Steam Frame

Oh hell yes. There was a leak of specs (via a benchmarking database) of an upcoming machine from Valve and I had my fingers crossed that it was a mini PC and not some VR thingy, saw this thread, and was sad for a moment before I spotted this post.

6x as powerful as the Steam deck (that I use plugged in anyway 98% of the time—I’d have bought a Steam Deck 2, but I’m glad I get the option to put money toward more performance instead of battery and screen that I don’t use) is great. Not a lot of games I want to play won’t run well at least at 1080p with specs like that.

Snapdragon doesn't really have a good history of supporting proper desktop games. Windows for ARM had kinda bad compatibility. It seems the aim is to have most games just be playable like with the Deck. Fingers crossed but I have some reservations.

Their new mini PC isn’t ARM (the Frame is, though), it’s AMD hardware like the Steam Deck. Appears to be x86, should play basically anything in my library at 1080p or higher as long as it works under SteamOS.

I know but the Frame supports regular x86 games as well in standalone mode.

you run FEX, not direct ARM games

That doesn't magically fix the Qualcomm GPU or the drivers.

I don’t think you will be on latest nightly. LTS are good and stable, if FEX is targeting those specs I don’t see a stability issue.

The GPU is fine and the drivers Valve are using, if their past hardware is any indication, will be open source. Doesn't magically fix them, but it does allow for Valve to fix them.

What is the draw of the Steam machine though? They say the price is comparable to similarly specced PC. So why not just buy/build any mini PC? There's plenty of options for that

A good while back I abandoned PC gaming because I was sick of driver issues, compatibility, and always having to update hardware to play the next game. Instead, I embraced consoles and haven't considered PC gaming since then. This, however, has me reconsidering that. I want it to "just work". When I want to play games, I don't want to deal with all of that other crap. I'm old, ain't nobody got time for that.

It's wild how experiences can vary so wildly. That's the nature of PC's though I suppose that you are trying to avoid.

I've had no driver or compatibility issues in longer than I can remember. Maybe Vista?

I also rarely upgrade because playing at console level settings means I can easily get effectively the same lifetime out of my hardware. Though I do tend to upgrade a little earlier than console users still leaning a bit more towards the enthusiast side.

Some people really don't want to spend time exchanging parts when the memory they buy turns out to be incompatible or that the GPU doesn't fit the sleek mITX case. There's a lot of research to ensure all parts are compatible and optimal when building a PC - for some it's time that could be better spent on using the PC instead of building one.

It's a console basically. It comes ready to play without much maintenance needed from the user.

I guess you abandoned PC gaming some time in the early 2000s?

It's tiny. It runs SteamOS which is built to be used with a controller on a TV. And it will probably be a performance target for many developers.

But I think the biggest feature might be the quick suspend and resume. Every modern console has that, but not PCs. You can try to put a computer to sleep, but many games won't like that.

You can still buy prebuilt though and slap SteamOS on it and youre there.

Dont get me wrong this looks very a nice product, but its nothing revolutionary.

I mean I just don't see the difference between this and getting any PC and slapping SteamOS on it.

As someone who has been building my PCs for decades, I have to admit seeing some appeal here:

It's apparently small, quiet, capable, and easy.

If comparing this device to other pre-built systems, consider that this one is likely to be specifically supported by game developers, while others are not.

I'm unlikely to stop building my own, but most people don't, and the value of saved time and reduced hassle should not be underestimated.

I love SFF PCs, but you can’t get the same density as a manufacturer doing a fully bespoke design. Just look at those innards: no space is wasted.