Nintendo Switch has become the go-to console for those of us hunkered down at home. And if you’ve just discovered the game console and wanted in on the action, you might be late to the party considering that Nintendo Switch is sold out in the U.S.
But in a situation like this, most of us might just wait until the hype settles or swallow our pride to take the bait and snag a device on eBay, even if it’s marked up as much as USD $500. However, for those people that live in 2037, they’re just building their own Nintendo Switch.
Using spare parts collected around his city, Brennan Johnston shared step-by-step guide on Imgur with carefully-documented photos, assembly instructions and even a pricing guide as poetic justice to “starve online price gougers.“
“Upwards of $450 to $600 in the Seattle area for a used Switch. Some with and without all the accessories,” said Brennen Johnston on his Imgur post. “This enraged me to the point of telling them I could build one cheaper out of spare parts.”
Altogether just 22 parts are required to build your very own Switch, and the investment comes out to around USD $199.
“The key to a project like this is extreme patience,” Johnston explained in an interview with Motherboard. “This took about a month and then some to bid on parts, find inexpensive sellers, and wait for ground shipping from China. In the end it was still worth it to me. This was a fun project to keep me busy during the quarantine while not breaking the bank.”
“The only reason the build was even finished was because of a lucky logic board offer,” Johnson said “I certainly didn’t do it only to save money. I love learning with hands on and improving hardware designs. This was a perfect opportunity to gain a ton of knowledge. If I do it again I will try to design and manufacture a better cooling heat-sink just for personal curiosity.”
Admittedly, if you’ve never assembled hardware before – let alone put together a computer – this might be outside of your expertise and possibly your comfort zone and might be waiting a little longer until Nintendo Switch get restocked in the stores. But for the rest of us with little patience and desperate to find out what Animal Crossing is all about, it could be end up being a great quarantine project. Plus you’d be learning a new skill.
