Agreed, but if I’d had the money at the time, I absolutely would’ve jumped at the steam machine and steam controller. I want a modern one now more than ever. If it weren’t for parts getting shittier and pricier, I’d probably build one myself this spring/summer and figure out which distro would be best for it. My steam deck is great and I want basically the exact same thing but more powerful at the cost of not being a handheld. Bonus points if I can easily remote play that new steam machine through my steam deck, which I think is a reasonable expectation. And I’d love to run an HDMI out splitter to easily swap between using it as a PC at my desk or using it as a console from my couch.
If you buy parts that are a couple of generations older there is absolutely a middle ground between the ridiculous new GPUs and the steam deck on performance, that you could probably build for a similar price to the deck. I would aim for an AM4 build to take advantage of how cheap ddr4 RAM is, with a 3xxx or 5xxx Ryzen CPU. Something like the 3080 is a great card for a cheap price but I personally would go for an AMD card. A few hundred extra (again in AUD) gets you a good 7800XT which is a pretty damn beefy card, but might be better to drop down a couple of models to save on power consumption.
Going even further, you can take someone’s ATX PC secondhand, swap out the motherboard for a smaller form factor and slap it in a little case.
As for OS, if you want it to be exactly like the deck you could run Bazzite, but SteamOS is either available, or about to be available.
I was actually targeting a 7800XT on an AM4 build already lol!
Yeah, it’s just hard to justify the cost when I already have a PS5 and not a whole lot of free time. It makes more sense to wait until the next generation of consoles comes out and then get something that runs games at that time at 1440p, 60+fps. Right now I’d just be building a lateral system for no real reason, pretty late in the current gen lifecycle.
I have exactly this (AM4, 7800XT, 3440x1440 monitor) running bazzite. Almost every game I have maxes 165Hz, works great for LLM inference too, really the nutso expensive stuff is only necessary for 4K+, which I find diminishing returns at present, LLM training (rent a GPU instead), and probably modern VR. Just to let you know you’re barking up the right tree. :)
Oh, and the 7800XT idles / youtubes ~ 14-20W, 7 with the monitor off. I’m actually using it as a backup NAS / home server in down time, system pulls ~40-45W at the wall and I haven’t even gone deep into power saving as it’s a placeholder for a new homelab build that’s underway.
I’d argue you could sell the ps5 and the games and make enough money to mostly (possibly entirely) cover the cost of building a more versatile device, but it’s also a bit of effort when you already have a setup that works for you
Edit: also, the system we’re talking about should comfortably run 1440p60 for the foreseeable future. Newer flagship hardware is targeting higher resolution and much higher frame rates.
I thoroughly enjoy the Steam controller and would’ve loved to try out one of the less conventional prototypes. I hope Valve can justify making another controller.
and figure out which distro would be best for it. My steam deck is great and I want basically the exact same thing but more powerful at the cost of not being a handheld.
Bazzite might be your jam. They’re a sort-of competitor (?) to SteamOS, as in they have distros for handhelds in the same way Valve has with SteamOS (which they are now leasing out to manufacturers like lenovo). But they also have versions for laptops and desktop PCs.
I’ve been using their PC (nvidia) version for a week now, and it’s been wonderful. Of course I probably wouldn’t have made the switch if Valve hadn’t helped pave the way and made proton so powerful. Also I probably wouldn’t have switched if I hadn’t given up on LoL and Battlefield (kernel-level anticheat).
I don’t think I’ve even heard of that, so I’ll look into it a bit more. I was leaning more toward an AMD build since that tends to play nicely with Linux compared to Intel/Nvidia. And there were a couple of distros I was interested in trying on my old laptop to compare before committing.
Agreed, but if I’d had the money at the time, I absolutely would’ve jumped at the steam machine and steam controller. I want a modern one now more than ever. If it weren’t for parts getting shittier and pricier, I’d probably build one myself this spring/summer and figure out which distro would be best for it. My steam deck is great and I want basically the exact same thing but more powerful at the cost of not being a handheld. Bonus points if I can easily remote play that new steam machine through my steam deck, which I think is a reasonable expectation. And I’d love to run an HDMI out splitter to easily swap between using it as a PC at my desk or using it as a console from my couch.
If you buy parts that are a couple of generations older there is absolutely a middle ground between the ridiculous new GPUs and the steam deck on performance, that you could probably build for a similar price to the deck. I would aim for an AM4 build to take advantage of how cheap ddr4 RAM is, with a 3xxx or 5xxx Ryzen CPU. Something like the 3080 is a great card for a cheap price but I personally would go for an AMD card. A few hundred extra (again in AUD) gets you a good 7800XT which is a pretty damn beefy card, but might be better to drop down a couple of models to save on power consumption.
Going even further, you can take someone’s ATX PC secondhand, swap out the motherboard for a smaller form factor and slap it in a little case.
As for OS, if you want it to be exactly like the deck you could run Bazzite, but SteamOS is either available, or about to be available.
I was actually targeting a 7800XT on an AM4 build already lol!
Yeah, it’s just hard to justify the cost when I already have a PS5 and not a whole lot of free time. It makes more sense to wait until the next generation of consoles comes out and then get something that runs games at that time at 1440p, 60+fps. Right now I’d just be building a lateral system for no real reason, pretty late in the current gen lifecycle.
I have exactly this (AM4, 7800XT, 3440x1440 monitor) running bazzite. Almost every game I have maxes 165Hz, works great for LLM inference too, really the nutso expensive stuff is only necessary for 4K+, which I find diminishing returns at present, LLM training (rent a GPU instead), and probably modern VR. Just to let you know you’re barking up the right tree. :)
Oh, and the 7800XT idles / youtubes ~ 14-20W, 7 with the monitor off. I’m actually using it as a backup NAS / home server in down time, system pulls ~40-45W at the wall and I haven’t even gone deep into power saving as it’s a placeholder for a new homelab build that’s underway.
I’d argue you could sell the ps5 and the games and make enough money to mostly (possibly entirely) cover the cost of building a more versatile device, but it’s also a bit of effort when you already have a setup that works for you
Edit: also, the system we’re talking about should comfortably run 1440p60 for the foreseeable future. Newer flagship hardware is targeting higher resolution and much higher frame rates.
Give up haptics??
I thoroughly enjoy the Steam controller and would’ve loved to try out one of the less conventional prototypes. I hope Valve can justify making another controller.
Bazzite might be your jam. They’re a sort-of competitor (?) to SteamOS, as in they have distros for handhelds in the same way Valve has with SteamOS (which they are now leasing out to manufacturers like lenovo). But they also have versions for laptops and desktop PCs.
I’ve been using their PC (nvidia) version for a week now, and it’s been wonderful. Of course I probably wouldn’t have made the switch if Valve hadn’t helped pave the way and made proton so powerful. Also I probably wouldn’t have switched if I hadn’t given up on LoL and Battlefield (kernel-level anticheat).
I don’t think I’ve even heard of that, so I’ll look into it a bit more. I was leaning more toward an AMD build since that tends to play nicely with Linux compared to Intel/Nvidia. And there were a couple of distros I was interested in trying on my old laptop to compare before committing.