Prototype Steam Deck Worth $3,000 Disassembled — Featured Discrete GPU Support, Smaller Joysticks, and Circular Touchpads

Okay, let’s dive into this wild ride of gadget-tinkering, shall we? So there’s this YouTuber dude—I mean, this guy really got his hands on a goldmine—a, uh, rare Steam Deck prototype. An engineering sample, they say. It’s like stumbling upon a unicorn or something. Anyway, some Twitter user—now X, but who keeps up?—named SadlyItsDadley (right? what a name), decided Jon Bringus from Bringus Studios is like, the ultimate guy to document this. Pretty epic move.

So Jon, being Jon, rips open the case on camera for all us curious folks. By the way, he’s got this paper that screams “POC2-34 Control 163,” like a secret code from the gaming gods or something. Proof-of-concept #34, they say. How cool is that? He not only tears it apart – I mean, with care, I hope – but he also runs some games. Yeah, actual games. It’s like watching history in the making.

And have you seen the look of this thing? It’s not what we’re cozy with right now. The touchpads—whoa—huge circles instead of neat rectangles. Crazy, right? And those tiny joysticks, feels like they’re for elves. Oh, and those palm rests. They’re different. Contoured? Ish. He also spills the beans on its innards: it’s got an AMD Ryzen 7 3700U, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD… the tech jargon goes on. Thought his hands were gonna catch fire, handling that beast.

Here’s the kicker (or, another kicker). Jon cloned the original SSD. Gutsy move. The cloned drive? Surprise! An early SteamOS with three mystery accounts. Three! But no luck with that official-looking ‘34’ account (seriously, who names an account ‘34’?). And get this—the software’s dated September 30, 2020. Like peeking into Valve’s workshop a year before the real deal hit the streets. Makes you wonder what more treasures Jon stumbled across.

Now for a bit of nostalgia—or not. Remember the Nintendo Switch catapulting the handheld gaming scene? Sure, the Switch laid the groundwork, but the Steam Deck, man… it just exploded. All these big-name players like Asus, Lenovo, MSI—they’re jumping on the bandwagon. Everybody wants a slice of that handheld pie. PC gaming on the move is apparently where it’s at now. Who’d have guessed?

And hey, if you’re into keeping up with all this tech madness, follow Tom’s Hardware on Google News. That’s what they tell me. Cheers to never-ending game nights!