Aug 17, 2026, 11:00 AMSince I've been in the queue for getting a Steam Controller for quite some time I never imagined I would get accepted into the Steam Machine one this year and added myself into the list "just in case", but got the e-mail yesterday and I'm not really sure. Really overpriced but tempting at the same time, anyone has one and want to talk me out of it (or into it?).
@djlink Do you have a specific use case for it? E.g. do you have a place to put it where no other device makes sense? Do already you own a Steam Deck with a dock?
I really love the Steam Machine, its design, the smallness and silent cooling, as well as its value for Linux gaming. But i cannot justify the purchase, because i don't know what to do with it. We live in a 100 m2 condo with wife and 2 kids. Our (wife's+mine) powerful gaming-PCs are in the living room and my Steam Deck is connected to the TV (for playing Minecraft with the older kid). I just don't know where i should
put it. It's redundant to my Steam Deck on the TV, it's not powerful enough to replace my gaming PC. And the kids don't need an own PC yet (neither of them cant even read).
And for just the funsies? TOO expensive.
Aug 17, 2026, 11:28 AM@beejay I don't have a Steam Deck, and connected to the TV I would use I have a Switch 2. my only PC atm is my work pc which is on a desk, honestly my PC digital game collection is bigger than consoles but I rarely have the "stamina" to be around the desk after work hours.
@djlink Oh, that sounds like a great reason to get one! I kiiiind of wish i was in your situation to justify it for myself :D
Could you imagine gaming more on the TV? (i don't) Are you fine with 1080p gaming scaled to your possibly existing 4k TV? (i would)
Do you prefer having a modular PC system which you can upgrade or the small and cute, super efficient relatively low-spec of the Steam Machine? (I'd first try with the Steam Machine and switch to a different, more powerful self-built system if there would be the need)
Do you play more "Controller" than "mouse-and-keyboard"-games? I play a lot of mouse-and-keyboard-stuff, so this could never be my "main gaming"-machine.
In short:
Is it powerful enough for your needs?
Do you want a gaming console or a gaming-PC?
Aug 17, 2026, 11:45 AM@beejay I think I would be fine with 1080p/1440p because last gen I was on Switch 1 and PS4 (although I guess Even my work PC I rarely update them incrementally, usually I let them be until "it's time", current work PC is starting it's 6th year, with a 9y old GPU. I imagine the next time I update will be complete, unless it's astronomically expensive and I can only go for CPU etc. Or maybe I'm trying to talk myself into getting one regardless xD
@djlink I mean, if you want to upgrade your "work"😉-PC anyways, you could use that one for graphically intense games and do the rest on the Steam Machine. I think it's a great piece of hardware, where much of the price goes to the compactness. You could also use a Silverstone SG13 and build your own Steam Machine which would be cheaper or more powerful for the same price.
In your case I'D go for a Steam Machine, simply to support the idea of it. It has way more soul and uniqueness than just a compact gaming PC. It's perfect to turn on and play a chaotic round of Overcooked, "It Takes Two" or Mortal Kombat with a friend. Or Dark Souls or Forza Motorsport or any other console game (until PS2 i would guess). You'll love it :)
Aug 17, 2026, 12:09 PM@beejay yeah, and the compactness of it, and there's tons of pc-only indie games I'm yet to play
@djlink Go for it. And tell us how u like it. :)
Aug 17, 2026, 12:39 PM@beejay will do
Aug 17, 2026, 11:30 AM@djlink It seems like a product where the second gen device will be a much better value and all round product that becomes genuinely "good enough" to play most games on a TV. Also should happen after RAM price nonsense ends so will be much better + priced sanely.
(I realise I also said "wait for 2nd gen" about the Steam Deck back in the day and those internals are still basically unchanged today. But I don't think I'm wrong just because Valve have failed to iterate past a new screen.)
Aug 17, 2026, 11:39 AM@shivoa probably yes. While I'm not tempted in buying RAM now for work PC before it gets more expensive, I also don't think it will get to better prices in the next few years, I think this will be bad for several years.
Aug 17, 2026, 11:48 AM@djlink My pessimistic outlook is that memory chip vendors have made more money in the last 18 months than they did in the previous 40 years combined & will not want to go back to the previous norm (so want to fix a new higher price, lower volume world of personal computing devices).
My optimistic view is that we can't keep on going like this and the threat of China's Project 2035 smashing into profiteers (+ AI bubble pop) will drive down prices in the next 2-3 years, back to sustainable levels.
Aug 17, 2026, 11:53 AM@shivoa yeah, unfortunately considering they are already announcing they sold all the stock for next 2 years I think they want to keep up the prices high as much as possible, artificially or not
Aug 17, 2026, 11:56 AM@djlink Or did they "sell" them, just like Sam Altman wrote a letter of intent to buy 40% of the memory chips for server farms he is never going to build funded by paper money that isn't real investments from other AI players (who are all pretending the same dollar bouncing round the corporate bank accounts makes for a trillion dollars of total investment)?
I could see their "already sold out" changing as soon as the AI bubble actually pops and AI datacentres are as popular as superfund sites.
@djlink I have one and I really like it. I've had my Steam Deck connected to the TV for the last few years and it's basically that but more powerful and extremely quiet.
But I also don't have a lot of other reference points, my PC is ~15 years old, and I only buy Nintendo stuff otherwise.
If you're looking for a console experience, we're not there yet, you will run into some issues. But if the idea of a pre-hacked console sounds appealing, that lets you tweak whatever you want, then you might have a lot of fun with it (it can get a bit overwhelming though, especially if you're new to Linux gaming…).
Aug 17, 2026, 5:05 PM@hirnsushi have you run into any “oh this runs like garbage” situation? All I hear/read is performance is terrible. I don’t hear s lot of high demanding games but i would probably
Start looking into some stuff like FF7 remake, upcoming Gears etc, I don’t need 4k but I wonder if this is just slightly above S Deck and the cap is quite quick
@djlink if you keep the settings at default, stuff usually works just fine, but I'm currently playing through my backlog from oldest -> newest, so my experience with very new AAA releases is very limited.
My somewhat current racing games all run at a stable 1080p/60 level with all graphic settings maxed, older games / indie games usually at higher resolutions without problems.
I'm quite happy with the power for my usecase, but you're definitly overpaying for the power you're getting, this thing only makes sense for people with large Steam libraries who don't own a current gen console.
If you decide to get one, don't set the default game resolution to 4K or something, keep it at 1080p, you can increase it for individual games.
Also one thing to look out for, don't enable fullscreen in games, windowed is better, some titles reeeeally take a giant performance hit from that.
Lonely Mountains Downhill, a little indie game I play a lot, caused the fan to spin up to a level that no other game has managed so far (it really is completely silent most of the time), but works fine in 4K if it's not set to fullscreen.
Aug 17, 2026, 5:47 PM@hirnsushi windowed mode on the tv even at 1080p?
@djlink It's never actually windowed, the games run in their own compositor, if you toggle between windowed / fullscreen in-game, nothing changes, it's always fullscreen, looks exactly the same.
But for some reason, some games treat running fullscreen differently, and that hurts performance.
No idea why, but I've seen it myself a few times, so I set them to windowed (which often is the default anyway).
I've seen that mentioned in PCGamingWiki a few times as well, so this doesn't seem to be a SteamOS/Linux specific problem :Blobhaj_Thinking:
Aug 17, 2026, 6:29 PM@hirnsushi ah got it, thanks for the tip
@djlink I got mine about two weeks ago, and so far I really like it. The controller is really nice (got one with controller bundled), it's super silent, performance is decent with everything I tried so far. There aren't many demanding AAA titles in my pile of shame though.
And the desktop mode is always just a few clicks away. I plan to use it for living room audio/video streaming 'n stuff a lot. I primarily used the PS5 for that before, which hasn't been as convenient.
Aug 18, 2026, 5:58 AM@code_disaster cool, thanks for the info. I ordered it so let’s see how it goes. Also a friend told me he’d keep it in case I regret so I can test with a backup plan