A Steam Deck Has Been Turned Into A Steam Machine

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There are tons of things we can do with the Steam Deck to customize it. This can range from changing out the shell to replacing internal parts like the SSD and screen. We can even go as far as to replace individual buttons, and it's all because Valve made it easy to take apart. Now, some people go a step further, and that's exactly the case we see here, where someone took the Steam Deck's motherboard and turned it into their very own "Steam Machine".

Reddit user Tom Paterson (TGPaterson) posted in the Steam Deck subreddit about how they designed their own "Steam Machine" using the motherboard from the Steam Deck, and it looks pretty awesome. In the post, they go over how they made this console. They took a Sabrent USB-C hub, which includes an NVMe slot, strapped on a 120mm Noctua fan for improved cooling, and a 3D-printed case that has its own swappable face plates to emulate Valve's Steam Machine:

So I initially designed this around an official Steam Deck dock but I struggled to get a HDMI connection over battery power so instead opted for a Sabrent USB-C hub which also included a full size NVMe slot. This meant we could now have 3x USB slots AND extra storage for our machine. I then stacked 3D printed sheets like a lasagna to get out structure.

I also wanted to try and improve the cooling (emphasis on try) by strapping a 120mm Noctua fan to the top and we had some small improvements, but nothing that blew me away. I tested this playing some AAA games at 1080p and compared it to a Steam Deck OLED playing with same settings at the same resolution. I was getting anywhere from -3 - -6C lower temps with this fan. Frame rates were the same as well, with the exception of Spider-Man 2 which I can't get my head around.

TGPaterson

This didn't really boost performance at all, with framerates being similar to a docked Steam Deck OLED with the same resolution and settings, but they were getting around 3C - 6C lower temps, which is nice to see.

Tom also created a YouTube video detailing the journey of taking the broken Steam Deck and turning it into a Steam Machine. Interestingly, it started as a clip-on box to keep it portable, but since Tom didn't use it much that way, they went into actually turning it into a standalone console with extra ports.

Now, Tom doesn't recommend actually doing this, since it really doesn't improve any performance and takes away the portability of the Deck, but it is a nice way to "revive" a Steam Deck that doesn't work anymore. Still, I find this really intriguing, and while I can't see myself doing it, it is very cool to see that something like this is possible in such a snazzy way.

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