Someone just turned their Steam Deck into a keyboard-sized PC called Bento

Reddit user u/michaelthatsit is garnering a fair amount of attention in the Steam Deck modding community with a compact and surprisingly clean DIY build called Bento. At first glance, it looks like a regular wireless keyboard. But lift the lid, and inside lies an entire Steam Deck board setup - fan, battery, and all - wired to power a wearable AR display.

Instead of a traditional screen, Bento uses a pair of display glasses, which draw video via a dongle stowed in the case. That allows the keyboard shell to remain compact and clean. The rest of the design reflects some clever decision-making too. There’s a carved-out right compartment acting as a "bento" tray for the dongle and possibly future mouse modules.

To make it fit, the creator stripped a Steam Deck down to its components and rebuilt it into a two-part 3D printed case. Venting was added to the top and right, but cooling is reportedly still tight due to space constraints - an issue the builder plans to address in the next revision.

Most of the build was sketched and iterated in Shapr3D, with plenty of failed prints along the way. Parts were sourced from eBay, and the whole concept came from noticing how neatly the internals of a Steam Deck could fit inside a keyboard’s footprint. An old-school Commodore 64 aesthetic rounds out the setup.

What's interesting is that the project is still evolving, with upcoming upgrades hinted at, including swappable input modules and a better enclosure for the electronics. There's also talk of a product-style demo video once everything is dialed in.

Buy the Steam Deck (512GB) on Amazon.