they thinking? The joysticks are these teeny tiny things. BIOS says it’s got an AMD Ryzen 7 3700U and a mere 8GB of RAM. Plus, a 256GB SSD. Fancy, huh? Supposedly it supports discrete GPUs or something techy, but Bringus didn’t poke it enough to find out.

Then, here’s the kicker. Our YouTube friend copies the SSD—the whole thing—to keep it nice and safe. Plugs it in again, and surprise! It’s got this old SteamOS version, like from September 2020. Three accounts are pre-installed, but the ‘34’ one is locked down tighter than a drum. So much for sleuthing.

Anyway—and don’t quote me on this—a year and a half later, people are going nuts about the Steam Deck, sparking a whole movement or whatever. Think about it. Nintendo was chilling with their Switch since 2017, and suddenly, here comes the Steam Deck and every company wants a piece. Now we have the Asus ROG thingies, Lenovo-whatchamacallits, the MSI Claw gang, and yada yada.

Honestly, if you’ve managed to follow my rambling this far—gold star for you. Anyway, just go click things on Google News for Tom’s Hardware if you want more of this good stuff. Or not. Life’s short.