The announcement of the Steam Machine's price arrived with a thud thanks to the over-$1,000 tag and even Valve is disappointed it's living room gaming PC ended up costing so much as a result of RAMaggedon. However, there is some good news, especially for those who don't mind a little building.
In an interview with The Verge, Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais confirmed that you can build your own Steam Machine with SteamOS as the desktop operating system. "Starting with the SteamOS 3.8 release, you can put together your own Steam Machine using whatever PC parts you want.”
Griffais said that Valve is working to improve SteamOS to be more compatible with a variety of desktop hardware, including Nvidia graphics cards eventually. He said that Valve is collaborating closely with Nvidia, though support might not come this year.
Technically, if you run an AMD system, it's been possible to run SteamOS on your own device but it's not straightforward or as easy with other gaming-focused Linux distros like Bazzite.
Some caveats
Griffais wants to change that and said Valve is working to do so. However, he did say that SteamOS currently should offer a "good experience" on console-like PC setups. It implies that your handheld console or even a simple mini PC setup could be a Steam Machine or Steam Deck-dupe.
"If you have something that is similar to the use case of a Steam Machine, where you have a PC that’s gonna be plugged into a TV, and has a single hard drive that you’re not going to try and dual boot […] you can put SteamOS on there," he told The Verge.
There are some drawbacks, non-Steam Machine devices will lack HDMI-CEC support and may not work as well with the new Steam Controller. Additionally, the SteamOS installer apparently is not designed for dual-booting, yet. So you can't cram it onto a Windows machine or different Linux box for now.
Non-Steam options
With the ongoing RAM shortage, building a gaming PC isn't exactly cheap, and it's partly why the Steam Machine is as expensive as it is. The Steam Deck just raised prices by 50% last month, an ominous portent ahead of the Machine release.
In the meantime, there are options like the Minisforum G1 Pro that might actually outperform the Steam Machine and is pretty compact. Or you could buy the pre-built Stormcraft Gaming PC for $150 less.
Of course, there's always a PS5...or Xbox, I guess; even the PS5 Pro, despite price hikes, is still cheaper than the Steam Machine. Yes, you're locked into the Sony ecosystem, but there are some great games on there, and they go on sale all the time.
You don't have to get a Steam Machine; that's all we're saying, mostly to ourselves.
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