Our Favorite Steam Deck DIY Projects

Last Updated on: 24th August 2022, 05:48 pm

Valve’s Steam Deck has taken the world by storm, and with worldwide adoption and great sales come even-greater opportunities and innovation within the DIY world. It’s perhaps for the first time that a gaming console is allowed to be upgraded and modded at the user level without the manufacturer throwing tantrums and legal threats around it.

If you’re not familiar with the Steam Deck DIY scene, today we’re going to showcase to you some of the projects the community made in the past few months. To create the list, we sat down with Glenn from Esportsheadlines.com, the author of the article on the best SD card for Steam Deck, and throughout our conversation, we handpicked six projects from the DIY community worth the coverage, with all of them being perfectly functional, stable, and working.

Let’s start off with our favorite, the VHS project:

1. Steam Deck DIY VHS Player

There’s hardly anyone out there who doesn’t know that we need modern hardware for our old VHS media; after all, how else are we supposed to watch all those critical tapes? u/melinte from Reddit was familiar with that problem and showcased to us how to watch VHS tapes on the Steam Deck.

By using a USB video capture stick, a USB to USB-C converter, some AV cables, and a perfectly working VHS player, he enabled his Steam Deck to play old VHS tapes without any issues.

Not completely uncanny as the Steam Deck is ultimately a handheld PC, and with video capture cards, the process is pretty straightforward – but we love the work they put into this DIY project. You can check out the full thread under this link.

2. Steam Deck DIY 3D Printed Dock

Everyone is waiting for Valve to release the dock for the Deck. Still, with the recent news boiling around the internet, it’s obvious there will be further delays due to a stream of unfortunate supply interruptions. That didn’t stop the DIY community from creating their own dock version. To be honest, since the launch of the Steam Deck, owners have tried to build their docks or use other objects as makeshift ones, with a lot of them succeeding at the task.

One of them is the YouTuber nicknamed Project-SBC, who created a DIY 3D printed Steam Deck dock that looks pretty cool; you can check it out in full in the video below:

READ MORE: STEAM: WHAT IS THE HIGHEST PLAYER COUNT A GAME HAS EVER HAD?

3. Nintendo Switch UI for Deck

Why would you make a Nintendo Switch out of your Steam Deck, you ask? Well, aesthetics and the cool factor, of course. This Switch Pro UI mod for the Steam Deck comes with a complete tutorial, and by the end of the process, you’d have the SwitchPro bootup, suspend screens and Switch UI sound effects. The user behind the mod is u/marytank8, and his full tutorial with video can be found under this link.

4. Steam Deck DIY 3D Printed Laptop-style Holder

The magic is in the smaller, simpler details, and Ekianjo from BoilingSteam.com delivered. The Steam Deck laptop project is eerily close to a small form-factor work laptop from like a decade ago. It needs extra accessories, such as the Logitech K480 Bluetooth keyboard, but the end result is interesting; you can check it out on the image below, and for the full guide and the 3D printed models, visit their site here.

5. Steam Deck DIY 3D Printed Magnetic Sunshield

This magnetic sun shield is a 3D-printed DIY project from the Austrian YouTuber “Lupus Worax.” Before he created this project, he had been quite active within the Steam Deck DIY community and had done a series of other Deck-related explorations ranging from fall protection gear and battery power packs up to a travel case appropriately named “Blast Shield” (actual tests against blasts likely pending). You can find the product and the whole explanation of its use below:

6. LTT’s “Ultimate” Deck, Modding Gone to Far?

At LinusTechTips, they do some borderline crazy stuff, we can all agree on that, and one of their most recent projects was their take on modding the Steam Deck to the fullest. They replaced the analog sticks with hall effect ones, added tempered glass protection to the screen, upgraded the cooling, battery, and storage, and added the killswitch protector from Dbrand. If you like the idea, check out their video below for more details:

Honorable mentions

There are more and more DIY projects popping up all the time and on all types of platforms from Reddit and YouTube to other more specialized forums. U/emil10001 successfully created a Gameboy camera mod on their Steam Deck as a follow-up to the VHS player mod we mentioned above. As a further follow-up, the creator of the VHS mode, u/melinte, raised them a digitized version of their “beloved LP record” – essentially Rick Rolling all Reddit users.

READ MORE: STEAM: HOW TO FIND GAMES RECOMMENDED TO YOU ON STEAM

Trying to one-up each other in this way is really fun. You never know what clever bit you are going to get next. We’re keeping our eyes peeled, and so should you!