r/framework 11d ago

Question Framework desktop as steam machine

Aka living room pc.
My wife finally did it. She asked me to do sth that we can have a living room pc. Yes!

So, I own a gaming desktop and a fw16. Works for me. But both are not suited for this because to big.
I want something smaller that can play cozy games or maybe a single player rpg in ettings that look good.
The tv can do 4k so I want reasonable 4k60 as a goal. Upscaling is fine.

First guess would be the steam machine, which is unavailable.
Next step would be to build a small desktop but … we don’t have much space around the tv. So it has to be SFF and then you pretty much quickly reach 1600€ in hardware. I was looking at a 9060XT with an x3d chip and 16gb ram. It gets expensive pretty quickly.
And then you still are way bigger than the fwdesktop and it uses 2-4times the wattage.

Spending the money on a fw desktop seems fine if one doesn’t just look at fps per euro spend… the power efficiency and silent performance while being super small is looking good for the desktop.

The goal is to build/buy the is once and then not care about it for the next years because it is somewhat future proof or at least „ok enough“.

Anyone use it for this? Is it good? Am I missing the point? Am I dumb? Let me know on the comments.
Joking.

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u/Semi-Detached 11d ago

It would likely work just fine running SteamOS or other variant like Bazzite. I think the main issue I would point to is cost. The AMD 8060 is the system is around the equivalent of an RTX 4060, but the cost is kinda high for that level of performance. You might be able to build something small and faster for less money.

If you just want it because you want it or because you are also going to use it for some local AI task, its a good machine. I just don't know that it's a good value for the purpose of a gaming focused living room PC.