Gamers Nexus have a clear conflict on interest here so their review cannot be taken seriously
*** Valve Steam Machine ***
- Thread starter kakarott
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Gamers Nexus have a clear conflict on interest here so their review cannot be taken seriously
Associate
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At the end of the day none of them want to upset the mighty Valve.. I'd take all reviews with a few pounds of salt...
Soldato
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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.
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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Soldato
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I don't know what Steve was thinking making a large part of his review video self promotion of his Steam Machine faceplates?
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
)?
Double the storage, and double the graphics power for £120 more.
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
)?Double the storage, and double the graphics power for £120 more.
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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.
Caporegime
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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.
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.