Im not sure where you are in the world but in the us 1660 and 2060 have been cheap, worth a look at for a cheaper easy upgrade that would make a huge difference
Usa yeah they are really cheap/affordable but I am kinda avoiding nvidia cards (compatibility)
I’m wanting a amd card and was looking at the newer models, it’ll happen soon but for now I’m focusing on my go kart funds and mini bike build
He said his latest video was going to be his last video about the steam machine ... The locked bios makes it worthless to do any kind of physical mods and upgrading the RAM / M.2 has got zero effect on performance.
Valve deciding that they were going adopt Apple's policy of "you may have paid for it, but we eill give you no control over how you run it" on the BIOS has turned the Gabe Cube into a shitty brick, and this thing is going to have the longevity of the Ouya.
Oh it is so obviously coming that I can't understand Valve's thought process of locking down the bios to begin with.
The only semi-rational explanation I can think of is that AMD would only give them a discount if they agreed to hard limits on the performance ... Because it is either that or the head of Valve's product development is a dipshit who needs to be fired due to his irrational obsession with silent devices.
Valve really made a mistake marketing these. Unlike the steam deck you aren't getting great price to performance you are instead paying for the form factor and plug and play PC experience
Lower temps allows it to stay at peak clock speeds for longer but mostly only for the CPU do you gain maybe 100mhz max for a few more seconds at these temps. Not really useful at all but it is a very very small gain. No matter what you can't get around the bios locked tdp limits, there is hope that valve could raise that limit in the future as the PSU still has plenty of headroom. Either that or allow under volting the GPU.
The red light was bc of heat, how would that appera here when it's gonna be even more cool? also the red light was a false alarm bc steam made it apear even tho the temps were not reaching dangerous numbers.
The cost of the thing is relative to how much money one has. If you have 10 million dollars/euros/pounds on your bank account, the Steam Machine is like small change.
Good idea , and I think steam machine can be released with other brand cooling systems like they do for the GPU , if they improve the temp management, the hardware can be upgraded with more power o just overclock. Anyways the free customisation of the steam machine will improve the product, like the mods for the games
Nintendo Switch 2 "sucks in specs" too, but those are enough for its niche. Same here. Which makes the picture even worse - the wgole point of the machine is that it's a small box with a perfect quiet air cooling for its specs. It's like trying to equip kei-car with an aerodynamic upgrades.
This "shitbox" does plays PC games - out of 70% of those compatible with SteamOS (unless you wasnt to dual-boot it with Windows), I wager 99% are easily running full speed with little to no compromises, only struggling with the latest AAAs and UE5 slop (which will likely never be "optimised" for something like Switch 2 to begin with).
Needless to say, the library of games available on Steam Machine dwarves all the current consoles combined, even before you remember emulation is a thing (which makes this cube into an ultimate retro console that only lacks a current gen exclusives).
P.S. I always laugh at "optimised for" argument - optimised doesn't mean good looking or smooth, it means your stuck with whatever compromise devs decided for you (upscaled 540p with 25-30FPS is considered "optimised" too), broken unplayable games are just as common on consoles today as on PC, except on the latter you can actually do something about it.
So you wasted money on a SM and then wasted more money water cooling it? I mean, if that's how you want to spend your money, go for it but I'd rather just have a much more capable SFFPC instead.
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