Engineering samples of consoles or accessories with mass appeal are bound to fetch a high price if they make their way to the open market. A Steam Deck prototype that was recently up for grabs on eBay, spotted by a user at r/SteamDeck.
A Steam Deck engineering prototype was just sold on eBay today for $3000 😭 from r/SteamDeck
The prototype bears a close resemblance to images shared by Valve in the past, and apparently features an AMD APU with Picasso silicon from 2019. Despite its original $3,000 price tag, the prototype found a buyer at $2,000.
Bearing the internal codename "Engineering Sample 34", this Steam Deck prototype is a tad different than your standard Steam Deck with blue accents, a pronounced curved design, circular trackpads, and what appears to be some sort of sensor on the right joystick.
The back cover is stamped with a sticker that screams "Not for resale" — which clearly proved tobe no obstacle for the seller.
During the design phase, Valve engineered a slew of engineering samples for internal testing, so it's hard to pinpoint the exact age of this model. However, the use of an older APU suggests this model was designed to assess its mechanical aspects before retail specs were finalized, alluding to a 2019 or 2020 timeframe.
The seller mentions that the prototype does not have an operating system (SteamOS) installed. Images of the BIOS that Notebookcheck captured from the listing reveal several key specs, including that Valve was testing older prototypes with an unnamed AMD Picasso (Ryzen 3000 mobile) chip, boasting (up to) four Zen+ cores and a GCN 5.0 (Vega 3/8/11) based integrated GPU. The architectural differences alone make up for a serious performance difference between this configuration and what goes into retail Steam Decks.
Likewise, the handheld's 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD are notably smaller than the 16GB and 512GB configurations available today, unless you get the 64GB eMMC version. AMD's Aerith and Sephiroth APUs would run circles around this setup.
We now wait to learn who the buyer is. Assuming it's a reviewer or hardware analyst, we might see an in-depth examination of this likely custom Picasso chip and how the Steam Deck's design transformed into what it is today. Alternatively, a collector may just keep their new addition quiet.
Valve has confirmed that gamers anticipating a successor to the Steam Deck will need to wait until more compelling processors hit the market.
