*** Valve Steam Machine ***

[Timber]

As I said I wouldn't be surprised to see more presets pop up but I really can't see it selling enough to have the major players crafting builds specifically for the hardware. There will be a few like the deck, which I think has a better argument for hardware tailored builds due to it's limitations, but I think it's optimistic to think many AA/AAA releases are going to be optimised for the hardware and anything less demanding shouldn't have much issue running anyway.

Not even the switch had 3rd party Devs putting much time into making sure their games ran and looked great and that sold over 100m units

Fair enough, I think there is nuance to this, but also the sluice gates feel like they are already open. Valve is too big on PC. As mentioned I think there's already loads of games where you see the benefit of a fixed-spec and more market penetration by Valve should only increase this. That said Linux support in general needs the needle to shift A LOT and that's one of the huge challenges for mass market adoption.

For the Switch I think it's slightly different as Nintendo's first-party dominance has impacted that. We have had some great Switch ports, however I suspect the issue with the Switch is more that Nintendo has struggled with third-party support much more than Sony, Microsoft, or Valve. With PlayStation it's been very obvious for this and last-gen where the PS4/5 has often been the lead develop platform.

• CPU is decent, 6-cores is fine and AM4 still holds up very well

I think this is meant to read Zen 4 as it uses DDR5.

 

[MatsyLR]

Doubled down on the WAN show about pricing. Linus very clearly knows what the price is but isn't allowed to say anything. But he did say he's disappointed and doesn't see much point in it overall compared to doing it yourself or just getting a console.

One of the main things he brought up was no Netflix, prime support etc so it's limited in many ways for a living room box. I know it's a "gaming" box but still, doesn't see many people using it on desktop either.

For old games it would be fine indie titles etc for many years great for lan parties and the like. But once ps6 games come out in around 2-3 years it won't be able to play them even with framegen as it's so out of date already any amount of framegen won't help.it.

Probably looking at it from a different perspective than it's supposed to be looked at though. Id want one if it was reasonably priced.

They are going to be doing a DIY video before release trying to match feature for feature.

They did a vote for guessing and most people was around the 500-600 bucks range and it was very clear it's higher by the way he was reacting. Someone put together a list of the closest they could get and it came to around 700-1000 bucks depending on deals without the CEC support, customer service etc, valve are not going to be selling these at a loss they've already said that its not being priced like consoles.

 

[lovelyhead]

Doubled down on the WAN show about pricing. Linus very clearly knows what the price is but isn't allowed to say anything. But he did say he's disappointed and doesn't see much point in it overall compared to doing it yourself or just getting a console.

One of the main things he brought up was no Netflix, prime support etc so it's limited in many ways for a living room box. I know it's a "gaming" box but still, doesn't see many people using it on desktop either.

For old games it would be fine indie titles etc for many years great for lan parties and the like. But once ps6 games come out in around 2-3 years it won't be able to play them even with framegen as it's so out of date already any amount of framegen won't help.it.

Probably looking at it from a different perspective than it's supposed to be looked at though. Id want one if it was reasonably priced.

They are going to be doing a DIY video before release trying to match feature for feature.

They did a vote for guessing and most people was around the 500-600 bucks range and it was very clear it's higher by the way he was reacting. Someone put together a list of the closest they could get and it came to around 700-1000 bucks depending on deals without the CEC support, customer service etc, valve are not going to be selling these at a loss they've already said that its not being priced like consoles.

Here's a link to the segment for those interested:

 

[lovelyhead]

For old games it would be fine indie titles etc for many years great for lan parties and the like. But once ps6 games come out in around 2-3 years it won't be able to play them even with framegen as it's so out of date already any amount of framegen won't help.it.

That's a good point about the new consoles coming out fairly soon. It feels like the Steam Machine is really just an indie game machine as it will play most of them amazingly well but from the day you buy it, you are on a fairly short countdown until higher end games will perform unacceptably on it. In fact I suspect you will only have half a year after buying it until you regret the purchase (assuming it is your only PC and you don't own another console) when GTA VI releases and runs badly.

Probably looking at it from a different perspective than it's supposed to be looked at though. Id want one if it was reasonably priced.

I might sound really down on it but that is mainly because of the price. I like things like the Steam Machine as it is great for tinkering with. If it were cheap I would definitely buy one too but I am not paying over the odds just because it is a Valve product.

They did a vote for guessing and most people was around the 500-600 bucks range and it was very clear it's higher by the way he was reacting. Someone put together a list of the closest they could get and it came to around 700-1000 bucks depending on deals without the CEC support, customer service etc, valve are not going to be selling these at a loss they've already said that its not being priced like consoles.

There are tons of people too online stating they would happily pay up to $1000 etc. Why would you say that? Do they think Valve are not paying attention to the sentiment online when thinking about price? It might not make a huge difference to the end price but if there were enough people saying "nah not interested above $500" they might be less keen to risk going for a higher price.

It is good to see outlets like Linus Tech Tips and Hardware Unboxed voicing a negative opinion regarding the estimated price to performance as Valve now know to expect negative reviews if the value proposition is bad.

 

[dink]

Given the specs of this Steam Box, doesn't seem like an 'upgrade' to an i9 and RTX 2080.

Digital Foundry also released a video discussing it and have the same sort of conclusions as the most of the other media coverage:

• CPU is decent, 6-cores is fine and AM4 still holds up very well
• From factor is very nifty, not often to get a gaming capable machine in such a size, especially for a PC.
• Major misstep with the anaemic GPU, not only is it weaker than a 6600XT, but only has 8GB VRAM, which going forward would even struggle in 1080p games
• Another potential misstep with HDMI 1.4, though apparently they have tested that it can run HDMI 2.0 speeds, but doesn't qualify for 2.0 due to some 2.0 functionality not met. Adaptive sync like FreeSync, etc is a feature from HDMI 2.0 that this does seem to have, but might only work through the DisplayPort.
• Aimed at being simpler plug-and-play introduction to PC gaming
• ...except the hardware choices make that tricky too, since users will likely need to fiddle with and turn down settings to get playable framerates
• Marketed as a 4k machine... which makes sense given a potential intended purpose to be used in the living room where people commonly have 4K TVs. But doesn't make sense since the hardware can't manage 4k gaming, even with upscaling it's barely feasible
• SteamOS will make things interesting and potentially one of the biggest selling points of this hardware.
• Controller doesn't sound like it's included, unlike consoles. Likely to be in a seperate bundle, of course costing more.

As mentioned with GPU discussions in the past, there's no such thing as a bad product, just bad pricing. How this does all comes down to pricing, e.g. folks liked the Nvidia Shield TV due to how cheap and nifty it was for various things. Something like this can't be priced any more than $600, ideally $500 to be considered average or $400 or below to really open eyes and be an option for budget PC gaming.

My prediction... Valve will pull an AMD and likely mess this up. Technically, they already have with some of the hardware choices for this thing.

Thanks for the insight, I’ll still end up buying it lol

 

[Timber]

One interesting stat that got lost I think is the Valve engineer who was all over the Q&A sessions this week said Steam Machine performance beats 70% of PCs, and can play all games.

It isn't specified if this is relative to the CPU, GPU, or combination there of. Although they also add that RDNA 3 is just over 33% of current GPUs on Steam.

Given how open Valve are with user surveys it would probably be quite easy to work out where the GPU ranks in terms of being better, albeit it needs a clear reference point. In the same way people make up their own interpretation of where the PS5 GPU part compares, I've seen the 7400, 7600, 7600m and 6600 all being mentioned as comparison points for the Steam Machine so far.

 

[Vestas]

Given how open Valve are with user surveys it would probably be quite easy to work out where the GPU ranks in terms of being better, albeit it needs a clear reference point.

The surveys are fairly comprehensive but I'm not sure its as easy as you think

You can draw a lot of conclusions from their surveys which aren't all that valid for "consoles" (or "console/PC/APU"). Plus they're overwhelmingly Nvidia in terms of discrete GPUs.

I think they looked at the minimal uptake of 4k gaming amongst Steam users (4.65%, Oct 25) and decided to design for 1440p "real world" play. That's not a bad design decision but its probably one which should have been taken 2 years ago.

Again I think they're looking at their userbase and thinking "50% of our users are on 1080p, 20% are on 1440p and 5% are on 4k (Oct 25)". Market to the 50% on the basis that they'd probably have to buy a new machine/display to play 1440p anyway and dangle the prospect of 4k gaming in front of them. SteamOS on the deck is very good at providing a fixed (selectable) frame rate experience so some limited 4k stuff may be playable at 30FPS.

Its decent marketing tactics and were the CU units RDNA4 or it was November 2023 then it might be a different matter. The hardware is AMD's last generation parts going into products launching in 2026.

I'm sure it'll sell to existing Steam h/w owners but apart from that I think they'll struggle.

Its a shame as SteamOS (Proton) is a much much MUCH better gaming platform than anyone else has - witness the X-Box "Ally" decks running Windows games faster with Bazzite than under the Windows OS installed on them ( https://www.theverge.com/games/807711/xbox-ally-sleep-fail-bazzite-fix-performance) and with Proton most games which run, run better ( https://www.protondb.com/ ).

 

[Timber]

The surveys are fairly comprehensive but I'm not sure its as easy as you think

You can draw a lot of conclusions from their surveys which aren't all that valid for "consoles" (or "console/PC/APU"). Plus they're overwhelmingly Nvidia in terms of discrete GPUs.

I think they looked at the minimal uptake of 4k gaming amongst Steam users (4.65%, Oct 25) and decided to design for 1440p "real world" play. That's not a bad design decision but its probably one which should have been taken 2 years ago.

Again I think they're looking at their userbase and thinking "50% of our users are on 1080p, 20% are on 1440p and 5% are on 4k (Oct 25)". Market to the 50% on the basis that they'd probably have to buy a new machine/display to play 1440p anyway and dangle the prospect of 4k gaming in front of them. SteamOS on the deck is very good at providing a fixed (selectable) frame rate experience so some limited 4k stuff may be playable at 30FPS.

I'm sure for Valve it's very easy to run a report, but I think it's doable just go through each unique GPU entry and grade it 'less powerful', or 'same, or better' as appropriate. That said I'm sure you'd just come out with a figure around the 70% as the GPU is the main weak point of the Steam Machine. That said I'm not giving up a few hours to do it!

 

[Hades]

I'm interested in this, depending on price. I now have an old but still capable desktop that will need upgrading in a few years. I'm already a Linux user for many things. If the price is right and reviews are good then I will probably buy one.

 

[Smir]

Doubled down on the WAN show about pricing. Linus very clearly knows what the price is but isn't allowed to say anything. But he did say he's disappointed and doesn't see much point in it overall compared to doing it yourself or just getting a console.

One of the main things he brought up was no Netflix, prime support etc so it's limited in many ways for a living room box. I know it's a "gaming" box but still, doesn't see many people using it on desktop either.

For old games it would be fine indie titles etc for many years great for lan parties and the like. But once ps6 games come out in around 2-3 years it won't be able to play them even with framegen as it's so out of date already any amount of framegen won't help.it.

Probably looking at it from a different perspective than it's supposed to be looked at though. Id want one if it was reasonably priced.

They are going to be doing a DIY video before release trying to match feature for feature.

They did a vote for guessing and most people was around the 500-600 bucks range and it was very clear it's higher by the way he was reacting. Someone put together a list of the closest they could get and it came to around 700-1000 bucks depending on deals without the CEC support, customer service etc, valve are not going to be selling these at a loss they've already said that its not being priced like consoles.

yeah a few mates think it'll be 750, might as well build my own.

 

[Dravic]

I think this is great over all but there are games that won’t run on SteamOS due to anti cheat not being compatible with the os

I think that needs fixing, yes windows can be installed to avoid that but for this to take off the average user won’t do that

Valve could really make a big disruption into consol segment with a device like this if done right

If enough are sold I'm sure there will be plenty of "easily dual boot windows on your steam box" tutorials/images/installers etc.

It shouldn't be too difficult for one fixed hardware configuration.

 

[TheVoice]

Absolutely DOA at those prices. You could buy a PS5 Pro + the disc drive and have more than £200 change which gives you way way more performance.

But you can't access your entire Steam library on a PS5. As a way of diverting existing PC/Steamdeck owners away from the current consoles, it could still find some traction. A PS5 Pro only gives you more performance when the developers have actually made an effort to use that power, but plenty of games have been released without Pro optimisaiton and only a handful of pre-Pro games have ever been updated. That's potentially a massive sticking point for PC owners who are used to a hardware upgrade benefitting virtually all games; I know it is for me and is why I've stuck with my launch PS5.

 

[xaldub]

But you can't access your entire Steam library on a PS5. As a way of diverting existing PC/Steamdeck owners away from the current consoles, it could still find some traction. A PS5 Pro only gives you more performance when the developers have actually made an effort to use that power, but plenty of games have been released without Pro optimisaiton and only a handful of pre-Pro games have ever been updated. That's potentially a massive sticking point for PC owners who are used to a hardware upgrade benefitting virtually all games; I know it is for me and is why I've stuck with my launch PS5.

Not convinced the library is the relevant matter here ( same could be said that a user can't access their PS library on a Steam Machine ). The main question is who is the Steam Machine targeted at ? Existing Steam / PC users with very old hardware for whom this represents a "cheap" upgrade, or people who want a small, compact gaming device for their living room TV ? If it's the latter, then I think the SM is a bit on the underpowered side as many people will be using a 4k display. This is in stark contrast to the average Steam user who play games on a monitor at 1080/1440p.

 

[TheVoice]

Not convinced the library is the relevant matter here ( same could be said that a user can't access their PS library on a Steam Machine ).

It's just as relevant as it is to the Steam Deck really; it's another means of accessing the often huge Steam libraries people have accumulated over the years, while offering a console-like PC experience to console users who are perhaps looking for a second system where the games are cheap and multiplayer is subscription-free.

The main question is who is the Steam Machine targeted at ? Existing Steam / PC users with very old hardware for whom this represents a "cheap" upgrade, or people who want a small, compact gaming device for their living room TV ? If it's the latter, then I think the SM is a bit on the underpowered side as many people will be using a 4k display. This is in stark contrast to the average Steam user who play games on a monitor at 1080/1440p.

I don't think it will appeal to many as an upgrade/replacement for an existing system, if you're on old hardware you're probably on a budget therefore your money is better spent on something where you aren't paying a premium for a mostly-fixed spec in a small form factor.

If the price was right (a big if) I could see myself considering one as a way of playing through many of the older/less-demanding games in my Steam library while sat on my sofa instead of at my desk where my gaming PC is. That said, the current murmurings seem to suggest it'll be pricey and the current DRAM/NAND price increases aren't going to help either, and are probably a large part of why Valve has opted to stay quiet on pricing for now.

 

[lovelyhead]

If enough are sold I'm sure there will be plenty of "easily dual boot windows on your steam box" tutorials/images/installers etc.

It shouldn't be too difficult for one fixed hardware configuration.

Going from my experience with the Steam Deck, installing Windows on that was not entirely easy. It was a bit convoluted and even once you got it up and running the windows drivers for the Steam Deck weren't very good. I had a lot of issues with sound drivers. Sound would work one day and be completely broken the next. There was next to no solution for my problem so I eventually just ditched Windows and went back to Steam OS.

Valve don't put much effort into making windows drivers for obvious reasons. They also took ages to release Windows drivers for the Steam Deck OLED. I think people wanting to install Windows on a Steam Machine might end up pretty disappointed by the end result. Only buy a Steam Machine expecting to run Steam OS and not windows.

 

[Dravic]

The steam deck is much more customised hardware than the steam box, which is pretty much off the shelf parts apparently, and if they're off the shelf parts they'll already have windows drivers. So maybe it'll be easier, it would certainly make it a better option for the gamers that need kernel level anti-cheat.

 

[lovelyhead]

The steam deck is much more customised hardware than the steam box, which is pretty much off the shelf parts apparently, and if they're off the shelf parts they'll already have windows drivers. So maybe it'll be easier, it would certainly make it a better option for the gamers that need kernel level anti-cheat.

Both the CPU and GPU on the Steam Machine are semi custom so I would imagine they will need their own custom drivers. The motherboard will almost certainly need it's own custom drivers for the audio, Bluetooth etc.

If the Steam Deck is anything to go by don't expect Windows Steam Machine drivers for a while and after they are released don't expect regular Windows drivers updates.

 

[Raymond Lin]

If this thing is on the same price point as a PS5 Pro I'll be super happy. If it's PS5 price then Day 1 purchase since I am going to Skip Xbox next gen.

 

[Noxia]

If this thing is on the same price point as a PS5 Pro I'll be super happy. If it's PS5 price then Day 1 purchase since I am going to Skip Xbox next gen.

You could replay HL2 on it, but remember to actually get in the boat this time

 

[SuperElectric]

People keep saying it's not for those who already have a beefy gaming PC but I genuinely can't foresee many people outside of that demographic buying it as an easy way to play their steam library in the living room. As a console alternative it's DOA due to it running Linux and thus locking you out of the vast majority of casual games, a list including FIFA, CoD, Apex and Fortnite. Millions of people buy consoles solely for those kinds of games, a fact that people online seem completely blind to because FIFA/CoD/Fortnite bad. If you're installing windows to get around that it instantly loses the plug and play appeal it's clearly going for.

maybe it'll see some interest from people with very old PCs that want an easy, and hopefully affordable upgrade, or people wanting to ease their way into PC gaming for things like mod support but I can't see this ending up as anything other than a niche product for PC nerds and people who like shiny new toys. I think a new and improved Steam Link would have satisfied the majority of what will become the Steam PC market.

I can't honestly put myself in the Steam Machine demographic, but just for fun I tried building a living room TV gaming PC in ************:

First try - no effort, enthusiast mini-ITX

CPU: Ryzen 7600 non-X - £157.97
Motherboard: Gigabyte B650I AX - £131.99
RAM: Crucial 32GB 6000 CL36 - £128.99
SSD: MSI M480 Pro 2TB - £130.99
GPU: RX 9060 XT 16GB - £329.99
Case: Silverstone SUGO 14 - £94.99
PSU: MSI MAG A750BN 750W - £59.99

Total: £1,034.91

I picked semi-premium components, nothing too silly, but still good. The SUGO 14 is obviously bigger (19.55L) in comparison to the Steam Machine (15.6*15.2*16.2cm 3.84L) but it has good compatibility (ATX PSU, 330mm three slot GPU, big CPU cooler if you want) and it should look OK in the living room as an anonymous black box. The Series X (6.8L) and PS5 (10.5L) are also much bigger than the Steam Machine and people put those in their living room, right? Also, this build is obviously an order of magnitude faster than the low-end components in the Steam Machine. It's also very upgradeable.

Second try - as cheap as possible

CPU: Ryzen 7500F - £120
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Assassin X 120 - £14.99
Motherboard: ASRock A620AM Pro-A Wifi - £101.62
RAM: Corsair 32GB 5600 CL40 - £113.46
SSD: MSI M461 2TB - £95.99
GPU: Sparkle B580 12GB - £193.00
Case: Lian Li A3-mATX - £59.95
PSU: MSI MAG A550BN 550W - £39.99

Total: £739.00

Still much faster than the Steam Machine, but a few compromises. The biggest one is the case, we have gone mATX to save some money. The Lian Li A3-mATX is still a nice case, comes in black, etc. but it's 26.3L.....I would still put it in my living room . I've also gone with the AliExpress Ryzen 7500F, which can sometimes be had for approx £100. RAM is a problem, there's some stock less than £130 but it could disappear at any time. No DRAM cache in the SSD, still more than fast enough for gaming. The B580 is faster than the RX 7600, which itself is faster than the GPU in the Steam Machine. Also 12GB VRAM. PSU is C-Tier.

I could try to match the Steam Machine for size, but the case is a problem. The Midori 5L-V2.4 is 5L but it requires a Flex ATX PSU, therefore it's very expensive (£280 inc PSU, custom length PSU cables and PCI-E riser), not worth it IMO.

Realistically, I would probably go for the first build, but with the S300 Pro ITX case from AliExpress (approx £100) and an SFX PSU. It's very small at 8.5L, and takes 305*55*154mm GPUs (2.5 slot). CPU cooling is restricted to 60mm, but with 65W CPUs it should be fine. Smaller than a PS5, larger than a Series X, I think it makes the most sense.

If the 2TB Steam machine was £600 with the controller, I'd say it's probably a good deal.