Steam Machine

A bit too sparse on details.

- No price

- No indication for whether the CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD are upgradable or all soldered together on the board.

- "4K gaming at 60 FPS with FSR" but doesn't mention what kind of games it can run at that quality.

- No performance benchmarks, or mention of what the equivalent retail CPU/GPU to their custom one is.

At face value this seems like a $500-600 PC, and that's also the price it would be able to compete with consoles at.

8GB VRAM + 4K + FSR3 is very tough situation. Basically bit better than an Xbox Series S but quickly outpaced by midrange PCs.

It will all come down to the price.

Yeah non-upgradable 8GB VRAM would make it a no-go for all but the most casual gamers. But then the casual gamers would rather buy a PS5 for the same price, so let's see where this one fits in.

The size here is actually important too. I think the PS5 is monstrously large and ugly. I do not want it in my living room.

If this little box is roughly PS5 power and reasonably priced (we shall see) then that might hit just right.

It's soldered on the board, Gamers Nexus has already reviewed it: https://youtu.be/bWUxObt1efQ?t=591

Yeah, gemini gives $649 - $699 for BOM, $749+ if they want some margin from the hardware. Which is cheaper than most "Gaming PC", but still more expensive than Switch/PS5, and lack the expandability of PC.

I wish they could sell at $300-$500, that's really going to make this a must have for this year.

There are some early previews where people ran some actual games at it[0].

Here are some of their results:

> In Cyberpunk 2077, running at 4K, it’s a surprisingly stable 60fps, albeit with the caveat of that using FSR 3 upscaling on Performance mode with Medium quality settings. But, also: basic ray tracing, something the Deck can’t even think about enabling outside of very specific games.

> The next game I tested, Black Myth: Wukong, is best run with its own RT effects switched off. Still, it also averaged around 60fps on otherwise similar settings: Performance-level FSR 3 upscaling to 4K, plus the Medium quality preset. And, in an almost unnerving repeat performance, Silent Hill f ran close enough to a solid 60fps (with most drops owed to Unreal Engine 5’s signature stuttering) on the Performance-level graphics settings and, once again, FSR 3 running on Performance mode.

[0] https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/hands-on-with-the-new-steam...

They already own the PC market. This seems more like a play to start to introduce Steam towards more of the console market.

And for that, assuming a reasonable price, it looks like a nice attempt. Certainly much better than last time.

> In Cyberpunk 2077, running at 4K, it’s a surprisingly stable 60fps, albeit with the caveat of that using FSR 3 upscaling on Performance mode with Medium quality settings

So it's not running at 4K nor 60fps. I wish people would stop calling 1080p upscale through some dogshit filter as "4K"...

> No indication for whether the CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD are upgradable or all soldered together on the board.

Almost certainly. This is the direction the industry is heading, and the perverse unavailability of high-end discrete graphics cards is the nail in the coffin.

See also the Framework PC.

It's basically a more powerful Steam Deck that's connected to a TV. The games will be "verified" and the settings pre-tuned for ideal performance just like the Steam Deck. They did a good job making the most of mediocre hardware in the Deck.

My initial thoughts were that this thing would cost considerably more, but I'm looking at the specs and it might not be too bad. Maybe it'll start at $499 or $599 and go up $749 or $849. I'm guessing SoC and not easily upgraded. It says Zen4 so it won't be Strix Point/Halo, but maybe some bastard variation with a Zen4 core and newer GPU than the Deck.

Yeah it's confirmed solderd and not-upgradable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWUxObt1efQ&t=591s

Consoles frequently get better performance than an equivalent pc because companies optimize for that specific hardware.

Frame becoming a mainstream device (compared to any random combination of components) might make a difference that way.

Using the deck prices seems like a good place to start unless they're using the opportunity to change strategy. It's an updated SoC, but minus a screen, battery, separate dock, built-in controller, and less pressure to pack it in a handheld chassis. They mention a built in wireless adapter for the controller, so I assume there will be bundles with and without a controller.

> "No indication for whether the CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD are upgradable or all soldered together on the board"

With 99.9% certainty this box is carrying on the legacy of the Deck and the Deck OLED, which means that it has a 100% custom crafted SoC with soldered components. Which also means they also could perform some trickery not found in "normal" PCs, like UDMA and custom interface.

> "but doesn't mention what kind of games it can run at that quality."

According to the specs it has a custom RDNA 3 chip w/ 28 CUs and boost clock at 2.45Ghz. The Playstation 5 has a custom RDNA 2 chip w/ 36 CUs @ 2.23 GHz and the Xbox Series X has a custom RDNA2 2 chip w/ 52 CUs @ 1.83Ghz.

Given the optimizations AMD made in RDNA 3 (the "budget" 9070XT can easily keep up with the prev gen "enthousiast" 9700XTX) I could make a safe bet it's on the same level of performance as a Playstation 5

> "No performance benchmarks, or mention of what the equivalent retail CPU/GPU to their custom one is."

~7600X, ~RX7700, but like I noted earlier that's meaningless because the overall architecture of the hardware in this box is likely completely incomparable with a generic PC (just like with XBX and PS5, by the way)

We do have an indication. The RAM and SSD are both upgradable. The RAM is SODIMM, and storage is NVME

I would call it TV 4k, not monitor 4k. FSR looks just fine from across the room.

All my friends have moved on to PC, and I don't really want to build a $1000 minimum computer with crazy LEDs that takes up a ton of space with a monitor at this point in my life. And SteamDeck doesn't support KB+M well.

I have no qualms about couch gaming with a KB+M if I can do it with my friends and my already extensive Steam library. Unless they completely drop the ball on this, I'm in.

They said it's semi-custom discrete not a custom SoC. So basically it's a Ryzen 7400 + Radeon 7400.

I agree 100%. However, the upscaling is pretty good. You can tell it's not 4K, but it's also considerably better than simple bilinear resampling from 1080p.

I was close :)

> and I don't really want to build a $1000 minimum computer with crazy LEDs that takes up a ton of space with a monitor at this point in my life.

The beauty of a PC is you can build whatever you want. It doesn't need to be large, and doesn't need to have LEDs. There are plenty of small form factor cases on the market with the same footprint as this one.

The Steam Machine is smaller than any case that would be considered mainstream in the small form factor community, at least to my knowledge. The FormD T1 is around 10L for example, and would look almost comically large compared to the Steam Machine.

And enthusiast cases like this are often quite expensive and not easy to get. Then you need to think about thermals, and find hardware that actually fits.

You can approach it form another angle and treat it more like a NUC and get a SoC but then you're probably not going to get close in terms of gaming performance.

So long story short: I disagree that it would be straight forward to build something like this on your own, at the same price point.

Would this be capable of utilizing the ray/path tracing many games have now?

According to [1], the RAM and SSD are upgradable.

* 16GB DDR5 SODIMM (upgradeable)

* M.2 2230/2280 NVMe SSDs

[1] https://www.eurogamer.net/steam-machine-everything-we-know-a...

How are you declaring it not possible "at the same price point" when the price of this isn't even announced?

I feel the same way, it has to be priced in the range of gaming console rather than gaming PC.

Yep, but you need to put insane amounts of research into figuring out which GPUs and CPU coolers can fit your small case...

And then you get your case and mobo and PSU and maybe CPU and your budget is already at over 1000€ and you still need a GPU.

7900XTX not 9700XTX which didn’t exist.

9070XT is RDNA4 not RDNA3 and steam machine has 28CU’s on RDNA3 which is same as RX7400 the bottom of the range RDNA3.

The 7900XTX has 84 and 24GB of VRAM.

This is a strictly entry level last gen GPU, don’t expect miracles.

The hardware is not good unless the price is very cheap.

As for the 7900XTX been enthusiast only in the sense it it was the top of the line from AMD it’s about 4080 in some areas and loses badly in others (ray tracing), price wise it wasn’t far of the 9070XT price wise at launch.

I have a 7900XTX I like it a great deal but the 4090/5080 and 5090 crush it and the 90’s are enthusiast both on price and perf.

I ended up with a 7900XTX because nvidia pissed me off on Linux one time too many otherwise I’d have gotten the 4090 but between kernel installs causing pain (nothing insurmountable) and them straight breaking power management for nearly a year on mature hardware, nah, AMD deserved the sale, they really do support Linux better.

This is a fairly low spec device. You can comfortably fit all the hardware, case, PSU, cooling etc. in a $600-700 budget. If you want to go small form factor then it'll cost a bit extra, but not that much extra.

It's essentially an RX 7600, roughly. It's not quite 'the most casual gamer', but it isn't super amazing. But... neither is the steam deck, and steam deck flies off the shelves.

I would reach out to those friend for freebie parts.

Steam Deck has a RDNA 2 chip which supports ray tracing (since it happily runs Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which has a hard requirement for ray tracing) so I guess it will .

If that's the case I think it's a hugely positive thing, and has gone away for newly bought hardware for a variety of reasons over the past decade. Having a basic PC and then upgrading it with a GPU used to be a realistic route to a respectable gaming PC, but I think that's largely gone away now (partially due to the death of the general "home PC" or many being on laptops. There are bargains to be had in the used market, but that comes with a lot of asterisks.

If they can get this to a large market I think it's great value, not just as a console-model PC but because a full featured desktop without lockdown is so near. It's a reverse of where I've thought MS missed a trick with the xbox, add a keyboard and mouse and let users have turn on a sandboxed lightweight desktop mode then funnel users to get software through their store, which would have been a great way to get xbox hardware installed in houses (especially the cheap S models) during covid when there was a sudden rush to buy PCs for home working that previously didn't need it.

This is targeted at the living room, but I'd love to see non-gaming uses highlighted and get the equivalent of 'deck certified' whether that's linux native or efforts into working well under wine.

Quite a lot of actual casual games, things you'd see in the indie or "cosy"/stardew valley-like genre only release on PC, or they take years to come to the Switch but nothing else. I see a lot of casual gamers getting the Steam Deck just because it's has the best selection of casual games.

For casual games even the steam deck can run most of them at 4k 60fps

I feel like these are the only things worth upgrading even in a desktop too. Unless you are the kind of person who buys the new CPU every year, upgrading anything in a desktop usually means replacing almost everything.

Every time I've looked at upgrading a part in my PC it's been the case where the CPU socket has changed, memory has changed to the next number of DDR, etc so it's basically just buying a new one of everything but the storage, psu, and case.

There are absolutely cases where I've wished I could upgrade the storage in devices though.