Cass Designs' 3D-Printed Steam Deck-Alike Puts Streamed Triple-A Games in the Palm of Your Hand
Built from two Xbox 360 controllers, a 3D-printed case, and a Raspberry Pi, this is a slick yet budget-friendly Steam Deck alternative.
Pseudonymous YouTuber Cass Designs has put together an alternative to Valve's popular Steam Deck handheld console, powered by a Raspberry Pi in a 3D-printed chassis and capable of streaming PC games via Steam Link: the "Meme Deck."
"When I started my YouTube channel, one of the video ideas I wrote down was to create a portable gaming system like the Nintendo Switch but for PC games," Cass explains of the project's origins. "It would use a Raspberry Pi to run Steam Link and use the hardware from my desktop to stream games to a handheld device."
The build began back in 2019, but gained a fresh head of steam ā no pun intended ā when Valve unveiled the Steam Deck in July last year. Effectively a fully-functional portable computer, the Steam Deck is optimized to play games locally on a custom Linux operating system ā but Cass' equivalent opts for the lower-power approach of farming the hard work off to a remote gaming PC and simply streaming the result.
"My build uses two controllers poorly connected to each other with a rats' nest of soldered wires," Cass explains, "and a Raspberry Pi 4 connected to a 7-inch touchscreen.
"Once the controller was all set, I started designing a case/chassis for it. I found a model for the back shell of an Xbox 360 controller and cut it in half, and modified it to what I needed for this project. In total, I designed six pieces: Two controller halves, a front cover for the controllers and screen/Raspberry Pi to mount to, two small pieces to cover the gaps between the screen cover and the controllers, and a back cover to contain all of the components."
The result is a self-contained device running Raspberry Pi OS, and technically capable of playing games natively so long as they're compatible with Linux on an Arm processor and not too computationally demanding. The installation of Valve's Steam Link software, however, extends the project considerably by adding streaming of even the latest triple-A titles like Elden Ring ā so long as you're on the same network as your gaming PC, at least.
Full details are available in Cass' YouTube video, though design files have not yet been uploaded to the Cass Designs' Thingiverse page.
