Steam Machine

Very weird USB-C port placement choices...

- 2 USB3-A on the front

- 2 USB2-A on the back

- 1 USB-C on the back

If you want to plug an external USB hard drive or SSD at full speed, you'll need to plug it at the front? Or use up the only USB-C port...

I suspect most joysticks sold today come with a USB-C to USB-C cable, so if you want to charge your controller you either need to plug on the back, use an adapter, or get a USB-A to USB-C cable?

Also the single USB-C port isn't Thunderbolt/USB4, and they're only including gigabit ethernet, which is disappointing but perhaps understandable if they're trying to keep it at a low price.

Most gaming peripherals still seem to use USB-A on the computer end for cables and dongles.

Current Xbox and PS5 controllers charge with a USB-C port on the controller end but a USB-A port where the plug into the console.

Could it be a synergy with the Steam Frame's dual band wireless dongle? I'm guessing they would really want users to plug that into the front of the device.

I suspect it'll be like the Mac mini situation, and the after-market USB hubs that fit the form factor will expand rapidly ..

most of the usecase is going to be keyboard, mouse, and bluetooth headset dongles. All three of mine attached to my Steam Deck dock are USB-A.

although I own a bunch of those usb-a->c attachments you plug on the end, so it wouldnt make much difference

You'd be wrong C to A is still pretty standard for controllers in my experience.

As for gigabit fewer and fewer people have ethernet routed to their office/TV area much less >1gig networking to take advantage of anything better than a 1 gig.

Valve / Steam presumably has good data on what controllers and peripherals people are using, so I'd imagine their port choices are based around that. Here's a June 2024 post talking about Steam Input and controller market share: https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail... . At the time of the post they say "59% of sessions are using Xbox controllers, 26% are using PlayStation controllers, 10% are on Steam Decks"

It's an old semi-custom semi-discontinued laptop soc.

What do you expect to do with the steam machine that will take more than a gigabit? I mean, it's cool when things are faster, but if you can saturate the link, downloads are still bottlenecked by the drives. And even 4k streaming is under 100Mbit normally.

A lot of devices that you commonly plug and unplug like flash drives and passkeys still make sense as USB-A for a lot of people because of the specifics of the USB spec.

C to A converters for devices are technically verboten since they would allow an enduser to make a A to A cable, which can fry hosts if you plug them into eachother if they don't support USB OTG. You can lose certification if you try to ship a device with a C to A converter.

Because of that, USB-A devices with an optional A to C converter (or neater devices that have both plugs on them natively) are what makes a lot of sense for a lot of people for the kinds of devices that live on a key chain. So it makes sense for that to be the default on the front of a desktop, IMO.

Most controller/headphone dongles come with USB-A, so 2.0 in the back makes sense. Radio for new steam controller is integrated.

I have a Y-splitter for my PS5 controllers and if I didn't, I would have had some sort of controller dock. I assume I would do the same for this. Either way, TV is too far from my couch for a cable, so I wanted to keep playing and charging I'd use a powerbank from my coffee table.

Gigabit Ethernet...that's sad, I'd take 2.5G, so I can better stream my legally ripped Blu-rays. I assume most people don't care because they would use Wi-Fi or their switch only goes to 1G. Better than JBL making android TV sound bar with 100mpbs.

I think it purposely designed, so you don't try to build a NAS on it.

mmm ...let's agree to disagree

I wired my whole place with 10Gb - couldn't do it in the wall (as in, hidden) so I have flat cables around the door frame and wall corners. I was willing to accept the cables, just to get 10Gb.

And, IMHO, it's worth it.

It would be a case if it had I/O like Mac mini. Like if it had TB3/TB4/USB4 somewhere, it doesn't.

> And even 4k streaming is under 100Mbit normally

Are you talking "4k streaming" as the current streaming providers do it, with trash bitrate, or "4k streaming" as you would do it if you had ripped your own blu-ray disks and you want to stream it from a NAS somewhere else in your house to your living room?

The extreme high quality blurays are going up to 144Mbps or so. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_HD_Blu-ray Still nowhere near a gigabit.

> I suspect most joysticks sold today come with a USB-C to USB-C cable

while things can be charged with USB-C cables, the only thing I've ever received A C-to-C cable is... a USB-C wall charger. Granted I haven't gotten a USB-C iPhhone yet and I gotta imagine that one is C-to-C.

Generally lots of pack-in cables I've seen in the wild for charging devices continue to be USB-A-to-C. Switch 2 ports are USB-A, PS5 front port is USB-A... we're still getting there.

The highest bitrate UHD Blu-ray supports is 144mbit/s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_HD_Blu-ray. A one gigabit NIC is not even close to the biggest compromise on this system.

Not sure what we're disagreeing about, I'm not saying it's not a useful thing to have just that most people don't have it and don't intend to have it so it's not a useful spec bump for Valve to spend money on.

I'm personally planning on going through the pain to get ethernet run (luckily I have both a basement and an attic so it should be fairly easy) in my house and if I ever build new there will be whatever is the best standard at the time in the walls (and maybe some dark fiber but I'm less sure on that) but I also know I'm a vast minority of users at the same time. I'm also in a pretty big minority having a >1 gig symmetrical pipe into my house to make a 10 gig connection to my devices actually worth while.

"the average bitrate for a 4K Blu-ray DVD can range between 48Mbps to 75Mbps. Some discs can also carry around 100Mbps or even 128Mbps, but these are more rare."

https://www.tomsguide.com/tvs/forget-streaming-services-here...

The steam controller also revealed has a USB-C, as does Hori's official steam controller.

However, you can charge it from things that aren't USB ports. Charging bricks are cheap and most people have one for their phone now, except some unfortunate old iPhone users

Steam input controller says nothing about the interface being used (USB A vs USB C). A single USB C (with DP support, I hope) port in 2026 sounds like a bad design.

I think the decision of usb2-a at the rear is for wireless keyboard and mouse adapters. Those ones can behave abnormally on usb3-a, plus it’s nice to have those ugly adapters out of sight.

I must have misunderstood - I prefer ethernet over wifi and I took your comment as more favourable towards wifi - in that case, my bad ^^

> bluetooth headset dongles

I imagine this has decent Bluetooth support out of the box even if not mentioned? Its hard to find a WiFi chipset these days that doesn't have some kind of Bluetooth support.

Maybe proprietary headset dongles, but if its just bluetooth its probably not needed.

I can download at approximately 2.5 Gbps from Steam on my PC.

I think not having a 2.5 gigabit port at least is a poor choice.

Yes but the cord it comes with will likely be a C to A cable. A lot of controllers have come with USB-C ports on them now but ship with C to A cables. Microsoft, Sony, 8Bitdo; all controllers I've gotten that have a C port but came with the usb-a for the PC/charger end.

My setup is far from my ideal one so I'm on wifi for a lot of things but I was just pointing out the business reasons they probably went with the 1 gig port, there's just not that many people who are looking for or could take advantage of a 1 gig port.

For controllers you can use any cable you want. The Xbox controller will charge just fine on a C-C cable. I don't think they should have gone all in on USB-C like laptops have, but there should have been more than one USB-C and one should have been on the front. Pretty much the only thing you need USB-A for these days is mice/keyboard with non removable cables. Which are becoming increasingly rare.

I agree that gigabit Ethernet is adequate for the type of product this is. But I do find it funny that the Wifi chip on this is very likely capable of 2Gbit. We somehow entered a world where WiFi is typically faster than Ethernet.

You could probably connect a 10gbit usb adapter to the USB-C port on this thing for this use case.

Of course you can swap cables or adapt. I was taking about the cables these devices come with.

I’m all about the USB-C lifestyle but PC gaming peripherals are still pretty dominated by USB-A.

What do you mean some how?

Most people can't or wont retrofit their homes with wired networking. Those that did in the last couple decades likely used cat5/e.

The demand in the consumer space definitely favours advances in wifi.

Games are super large nowadays. IIRC Steam uses P2P for the update downloads, so you should be able to saturate whatever link you have, and the SSD should be substantially faster than 1Gbps. So anyone that has a > 1Gbps internet connection should benefit from something higher than Gigabit.

Adapting A ports to C is much more convenient than going the other way. I have a whole sack of passive A to C dongles that stick out less than 1cm from the port.

there is almost no one who has multigigabit internet and even for people that do, you spend significantly less than 1 percent of your time on that device downloading. its a complete non issue. this device is a midrange at best pc, so having a gigabit connection is exactly where it should be. if you want to have the best of the best build a pc.

So you can theoretically download an AAA title like the new kingdom come at 84GB in just under 5 minutes instead of 11 min. That's cool and all, but does it actually matter? I mean, with games of those sizes you're going to spend hundreds of hours in the game most likely. It's an extremely first world problem that takes minutes, maybe once a month.