Since its inception, the Steam Deck has been a bit of a game changer in the PC gaming world. The goal of the handheld console was to make PC gaming as easy and straightforward as a walled-garden proprietary console like a Switch or Playstation but still allow for the more open gaming experience of a PC. At its core, though, it’s essentially a standard PC with the parts reorganized into handheld form, and there’s no reason any other small-form-factor PC can’t be made into a similar system. [CNCDan] has the skills and tools needed to do this and shows us how it’s done.
The build is based around a NUC, a small form factor computer that typically uses the same low-power mobile processors and graphics cards found in laptops but without the built-in battery or screen. This one has an AMD Ryzen 7 processor with Radeon graphics, making it reasonably high-performing for its size. After measuring out the dimensions of the small computer and preparing for other components like the battery, joysticks, buttons, and even a trackpad, it was time to create the case. Instead of turning to a 3D printer, this one is instead milled on a CNC machine. Something tells us that [CNCDan] prefers subtractive manufacturing in general.
With all the parts assembled in the case, the build turns into a faithful Steam Deck replica with a few bonuses, like an exposed Ethernet port and the knowledge that everything can easily be fixed since it was built from the ground up in the first place. The other great thing about builds like these is they don’t need an obscure NUC for the hardware; you can always grab your old Framework mainboard for handheld gaming instead. Reminded us of the NucDeck.
When you say “builds like these”, and then link to the Framework project, I think it hugely undersells what CNCDan has done.
He created several custom PCBs, including a battery power management system with its own LCD reporting. Some of the buttons were custom silicon moulded. And the housing is the result of rather advanced prototyping over many months.
The Framework one is a rectangular slab connecting expensive laptop components with a scavenged USB C gaming controller. Fun, but nowhere near this level.
Facts!
The two projects have many comparable points and the framework one looks really quite replicable – its a great thing to link to for comparison! it both shows how far you can go if you have the skills, tools and time and that you really don’t have to if you want something similar yourself.
This is incredible. He must have spend a very long time designing this and it looks comfortable and something that would actually sell well if he went that route. It’s a beautiful device he should be proud of. The case, the custom PCB’s, everything is just made to a high standard, for a one off. It’s really impressive.
When the Steam Deck came out I ordered it not really knowing what I could expect, but it has changed the way I game as I haven’t even touched my gaming PC in over a year and a half. I got a separate monitor above my normal monitors in my office and I can connect my Deck to a docking station and I use a DualSense controller to play games. I can take it to the living room, connect it to the 65″ with a dock and continue my games. I take it with me on business trips, vacations etc. Before I buy a game, I check if it’s Deck compatible, or I just won’t buy it. When the Steam Deck 2 eventually comes out, it’s an instant buy.
I appreciate the open hardware design of the Steam Deck. It allows others to look at what they did and replicate it, it allows for ease of repair. They even work with iFixIt for spare parts. The more companies that make their own competitor, the better. Although the ROG Ally has serious problems, it’s still great that they entered the game as well and I hope many more will join, as the more people game on these handhelds, the better new games run on older and lower-end hardware and Linux. It’s a win-win for everyone.
What Valve has done with the Steam Deck is nothing short of miraculous. On paper, the Deck’s specs are nowhere near the performance that my Geekom A7 is capable of; the latter is a generation newer and its Ryzen 9 CPU combined with the Radeon 780M GPU should trounce the Deck in gaming. Yet, I’ve found that the Deck outperforms the A7 in nearly every game I throw at them, and doesn’t get as hot or as loud when running at full tilt either. What Valve has been able to do with their physical design and the custom AMD silicon is nothing short of amazing.
According to Passmark, the Deck’s CPU performance is one third of the A7’s CPU:
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/6154vs5454/AMD-Custom-APU-0932-vs-AMD-Ryzen-9-7940HS
And the Deck’s GPU scores just under half the 780M in the A7:
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/compare/4528vs4818/Custom-GPU-0405-vs-Radeon-780M
Yet the Deck almost always outperforms the A7? This is pure sorcery on Valve’s part (and maybe on AMD’s as well).
I agree the Deck is really impressive, and really do love mine. Though you should be able to get the expected sort of performance gains out of the bigger AMD APU. Though there are lots of little gains you’d get with any such tightly integrated combo – higher speed memory access that likely needs less power because of the directly soldered RAM for instance – as annoying as it can be it does bring advantages.
The other thing here is that being a big enough audience with the developers, Valve, and the community all tweaking the settings and then likely talking about it so it becomes the default when they get a good result you have something close to the console level of optimised for the hardware performance out of the box. Simply by turning shadows, model detail and textures down to the point the deck won’t struggle but at the 1080P or deck native resolution you won’t easily be able to tell.
Also when it comes to gaming in nearly all cases you almost don’t need a CPU, just a single or maybe two fast enough (which usually means not actually that fast) compute thread as most games are still really bad at multithreading at all, so when a device is specifically for games… Heck Jeff Geerling recently demonstrated just how well a the little ARM chip on the Pi5 can game when you strap a big GPU to it.
Though obviously not every game is going to play nice there. But still what you get out of the bigger AMD APU is much more in the compute side of things, so in most games you won’t notice anyway. And when it comes to graphics more graphical compute only helps if you can get the data to crunch – so memory speed becomes much more influential. Which is where your Geekom is going to find it difficult to keep up, unless you can tweak the memory speeds in the BIOS anyway as the on paper specs are fairly slow memory.
“Though obviously not every game is going to play nice there.”
Maybe not every game, but considering the effort a lot of developers make to have the game run well, is a very good thing. That’s one of the major benefits. The moment developers see themselves having to support the Deck in a way that the game still looks good and works properly on hardware as “slow” as the Deck, it provides other gamers with lower end hardware with the ability to run the game as well with similar results. This might be the best reason to get gamers away from the latest greatest video cards and get them to run mediocre hardware for the same games. I see this as an absolute win.
And yes, the community behind it is great as well. There are many many Deck users and tweaking the software to either make graphics look better, or make the battery last longer, is well documented and Valve is known for listening to the customers in that way. A lot of current features that the Deck has, used to be community plugins.
To some extent the consoles are also in the mix for that optimisation forcing being really quite anaemic in performance themselves compared to the PC space even when this console generation was brand new, which it really isn’t any more… I do agree though Valve/AMD really found a very good balance in the Deck’s APU that makes it really good at what it does, while actively by its existence (and pricepoint) getting plenty of attention so many PC games are now creating a good default for relatively low spec hardware.
“Though obviously not every game is going to play nice there.”
Maybe not every game, but considering the effort a lot of developers make to have the game run well, is a very good thing. That’s one of the major benefits. The moment developers see themselves having to support the Deck in a way that the game still looks good and works properly on hardware as “slow” as the Deck, it provides other gamers with lower end hardware with the ability to run the game as well with similar results. This might be the best reason to get gamers away from the latest greatest video cards and get them to run mediocre hardware for the same games. I see this as an absolute win.
And yes, the community behind it is great as well. There are many many Deck users and tweaking the software to either make graphics look better, or make the battery last longer, is well documented and Valve is known for listening to the customers in that way. A lot of current features that the Deck has, used to be community plugins.