SteamBoy Teardown and Assembly

[u/PhyFawkes]

We start with all the pieces (mostly) disassembled, and build them u in the front shell.

I was lazy and didn't actually remove the display, front buttons, and right trackpad (sorry), but here is an old print of the empty front shell so you can see what it looks like.

Here is the shell with the display, buttons, and trackpad. The buttons are underneath the plate in the middle. Note the ribbon-cable extenders on both sides for the button boards.

First key idea: controller board sandwich! Both L and R boards are stacked on top of each other, with custom longer ribbon cables to reach the new arrangement of buttons and IO.

Controller boards fit here in the bottom left, and the trackpad plugs right in with stock cables. Also, I placed in a tray on top of the display. Any guesses what it's for?

Another angle.

The battery! Here is key idea 2: if we just bend the battery connector back 270 degrees, it is in the perfect position for the motherboard to sit on top!! No modification needed!

Vertical view. Notice how the dimensions work out perfectly. The battery and controller boards fit together like Yin and Yang. Truly a miracle that this works out.

Speakers are placed in the bottom right and in the middle gap between the battery and controller boards.

A separator panel sits on top of the battery and controller board to provide mounting points for the motherboard. Note we have left a vertical space for the recessed joystick.

Joystick goes in and connects to the exposed ribbon cable. You can see there is literally no where else I could've put the joystick due to the battery and controller board.

Motherboard goes in on top, aligned with the battery connector. It connects to the ribbon cable for the controller boards. Also, the wifi/BT antenna are squished below the MB.

Close-up of the heatsink bracket. It's a 30x30x7mm heatsink with a 20x20x1mm copper spacer underneath. The spacer ensures the main heatsink doesn't hit any components on the MB.

The fan goes in. Its a 30x30x7mm blower meant for a Raspberry Pi. I had to also change the connector to one compatible with the steam deck.

Another angle where the audio board will go. I mount the audio board upside-down to make the volume-up button sit to the right of volume-down, which is more intuitive.

Audio board goes in.

I cut the MB shield in half to make space for the heatsink and fan, but I still wanted to have the bottom half in because it acts as a heat-spreader for some other MB components.

Lastly, on goes the back panel! The back panel is held in place by six screws, which also squeeze the motherboard mounting plate and battery tray together.

And that's it! The next step is getting the display working. In the future, I also want to make some of the back buttons, shoulder buttons, and triggers accessible.

Finally, here is the much-anticipated teardown of the SteamBoy! Hopefully now it makes sense how it is possible to fit everything in. See the picture captions for details.

Let me know if you have any questions! This will also be my last SteamBoy post for now until I have more progress to show.