Steam Machine Review - Bad News.

This is the Steam Machine, and ever since they announced it last November, I've been so excited for this to come out because I love small form factor gaming systems.I've built many of them over the years, but they've never been able to do what this machine does.The Steam Machine delivers an amazing gaming desktop experience, as well as an amazing console experience, and something that I don't think any other system can pull off.So even the way you would boot it up, you pick up the controller, hit a button on it, and the machine wakes up, It'll automatically turn on a TV, it'll switch the TV to the right input, and then within seconds, your Steam library is on screen, ready to play.And it's got a very intuitive UI, there's no Windows 11 slop, and it's all run off a small, quiet cube that is powerful enough to play basically every game.It's powered by a semi -custom AMD chip.

It's got 16 gigs of RAM and 8 gigs of VRAM.Now, by default, games on the Steam machine are set to run at 1080p, and at that resolution, games run well.They feel smooth and frame rates are good.Valve claimed it would be about six times faster than a Steam Deck, and from my testing, that is fair.I am getting roughly five to six times the performance of the Steam Deck.

Now, you can always increase resolution and pump up graphic settings, depending on what you're trying to target, but out of the box, this thing delivers 60 frames per second or more for every single game that it tried, and that's without adjusting any settings.Now, back in November, Valve also made two other claims.

The first was that the hardware in the Steam Machine is equal to or better than 70 % of what people game on currently.So I went and looked at the most recent Steam hardware survey, And yeah, I think that holds up right now.The most common GPUs out there are 3060s and 4060s, and there's a big chunk of devices that are weaker than that, so it does seem that the Steam Machine is equal to, or better than, 70 % of the existing gaming hardware out there, at least according to Steam surveys.

Now the other claim that Valve made back in November was that you should be able to hit 4K60 on most Steam games using AMD's FSR, and

You can get there, like you can hit 4k 60, but often with the lowest presets and aggressive upscaling doing most of the work.Now depending on the game, image quality at 4k with FSR can look good in some games, but other games not so much.And same with ray tracing, this system is capable of ray tracing, but AMD's GPUs are typically not as good as Nvidia's GPUs when it comes to handling that kind of technology.So in general, I would set my expectations of this device as a 1080p machine.4k beast machine it's an excellent 1080p device and a big part of that comes from the fact that this only has 8 gigs of VRAM now this was a hardware decision or a hardware choice that was very contentious because 8 gigs is like the minimum so 8 gigs of VRAM is still the most common amount of VRAM on Steam and 1080p is still the most common resolution that people play in and you could argue that 8 gigs of RAM is enough for 1080p but it's at the cusp of of being enough because there are games that if you crank the graphic settings like if you want like higher textures more advanced textures It chokes at even 1080p resolution and who knows about the future, right?This is a system that's supposed to last several years I just feel like 8 gigs is literally the bare minimum and they just went with it native 1440p with higher textures can be rough on performance depending on the game and native 4k resolution is only going to be playable with very light titles, but at 1080p Fantastic system.

Now, it's a very quiet and energy -efficient system.I've had it running for hours with good temperatures and low fan noise.It's quieter than a PS5 or an Xbox for sure.And for a system this size with this kind of performance, the cooling system is very impressive.To open it up, it's just a few screws to remove, and once you do, you can see the massive heatsink that's in here, and also the big chunky fan on the back of the device that is moving the air.And because it's such a big fan, it doesn't have to spin so fast.

fast but to remove a relatively large amount of air and so the air will suck in from the front of the device as well as the bottom of the device and it sucks it through and then blows it out the back.And also if you look at the bottom here, you'll see that this is where the storage drive is.So if you ever need to replace it or upgrade it, you have that.Now, one thing I want to draw your attention to are the antennas.There are four antennas on this thing, and you might be thinking, why do I need a super sweaty Asian guy to show me antennas on a steam machine?It is very cool.

So there's a total of four.Two of them are for Wi -Fi, and they've positioned them very well.So there's one that runs the top like so this is the front of the device here and this would be the back towards me so there's a Wi -Fi antenna that runs along the side up to the top and there's another one that runs on the side and then there's kind of upper top but there's also two other antennas one is dedicated for Bluetooth connections so there's no interruption or interference with the Wi -Fi and And then a fourth one that is the antenna specifically for the Steam Controller.So this has internal hardware, so you don't need the puck or the dongle thing that normally comes with the Steam Controller to have to play with it.It just connects, you just connect a wire and it knows it does a little thing and then now you can just use the Steam Controller without any kind of dongle, which is not new in the console world, but is pretty cool.Kind of new in the PC gaming world.

I kind of like that It's just a cleaner setup now because these are all separated.I've noticed that the latency I mean the steam controller latency is already awesome but the Bluetooth controller latency if you've played with Bluetooth controllers and you have a download going and you just there's Often very often you can tell that there's interference and you will just you'll you'll work around it But because it's a separate controller connection, a separate antenna, it is a massive improvement for bluetooth controllers andoff of this system.When you disassemble it further, you can see that there are two RAM slots, so it's upgradable RAM, and if you flip that over, you can see the motherboard and the two chips, the CPU and the GPU.The front plate is magnetic, and let me just slot this back in real quick.The default plate is this black one here, and it attaches like so.

But in the two terabyte bundle box, it came with two other plates.There is a red one that is this red velvet looking plate, which I personally don't love, but depending on your decor, you might make this work.And I think it's the color of like the valve.I don't know, like that orangish reddish color that they have on their valve logo.And there's also this wooden plate that I actually like.This to me feels like if you have the right space for it, it could, it just looks better than the black.

But the fact that you can swap out plates so readily and so easily, you know that there's gonna be a ton of companies making cool things like this.I imagine skins.The dbrand companion cube is arguably the best thing out there.It's super cool and very well done.Now below the faceplate is this RGB strip.You can set up to this rainbow lighting thing or you can make it pulse, you can make it super bright, you can kill it.

And when you're downloading stuff, it works as a progress bar.The IO ports work like a regular regular PC because it is a regular PC.If you want to set this thing up as your very tiny gaming desktop, it works wonderfully for that.Just plug up your mouse and keyboard and let it rip.There's USB -C in the back, but this is not Thunderbolt.It's just regular USB -C connection.

Now this, at the front, has a microSD slot, and if you pop it out, you'll see there's a little card.You can pull this out from your Steam Deck, with all your games and just throw it in.There's no configuration or anything necessary.It just automatically reads it as your game drive.So Steam Machine, very cool.However, we need to talk about its price.

When this thing was announced in November, I estimated it to be a $17 ,000.That's what I thought it would be based on what the market was at the time.It is not that price.This has an official price tag of $1 ,049 US for the base model with 512 gigs of storage.There's a 2TB version as well as bundled versions for both of these.Now, my first reaction when I found out the price, and keep in mind, I'd been testing this thing for about a week before they landed on a price and let me know, but when I found out I was like, what?

1049 for a system that has 8 gigs of VRAM, like that seems crazy.

And it was just so much higher than what I was like hoping and expecting it to be.And I just immediately looked into the cost of building your own.And right now it does seem like it would be a similar cost to go that route.

And to be fair, Valve had said right off the rip that they were not trying to target console pricing as much as we wanted to, they were trying to target desktop pricing.Now, there are a bunch of advantages if you have a Your own like custom build right you can control your budget if you want a more expensive gpu you want more vram You can do all that and you can trim back on stuff that you don't need like if you have a drive of your own You can just do it and adjust your budget and it's a fully upgradable system There's obviously a bunch of advantages, but the one thing the big thing that you'll never have, that the Steam Machine does have, is the tuning.Valve has dialed in the CPU, the operating system, the drivers, the firmware, all of it for this specific hardware configuration.So all the power management, the fan curves, the sleep -wake, the way that the controllers interact, like the controller settings, all of it is done in advance.But the best part is the settings of the game.So, the first time you load up into a game, the developer has already set up a graphics... like setting that they think is like ideal and Valve has verified it for this system because there's only one hardware configuration with 16 gigs of RAM, 8 gigs of VRAM with this performance so that the developers are aware of this exact hardware configuration.

They tune a setting to that and they're like this is the profile that the steam machines will boot up with so that the moment you play You don't have to mess with any of that stuff Now if you're a PC gamer and you like messing around that we take this stuff for granted, right?We are so used to that like we were born in the craziness of like having to adjust a thousand things before you even play but for a ton of my friends and my kids they look at that stuff and they're like Ew!Like, can we just play Nintendo Switch instead?Because I don't have to mess with that.So, I look at this and I'm like, this is so amazing.This is transformative, because now you have a desktop thing that the enthusiasts can still mess around with if we want.

But if you don't care for it, if you don't know how to mess around with settings and tweaking things, it just goes into the system, it boots it up automatically, it's detected by the whole thing, and it just plays.perfectly with great graphics and great frame rate and Like maybe I'm overthinking this but this to me Changes the way that PC gaming is because this has never existed before on a desktop the Steam Deck could do it But that's a handheld this is the first and I think the only system that could do it because you need to have a hardware Configuration that is locked and no one else can customize because the moment you have customizable hardware now You can't do that Right?You have to - you can only do this if it's a locked hardware configuration, and this is it.And this is why the experience is so console -like, that if you just don't want to mess around with nerdy sweaty stuff, this can do it.But if you built your own system, even if you match the hardware one -to -one somehow, I don't think you'd be able to pull it off.Also, if you built your own system, you couldn't get something this small and this performant and this quiet.

together, like I just don't think that'd be possible.You would need custom hardware for it.Okay, there's two other things I want to mention about the price.So the first is, if you look at the price, it's $1049, which if you think about it from the psychological perspective is so much worse than the simple $999.I'm sure Valve would have loved to be able to hitthat $9 .99 price point, you know, it's below $1 ,000.

I think that the pricing was so tight for them that they couldn't just make $9 .99 work and they had to go with the much less attractive $10 .49.The other thing is that I think Valve is so aware of how sensitive the pricing around this product is that they even released a statement about all like the component pricing and all that stuff, but they also have this thing about like why they don't want to subsidize.And maybe there's merit to it, their whole stance is that If you subsidize a product like this, it just makes the ecosystem more closed and it prevents other companies from being able to make hardware like this.It's a whole thing.And in their defense, you know, maybe there is merit to it.But if you, you know, if this thing was cheap enough, and it was like below the cost of what it was, it was like a subsidized product.

I think many people would just buy this as like, Windows desktop or like a Linux desktop and not even play games on it, which would be weird, but That would be the natural tendency of people, right?Okay So you might think based on the title this video that this is the bad news that the pricing is the bad news It is not because I don't think that this is overpriced It is expensive much more expensive than we were hoping and expecting to be but I don't think it's overpriced all things considered So what is the bad news Dave?You might be asking.All right, so Here it is.Because of the supply constraints of components, they were saying that they can't even get some of the components to just have the quantities that they're trying to get.I think it'll be extremely difficult for people to get this thing.

The quantities are so limited that Valve is running, like, this raffle -based system where you, like, submit your email and they pick out winners to have the privilege of buying this thing.I've never seen a hardware launch in the gaming space that has been this supply limited.Like, they're saying that they're gonna have to go to the end of the year and into the next to be able to fill out that first batch of orders.It's crazy.So, yes, Steam Machine.If you're looking for one, if this fits your budget, it's definitely worth it.

It's just extraordinarily difficult to get, it seems.

Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video.