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Valve has done a teardown of its new Steam Deck console — but don’t try this at home

Valve has just picked apart its new portable gaming PC, the Steam Deck — but just in order to tell you why that’s such a terrible idea.

Whenever a new product makes its debut, there’s nothing more tantalising to the child in all of us than the desire to pick it to pieces and take a look at the complex innards packed inside; followed of course by a half-hearted and ultimately doomed attempt to put it all back together again.

Well, the good news is that Valve has done exactly that with its new Steam Deck console! The bad news is that the company warns you to never, never try this yourself at home. Seriously.

Related: Has Steam just beaten Nintendo at its own game with this Switch rival?

The presenter clarifies that while “you have every right to open it up and do what you want”, Valve recommends not to do this because the innards are tightly designed and the parts were chosen specifically for their purpose, and the warranty will not cover any damage incurred by users’ tinkering. What’s more, if you damage the battery, the device itself could actually catch fire — so you’d best leave it alone unless you want to “take big risks with your property and with your life.” Gulp.

While the teardown is incredibly informative, as the thumbsticks and SSD are efficiently replaced by the expert in front of the camera, it also essentially devolves into a list of the various ways you could ruin your console and your chances of survival simultaneously. Point taken, Valve.

Related: The Steam Deck officially boasts better battery life than the Nintendo Switch

The Steam Deck is currently available for pre-order before its December 2021 release, at a price of $399 (£349). The portable gaming PC, which resembles the Nintendo Switch, boasts impressive specifications given its diminutive size, including a 4-core AMD Zen 2 CPU with 2.4-3.5GHz, twinned with an AMD RDNA 2 GPU 8 CUs at 1.0-1.6GHz that packs 1.8 Teraflops of power. With 16GB of RAM, it offers performance of 720p at a maximum of 60fps, and baseline storage of 64GB.

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