No screen, no controller, and absolutely no sense, just a power button and a USB port.

“ One of those terrible ideas that I am so glad someone tried ”

- Some guy on reddit

But… Why?

TL;DR Well, the Steam Deck didn’t fit in my backpack…

The Steam Deck has been a game changer for travel, but I found myself leaving it behind more often than not, as it wouldn’t fit in my backpack, took up a huge amount of carry-on space, and was a hassle to bring down from the overhead compartment when I wanted to use it. When I did use the Deck, it was either plugged in to AR Glasses (XReal Air 2 Pro) or plugged in to a TV. So, I got to thinking: it could be so much smaller and lighter without the build in controller and screen, but that would be ridiculous, right? …right?

⚠️ Disclaimer

“I am not a smart man”

This project was not approved or endorsed in any way by Valve and is generally a very bad idea. I’m honestly surprised it worked and have no idea how long the modified console will survive. The following is provided “as is” and without any expressed or implied warranty. If you choose to attempt this do so at your own risk. Be warned that are likely to “brick” (as in destroy, but pun intended) your console and you might get hurt in the process (lithium batteries and power tools are dangerous, among other things).

This is not a guide, more of a “how I did it”. If there’s enough interest, I might expand this to a more step-by-step style write-up. Until then, feel free to reach out via the issues page page or on reddit if you have any questions. If you’d like to support the project, consider using the affiliate links included on this page.

Getting Started

First of all – huge shoutout to iFixIt for their great Steam Deck Repair Guides as well as to Valve for supporting the DIY repair and mod community!

This mod was performed on a 1TB OLED Steam Deck, there are some differences between the OLED and LCD models.

The first hurdle on this ridiculous road was figuring out if the Steam Deck would even boot without any peripherals or a screen attached. Working off the battery replacement and motherboard replacement tutorials was able disconnect everything from the motherboard other than the fan – success! In this state the Deck will boot output display over USB and accept peripherals via an external dock.

Internals

This initial teardown also revealed a useful aluminum(?) frame, unfortunately, you’ll have to remove the screen [link] to remove it from the shell. This shell had some unnecessary “wings” so of course they had to be removed with a rotary tool. With the excess metal removed, I had the perfect internal frame for the Brick.

Note that some of the fan and motherboard cover screws are outer-shell screws which must be added back so everything is properly held in place.

I probably should have removed or masked out the fan before grinding away the metal…

Case

Using my limited CAD abilities, I designed a rudimentary shell for the Brick. The shell has two pegs to align the board and you can add a dollop of PLA with a 3d printing pen to further secure the board to the case. There’s a cutout in the case to accommodate the original power button, and the air intake is sized to accept the metal grill from the original back shell.

I printed out the case in Overture Polycarbonate Pro (PC) [link] which should be heat-resistant enough not to melt while the deck attempts to run Cyberpunk 2077. Color accents were added in PLA with a 3D printing pen.

Note: The 3rd antenna is missing in this photo, which I reattached later.

Result

And there it is, in all its glory: the Steam Brick! About a 3rd of the size of the Deck, and about 4 times smaller than the Deck’s OEM case. As a bonus, it’s also 24% lighter!

FAQ

How is the battery life?

Proper testing is still pending, but from my experience with the unmodified deck, play time with AR glasses (and the screen off) is very similar to play time with the screen on. The only difference should be any idle current taken up by the screen and ontroller components, which I expect is negligible.

Why remove the screen? It wouldn’t have made the build larger!

Keeping the screen would have significantly complicated the build, as you’d need something to keep in in place. More importantly – the brick was built to be tossed in a bag as-is. No case, no screen protector, just throw it in a backpack or suitcase and don’t worry about it!

How about adding X?

The point of this mod is removing, not adding, but I am considering developing modular “hats” which can be added/removed as needed. Top of the list would be a hat with a secondary battery and USB hub. Some people suggested adding the controllers back on at which point you might as well add the screnn, you know… really DECK it out…

Why did you do this again?

Because I was so preoccupied with whether or not I could that I didn’t stop to think if I should.

Hardware

The build includes:

• 4x 3M heat set inserts
• 4x 20mm 3M screws

Known Issue

• Accessing the BIOS by holding down the + button while powered up is impossible, as that button isn’t included in the build. As long as the Deck can boot - a workaround is to boot into linux and use systemctl reboot --firmware-setup from the command line.
• It’s difficult to tell if the Brick is on or not – as the Deck’s indicator light doesn’t indicate on/off status

Resources

STL Files for case

Affiliate Links

Want to support this project? Get your hardware here:

• 1TB OLED Steam Deck
• XReal Air 2 Pro
• Virtue Pro XR
• iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit
• LTT Driver (non-affiliate, but love it!)
• POWERWORKS Rotary Tool

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.