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Comment by phantasmish

9 hours ago

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.

24 comments

phantasmish

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andoando  5 hours ago

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

  • baggachipz  5 hours ago

    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.

    • theshackleford  5 hours ago

      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.

  • foresto  3 hours ago

    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.

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

    If comparing this device to other pre-built systems, consider that this one is likely to be a first class target for game developers, while others are not.

  • eptcyka  5 hours ago

    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.

    • andoando  4 hours ago

      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.

  • remir  4 hours ago

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

  • notatoad  1 hour ago

    i've spent plenty of time building custom PCs, but life changes and that's really not something i have any interest in doing any more.

    there's plenty of people who just want to play games without researching what CPU and video card to buy.

  • rbits  4 hours ago

    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.

  • archagon  3 hours ago

    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.

torginus  8 hours ago

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.

  • phantasmish  8 hours ago

    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.