WTF?! When YouTuber Marcin Plaza initially began converting a broken laptop into a handheld gaming PC, he didn’t expect to end up with something resembling a Nintendo DS with an ultrawide screen. After much trial and error, the project resulted in a surprisingly thin device that runs many games smoothly.
Plaza isn’t the first tinkerer to build a custom handheld gaming PC, but his three-month project resulted in what is likely the strangest example of an increasingly popular form factor. The unusual creation emerged from necessity rather than ambition.
Initially, the sole objective was repurposing the motherboard from a broken 13-inch Lenovo Yoga 730 2-in-1. However, after hours of searching, Plaza discovered that the only portable screen compatible with the notebook’s mainboard is the BOE NV127H4M-NX1, a bizarre 12.7-inch, 3:1 LCD panel with a 2,880 x 864 resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. This necessitated a clamshell design akin to Nintendo’s older handheld systems or some of GPD’s pocket PCs.
After testing the screen, the YouTuber trialed several 3D-printed chassis designs and built a keyboard from scratch – his first custom PCB. Plaza used a button matrix to operate 42 inputs while accommodating a control module small enough to fit inside the handheld.
The resulting PC features a basic keyboard setup, a large trackpad, shoulder pads, and four face buttons serving as a directional pad, similar to the Nintendo Switch’s left Joy-Con. Despite using a mainboard from 2018 featuring an Intel Core i5-8250U CPU with 8GB of RAM and Intel UHD 620 graphics – hardware far older and less powerful than a Steam Deck or Asus ROG Ally – Plaza’s ultrawide handheld runs titles like Stardew Valley, Portal, and Half-Life 2 smoothly.
Ultrawide support is gaining momentum in modern PC games, and Valve recently added it to Half-Life 2 to celebrate the game’s 20th anniversary. Although the feature isn’t universal, playing non-ultrawide games on an ultrawide monitor leaves sufficient screen real estate for another window, which Plaza occupied with a guide in a browser.
Using the motherboard from a Framework laptop, which another YouTuber demonstrated last year, would have likely been easier, as the company sells the boards separately. Earlier this year, tinkerer Eta Prime did the opposite, using the chips from a broken Steam Deck to create a cheap miniature gaming PC.
Toward the end of his video, Plaza teased his next project – an attempt to install a dedicated GPU into his handheld.