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

Ah, so there’s this dude on YouTube, right? Managed to snag this early Steam Deck prototype—engineering sample number 34 if you want to get all technical. And before you ask, yeah, it’s practically the baby version of what we know now. Anyway, some X (yeah, the app formerly known as Twitter, because why not) user tagged SadlyItsDadley lent this beauty to Jon Bringus from Bringus Studios. Apparently, Jon is like the Gandalf of game history archiving or something. Why this stuck with me, who knows.

Bringus gets his hands on this thing and just goes for it—peels off the cover on his channel. It’s kind of like watching someone unwrap a mysterious sandwich you didn’t order. Notably, this bad boy came with a paper marked “POC2-34 Control 163.” Sounds like a secret code, but it’s just proof-of-concept number 34. Anyway—wait, where was I? Oh right, Jon wasn’t just fiddling with it; he actually ran some games to show Valve’s journey from daydreaming about a portable Steam console to, well, reality.

Now, about its looks. If you’re thinking sleek and shiny, think again. The prototype’s got these huge circular touchpads. Yeah, way different than the neat rectangles we’re used to now. The joysticks? Tiny. Like, smaller than you’d probably expect. And those palm rests? Definitely a bit on the funky side. Under the hood, we’ve got an AMD Ryzen 7 3700U, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD—a bit nerdy but it tells you where Valve was aiming. Even had discrete GPU support, or so we’re told, though Jon couldn’t test that out.

Now here comes a twist: Jon decides to copy the original SSD, like someone preserving an ancient scroll. And when he boots it up, surprise! He finds an early SteamOS version with three accounts. There’s an elusive ‘34’ account he can’t access—cue mystery music. What’s wacky is this thing was built way back on September 30, 2020. Pre-launch history, if you will.

Honestly, Valve kind of flipped the handheld gaming world with the Steam Deck. Sure, Nintendo laid some groundwork with their Switch, which—side note—was like the ultimate handheld for a while, in 2017. But when the Steam Deck hit, it was like a ping in the major PC hardware universes. Suddenly, everyone wanted a piece of the portable PC pie. Asus, Lenovo, MSI—they all jumped in with their own gadgets.

And hey, if you’re into this chaotic tech journey, Tom’s Hardware seems to be the place to hang out. Google News, follow buttons—yeah, you get it. They’re all about keeping up with this madness. If you’re into handheld history or whatever, they’re worth a peek.