*** Valve Steam Machine ***

lovelyhead said:
Yes the mildness of Steve's review really shocked me. He is usually very up in arms about nearly everything but then he does have hundreds / thousands of Steam Machine faceplates to sell!
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Gamers Nexus have a clear conflict on interest here so their review cannot be taken seriously
 
I just watched the IGN review and they just made a load of excuses for poor performance compared to console and described it as being great.

I don't suspect these reviewers are being paid but clearly they don't want to be too harsh on Valve in case their access gets revoked. As I said earlier the only channel who is telling it like it is is hardware unboxed as they have no fear of losing access.
 
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This is nothing more than a collectors item for Steam fanboys really. It's a bit like the Ferrari Luce in that sense.

Yes, it will likely sell out, but not because it is any good. It will do simply because there are too many people with far too much money to know what to do with.

This is supposed to be a gaming machine right?

Why would anyone not just buy this instead (no snarky comments about it being out of stock :p)?


Double the storage, and double the graphics power for £120 more.
 
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Jono8 said:
This is nothing more than a collectors item for Steam fanboys really. It's a bit like the Ferrari Luce in that sense.

Yes, it will likely sell out, but not because it is any good. It will do simply because there are too many people with far too much money to know what to do with.
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I think it depends on what you want. This does things that other PCs cannot; CEC, one-touch power-on, built-in support for the Steam Controller all in a super small, good looking, very quiet and energy efficient package. If you are someone that doesn't want to go down the DIY route and just wants a small lounge PC to stream games, play games on the big screen, or compliment a Steam Deck. This does that. But Valve have been funding open-source software so that you don't have to buy their hardware. There is nothing stopping you running Steam OS, or another version of Linux on your own hardware. And they have essentially simplified the PC in a way no one else has, despite years of Microsoft trying.

The price is nasty, but equally so is buying any tech at the moment and it was the worst time to release. A year or two earlier and I think some of the criticism would have been mitigated along with a better price. Maybe they took long after the Steam Deck to release this.
 
I mean I can afford it, I just bought a Certina GMT watch, but I just don't think it is worth it for the money. A.I. reasons or not for the current state of the market. I can't stomach spending this amount on a dated spec for a gaming PC.
 
Timber said:
I think it depends on what you want. This does things that other PCs cannot; CEC, one-touch power-on, built-in support for the Steam Controller all in a super small, good looking, very quiet and energy efficient package. If you are someone that doesn't want to go down the DIY route and just wants a small lounge PC to stream games, play games on the big screen, or compliment a Steam Deck. This does that. But Valve have been funding open-source software so that you don't have to buy their hardware. There is nothing stopping you running Steam OS, or another version of Linux on your own hardware. And they have essentially simplified the PC in a way no one else has, despite years of Microsoft trying.

The price is nasty, but equally so is buying any tech at the moment and it was the worst time to release. A year or two earlier and I think some of the criticism would have been mitigated along with a better price. Maybe they took long after the Steam Deck to release this.
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I guess I can't get my head around someone choosing a slightly smaller form factor/one touch power on etc over double the graphics processing power for something you are primarily buying to play pc games on....

Getting something with only 512gb ssd space and the power of a 7600/4060 for nearly £900 in 2026 just seems absurd to me.
 
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Jono8 said:
I guess I can't get my head around someone choosing a slightly smaller form factor/one touch power on etc over double the graphics processing power for something you are primarily buying to play pc games on....

Getting something with only 512gb ssd space and the power of a 7600/4060 for nearly £900 in 2026 just seems absurd to me.
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Yep, I get it. I recently built a new PC in the last few weeks and bought 32GB of DDR5 and a 2TB NVMe and that combined cost more than the 9070XT. If I'd have only bought that last October I would have paid a fraction.

But there are people out there that do care about the looks and having small boxes in the lounge. I watched a Youtube video the other day where this chap demoing his main gaming PC and it had a pretty low-end GPU simply because he was concerned about keeping the power draw under 200w.

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As an aside I've just installed Steam OS (recovery image was 3.8.10, updated to 3.8.11) and Valve have definitely tidied it up a bit. When it first boots from USB KDE is nicer looking and the install script to wipe your drive super simple. It still has the erroneous 'your battery is low' message and it names the host 'steamdeck'. However it does give the correct button prompts initially (my case an Xbox controller). So definitely some improvements since I last tried it. I will say this versus Bazzite on this AM4 5600X PC - it's much quicker, only one reboot required, boots super fast (not sure if this is just Arch vs. Fedora 43 Grub bootmanager). But I still get annoyances like the super small performance monitor at 4K with no option to adjust in the settings. As In don't need Heroic, Waydroid etc. I might try this for a bit.

I feel it still needs work for anyone installing for the first time on a new non-Valve, or officially supported PC.
 
Jono8 said:
This is nothing more than a collectors item for Steam fanboys really. It's a bit like the Ferrari Luce in that sense.

Yes, it will likely sell out, but not because it is any good. It will do simply because there are too many people with far too much money to know what to do with.

This is supposed to be a gaming machine right?

Why would anyone not just buy this instead (no snarky comments about it being out of stock :p)?


Double the storage, and double the graphics power for £120 more.
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That case is 34 litres, steam machine 3.8 litres. Its small but not Steam Machine small and thats the difference. If you take the linked PC over a steam machine then you aren't the target audience, Steam Machine was never a serious gaming PC, that was clear the moment the released the specs. But the price has now crippled it
 
Another interesting thing that Hardware Unboxed brought up is why are Valve charging £270 for 1.5TB extra storage when you can buy 2TB drives on Overclockers for £200? Valve are milking their buyers here.
 
lovelyhead said:
Another interesting thing that Hardware Unboxed brought up is why are Valve charging £270 for 1.5TB extra storage when you can buy 2TB drives on Overclockers for £200? Valve are milking their buyers here.
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Especially when they will be buying them in bulk and probably getting a decent discount.
 
Steam Machine with tiny 512GB SSD, Radeon 7600M Mobile GPU and CPU matched peformance as Ryzen Z1 handheld CPU for £879? LOL :cry::eek:

You can get desktop or laptop PC with bigger 1TB SSD that is twice the size of storage, more powerful RTX 5060 GPU that is 2 times faster than Radeon 7600M Mobile GPU in games benchmarks and much faster CPU for similar price.

£879.95 laptop


£899.99 desktop PC

 
AthlonXP1800 said:
Steam Machine with tiny 512GB SSD, Radeon 7600M Mobile GPU and CPU matched peformance as Ryzen Z1 handheld CPU for £879? LOL :cry::eek:

You can get desktop or laptop PC with bigger 1TB SSD that is twice the size of storage, more powerful RTX 5060 GPU that is 2 times faster than Radeon 7600M Mobile GPU in games benchmarks and much faster CPU for similar price.

£879.95 laptop


£899.99 desktop PC

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A 5060 laptop is not going to be as fast as a 5060 desktop GPU. It’s not 2 times faster than the steam machine.
 
Raymond Lin said:
Is the SSD soldered on or can you upgradable by the user?
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You can replace the SSD very easily as it has a full size slot (2280) that is very easy to get to.

RAM is more involved and I didn't see any reviewer tackle that, but is user replaceable as well. Indeed the whole 1x16GB stick vs 2x8GB stick lottery might come into play.
 
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Watching a few of these so-called reviews around the RAM allocation, with some systems coming with dual 8 and some with a single 16. I'd be rather put out if I did wish to upgrade to 32 and finding out I'd need to purchase dual 16 instead of a single.

The whole thing is a hard pass for me, which is a shame as I really like the small form factor for a living room PC.
 
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