STEAM Big Picture build (TV)

[Majik]

I have some interest in putting together a machine to run STEAM big picture on my living room TV.

Something that has enough kick to play the small indie games that spring up on steam, i'm not looking to play battlefield 4 on this, think kids type indie games, Bastion, Faster than light, Limbo.

It needs to be space saving (very small) and if possible low to medium power consumption.

Any idea what I would need to spend for something like this? and if someone has the time or would like to spec something like what i've described i'd appreciate it greatly.

thanks,

Majik/Jonny

 

[StevieP]

I'd imagine you could play fairly basic games on an Intel NUC??

 

[samcat]

NUC all the way.

Got a better gaming pc elsewhere in the house? Wired network (gigabit), and steam streaming works very well for more GPU intensive games... Its allowed me to rebuild my living room pc back into its passive streacom case and ditch the GPU.. Streams all the games I want from the big gaming pc when I want to game down there.

 

[Axeia]

If you're looking for a really simple system the AMD5350 is the way to go imo.

In 3DMark 8 Fire Strike AMD scores 409, beating the Celeron G1610 with Nvidia G210 graphics in second place with 277 marks and the J2900 in third with 181 marks. Similar results are seen in Minecraft, render distance 8. AMD gets 57FPS, while the G1610/G210 rig gets 31FPS and the J2900 ends up with 25FPS.

It beats both Intel platforms by a ratio of two to one in Bastion, delivering 44FPS at 1920x180 with 4xAA. Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 is playable at 1080 medium, with 31FPS, with the G1610/G210 combo in second at 28FPS and the J2900 out of the running, as it could not complete the test.

So 44fps in Bastion according to fudzilla.

It's also very low power going by the hardware.info power tests. 9.6W idle usage compared to 33.6W of the lowest power Intel Core processors. On load this jumps to 21.7W, yes you're reading it right during load it consumes less than a NUC would idle.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 EVO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TE120BW) £67.99
1 x Akasa Crypto Vesa Mini-ITX Case with 80W PSU - Black £59.99
1 x AMD Athlon 5350 2.05GHz Quad Core Processor - Retail (Socket AM1) £37.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Fury Black 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C10 1600MHz Single Channel Kit (HX316C10FB/4) £29.99
1 x MSI AM1I AMD AM1 (Socket FS1b) Mini ITX Motherboard £24.95
Total : £230.51 (includes shipping : £8.00).

Something that has enough kick to play the small indie games that spring up on steam

Check (do look up benchmarks though, maybe some games are 'heavier' than you expected them to be)

It needs to be space saving (very small)

This is so small it comes with a VESA-mount allowing you to stick it on the back of a monitor/TV that has a VESA mount as well. Doesn't get much smaller than that.

low to medium power consumption

It's so low it might make your smartphone yealous! Just kidding, but yeah - I have devices that consume more power in standby mode.

BTW, only one RAM stick in the list isn't an oversight. This CPU/APU only has a single-channel memory controller so the most power efficient way would be to use one strip of RAM. I can't say I have any experience with this particular case but going by the 80W power supply we're talking about a very efficient PICO-PSU.