The Steam Machine

So I have been absent a while but I have a good excuse! I have been super busy...oh, and I got a Steam Machine. Not just any machine, either: the 2TB version with Steam controller. Yes, that means an infinite number of PC master race guys who can build their own micro PC out of spare parts are agonized at my purchase.

My first comment on the Steam Machine after owning it for about a month now is that it makes gaming much easier by simply providing a very close facsimile to a console gaming experience, with the Valve touch. Having an extensive collection of Steam games in my library means I could immediately start testing it out, and I have tried out a lot of games on it now, and even finished a few. I sat for years on The Callisto Protocol, for example, and restarted that game in the "minimum security" mode (old dad with bad reflexes mode), and ploughed through the campaign over a weekend.

The main bugaboo I see about the Steam Machine online, besides proficient PC gamers who like to assemble their own machines arguing it has no merit on price, is the idea that Valve over-promised on its 4K resolution capabilities. I don't know if this is true or not; I didn't really expect it to be 4K ready for all games with the specs given at time of ordering, and the actual machine likes to default to 1920X1080 resolution, but I generally favor 2K resolution myself to optimize for performance even though my monitors are all 4K OLED beasts. I have pushed several games up to 2K resolution without needing to dampen down other stats and the net result is some great performance. On the other hand my eyes are old and tired, and in a couple cases I noticed that after playing a bit I'd go into a game's settings to mess around with it and realize some games would default to 720p resolution for no good reason. This thing runs most stuff just fine at 1080p or 2K resolution with plenty of high specs turned on.

My enjoyment of the Steam Machine is at least partially due to the new Steam Controller, which is now my preferred controller due to its comfortable design and the fact that virtually all games I have tried work just fine with it, no tweaking or modifying necessary. I love this controller, and I am keeping my preorder for a stand-alone so I can have two Steam Controllers hooked up for those rare couch co-op games out there.

Anyway, all the youtube videos on this that complain about the price to performance on the Steam Machine have been a wake up call to me that the target audience is not an enthusiast PC gamer who already has a beast of a machine and likes playing at his desk, and certainly not those guys who build their own machines. They are another market. Now, you may have other good hardware and maybe even a nice desktop (I do), and just enjoy technology for what it is; you might (like me) find the Steam Machine a cool device to get just to admire how tiny its form factor is relative to its output. If you are not the kind of gamer to run out and build your own machine then you are likely aware that despite the complaints about cost, if you go online there are a lot of much, much more expensive prebuilts out there these days due to the spike in RAM and GPU prices.....and if you want a machine in 2026, Steam Machine is a very competent gaming rig with a very nice Linux-based console polish. You could do a lot worse than to get this, and while yes you can probably find some cheaper gaming laptops out there with lower specs, or even an occasional low spec desktop, I would be surprised if those actually have competitive performance with what the Steam Machine has to offer. 

Another comparison that goes around is Steam Machine vs. PS5 Pro or Xbox Series X. I will only suggest that when you decide which one of these to go get, that you are electing to buy in to the gaming ecosystem of either Sony, Valve or Microsoft. If I had to pick the least anti-consumer of the three it is obviously Valve. Someone please be ready to cryo-freeze Gabe Newell! Yes, you can save some cash by buying an Xbox or a PS5, but I have both as well and I would take the Steam environment any day of the week over the other two. Long term savings include not having to pay into their passes to gain access to online play, as a good example....and if you want free games, you can go into the Linux desktop mode and use the Heroic Launcher to add storefronts like GOG and Epic, which loves to hand out free titles. If I had to suggest Xbox or PS5, I would lean to Xbox right now as having the better overall game pass option vs. PS5. You also still get the widest selection of games and the best overall pricing on the Steam storefront.

So what games have I tested and found run great on the Steam Machine so far? Well, games that ran well at 1080p and 2K resolution with medium or high settings, and older games maxed out, include: 

The Callisto Protocol (played and finished on the Steam Machine)

Beast of Reincarnation (I really like this game; at lower res it looked washed out, but I found it ran the game at 2K resolution on high just fine)

Stellar Blade (works great!)

Path of Exile II (really looks good and plays great on the Steam Machine)

Batman Arkham Knight (maxed out settings and resolution)

Wanted: Dead (ran at 1080p had fun, but a rather frustrating game even on easy mode)

Forsaken Realms: Vahrin's Call (indie gem ran great on 1080p high)

Fallout 4 (ran great at 1080p and 2K, and despite having the anniversary pack I had no issues no matter what all the Steam reviewers claim)

Total Chaos (ran great, still can't quite grok the vibe of this game. Is it survival horror, or Doom-like with fewer useful pickups?)

AI Limit (ran great, but I good example of a nice looking low graphical stress game)

Atomfall (ran extremely well at medium-high settings and up to 2K)

Burnout Paradise Remastered (cranked up to max as this is not a demanding game)

Need For Speed Hot Pursuit (maxed out settings)

Hunted: The Demon's Forge (cranked up to 4K max settings looked great; I love this obscure game btw)

Steel Seed (ran great on 1080p high)

Diablo IV (ran great! Blizzard knows how to optimize for everything)

The Division 2 (ran well at 1080p, forgot to test at 2K)

Dirt 5 (ran great!)

Lost Souls Aside (surprisingly ran very well, enough that I played far enough along to start appreciating the game)

Horizon Zero Dawn Forbidden West (this ran exceptionally well!)

Crimson Desert (looked fine at 1080p but I think this is an example of a current gen game that benefits from more performant machines)

Routine (ran great!)

Prodeus (maxed out ran great!)

So how about games that did not run so well? Well I have only encountered a few, as follows:

Avowed - this game looked bad and ran with a lot of stuttering, and while I tweaked it a bit to where the framerate was decent it still looked washed out and unpleasant. The experience was subpar. In defense of the Steam Machine I have had issues with this game on my bigger rig with a 5070TI card as well.

STALKER 2 Heart of Chornobyl - weird artficating made the game unpleasant to look at.  It seemed to run fine, but nothing I tweaked in the settings got rid of the sparkly haze over half the screen.

Call of Duty Black Ops (original one) - would not run, although it claims to be machine ready.

So! Pretty good overall so far. A lot of the games I am currently playing run great on the Steam Machine, and others I have not yet tried on it seem to work well per the many Youtubers out there. Overall I have to say, if you find any of these criteria meet your needs, you may want to consider a Steam Machine purchase:

--do not want to build your own machine

--love the tiny form factor

--love a console-like experience while still being a real PC

--Would like a easy way to explore Linux on a machine designed for it

--Prefer the long term benefit of the more consumer-friendly and lower cost Steam ecosystem over console ecosystems

--have shopped around for other prebuilts and realized they are damned expensive no matter what the PC builder guys says

--happen to already have or want an excuse to build up a steam game collection

Then the Steam Machine might fit you well! For me? Solid A, I am loving this machine and will get (hopefully) years of play out of it before I need to upgrade. 

A Couple Notes on storage and expansion:

1. Expanding the memory onboard with the MicroSD slot is easy. If you are worried about running games from a MicroSD, or load times, don't; for whatever reason these things work great in the Linux/SteamOS environment. I did drop a Micro Express SD card into the Machine, though that might be overkill.

2. All information I have read suggests that adding memory to this thing or upgrading the SSD is a royal pain in the ass due to the compact design. I have also watched videos suggesting it is probably not worth it. Given how good the performance has been, I do not feel the need to upgrade. And since I got the 2 TB model I feel pretty well set with it.

3. I also plugged an external 1TB SSD I had handy into the back USB C port, and it also runs games from the SSD just fine. I used to use it with my main desktop anyway before I upgraded the internal M.2 drive in that one to a 2TB and 6TB model (thankfully over a year ago before this stuff skyrocketed in price).

4. I am currently using a plugged in mouse and keyboard with it but I tried it with bluetooth mouse and keyboard and it worked great.

Reviewing the Alienware Steam Machine i7

My wife picked up a Black Friday special for me (ironic, yes): the Dell-made Alienware Steam Machine i7, which went on sale for $375 at Gamestop. After a harrowing journey in which UPS seemed to lose it, and asserted to us the machine had been stolen, the Steam Machine mysteriously appeared.

This machine is 1/2 the size of an Xbox One
and about 60% the size of the PS4

I can't recommend the Steam Machine as it was intended....which is a Linux-based platform operating on SteamOS... for two reasons: first, it would hang on the intro screen and refuse to boot up properly; this seems to be a common issue that is a real pain for Steam Machine owners, based on my own googling. Second, it didn't really matter, because I had no intention of suffering through the SteamOS environment with the medicore lineup of Linux-compatible titles, so I picked up a copy of Windows 10 and reformatted the system anyway.

Now I have a Windows 10-based Micro PC that is more powerful than my two gaming consoles (PS4 and Xbox One), smokes my old Core i5 in terms of performance, and is half the size of both consoles....it's tiny! It also runs silently....especially compared to my wife's own rig, which is a very expensive Xidax monstrosity she picked up two years ago and which sounds at times like a jet engine taking off.

Anyway....if you've ever seen one of these Steam Machines and wondered what their value was, I just have to say that so far (one week in) it's been an amazing experience, and well worth it once you kill the Linux/SteamOS and boot it over to Windows 10. If you read online most of the advice is about trying to set it up for a dual-boot format, presumably for gamers who have some vested (or technical) interest in keeping the Steam Machine with it's intended OS, but the fact is the thing runs great with Win 10--and as a result dramatically increases the number of games you can actually play on the PC.

Now that I have this machine it really makes my PS4 and Xbox One look kinda....redundant. The Xbox One is now back to the status of "Game Console I own so I can play Halo" and PS4 is the device I play Destiny on. Sony and Microsoft just don't have enough exclusives to make their devices stand out once you have a superior gaming PC....and Microsoft's concerted effort to make all of their first-party titles cross-platform compatible on the Xbox One and the PC means I can now load Horizon 3 and Gears of War 4 on my PC and enjoy them there.

I learned to hate the disc on the right. And the one on the left might 

suck too, but I spent too much time loathing its buddy to notice.

The one downer in this package is the Steam Controller. The Steam Controller is an interesting but failed concept, an effort to make a tactile interface on the controller that reacts to your touch/pressure. It replaced one of two analog sticks with one of these touch-based discs, and the result, while not bad for navigating the cursor without a mouse, is utterly terrible for first and third person shooter experiences. I could see it being potentially useful for RTS type games, or games that don't require lots of precision control over a character, but my efforts to adjust to it so far have been miserable.

My preferred controller remains the one for the PS4, which I am pleased to see is getting a lot more compatibility and support from current game titles, so it runs great on PC with, say, Titanfall 2 and Doom (both of which I grabbed for PC on sale.)

Anyway, if you find a second generation Alienware Steam Machine i7 or a first generation version with Windows already on it, and you happen to like the idea of a micro PC smaller than a console with more power than what the Big Two currently have on offer, then I suggest grabbing one. At the price my wife paid for this one it was a complete steal.

SOLID A! Would have been A+ with Windows 10 pre-installed and a better controller packed in.

(And yes, this is the reason I've been posting less in the last few days....)

UPDATE: You know I was thinking some basic stats might be useful to people. Here's the scoop:

USB Info: There are two front USB 2.0 ports and two rear 3.0 ports. The 3.0 ports really are blazingly fast. I have my SSD externals hooked up to the back, so I have 3TB of active storage on this machine now, and run many games from the externals. 

Drive Support: There is no disc reader/writer, so if you want to be able to play DVDs or Blue Rays you'll need to keep that in mind.

Graphics Card: The on-board graphics card is, to the best of my knowledge, not something you can replace. However for the price I paid I expect to be able to upgrade anyway down the road. 

Also, Bluetooth: this thing connects effortlessly to my bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Adding this device dramatically decreased the number of wires and plug-ins littering my workspace.