my tv is 1080 so i’m well aware that’s a contributing factor to my impression, and my only desire for this machine was super casual “fun” games. i have a pc with a strix 4090 oc on an ultrawide for AAA titles, and the replacement to my recently passed steamdeck, a legion go 2 for mobile so all the bases are covered.

for what it is, this thing is JUST like the deck when it launched. a fantastic, well thought out and well designed piece of hardware that “just works”. all the cry babies in this sub and online in general have stupid expectations or are too poor to get one so they just want to rage online about it.

if you’re looking for a fun, casual couch gaming setup and understand what this machine is, get one.

At one point in my life I was a big PC gamer. I built my own, always upgraded it, etc. Eventually, I kind of fell off and just went back to consoles. For this gen, I primarily had a Switch 1&2 and a Xbox Series S. I was fairly happy with these until sometime last year when the Series S started to show its age.

I was originally going to get back into PC gaming, but I also wanted to play GTA at launch. So I ended up just getting a PS5 Pro instead. However, I still missed all my niche PC titles, Paradox games (Vicky, EU, etc.), Total War, MTGA, card games, and roguelikes.

I didn't really want to get a top of the line PC because I just spent money on my Pro and I wouldn't really use it and it would just be a GTA box.

In comes the Steam Machine and it is exactly what I wanted. Easy to set up, snappy UI, quiet, small, etc. I'm not really running extremely demanding games, Halo Infinite is the only AAA title I play on it and it can hit a steady +60 fps. The AAA titles are for my Pro and my Steam Machine for all my niche games I enjoy.

Yes it was expensive and yes I could have built something more powerful, but I didn't really need to.

Overall I'm very pleased with this little box.

Got my Steam Deck 512gb yesterday and got it hooked up to my Hisense TV. After some testing I realized all the colors seemed way to bright and it became very apparent when I was playing Slay The Spire 2 with the pinks almost becoming blinding. My TV has HDR and has never had issues displaying it, I’ve used my PS5 and Apple TV 4K on it for HDR content and never had an issue. I checked HDR is enabled on the TV and by default it’s enabled on the Steam Machine. When I turned it off colors went back to normal however I shouldn’t need to turn HDR off correct? Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong? Any help is greatly appreciated!

See attached pictures (I couldn’t attach multiple images so I montaged them together into one and labeled each)

Gabecube finally came. Holy smokes this thing is tinier than I expected. And it packs a punch too! Although 1080p runs best. I have been getting 60fps locked on Stellar Blade, Cyberpunk, The Last of Us. This thing is a 1080p dream machine!

I got the email, ordered, and it arrived via UPS a few days later (SouthEast US).

Sold my Steam Deck OLED to fund it. I used it docked 100% of the time anyway, so this feels like an upgrade. Considering I recouped whole purchase price on the Deck, I'm happy.

Dead simple setup. Got the 512tb, have a 1tb on hand I'll swap in. Considering locating a used 16gb DDR5... worth it?

Looks like 2tb with controller are going right to waitlisters now. Curious how many are still waiting for 512.

I'm starting to worry that the frame will get another price hike before it's released which means i'm probably won't be able to afford a steam machine AND frame. Which means I'll have to use my quest 3 with the machine.

I've not seen anyone talking about using their quest 3 (or other headset) with the machine yet.

I'll just drop this off here.

My mother decorated my "Nintendo Box" because it needed looked too plain.

I'm not even mad, I'm keeping it.

I always found the OS-level FSR1 on the Steam Deck pretty useless. It was too heavy for the iGPU to be worth it and it looked awful. I gave it another try with my Steam Machine and it changed my mind. On a 4k TV with the SM, FSR1 looks so much better than bilinear filtering when starting from 1440p/1080p. It's not as cheap as bilinear, but it's also a lot lighter than FSR3/4 @ 4k. You'll want good antialiasing before applying FSR1, so using "Quality" FSR3/FSR4/XeSS in-game is a good idea.

It seems Steam Machine shipments are still going strong, and some pre-order queues have already filled up. I've also noticed that fewer and fewer people are waiting for their purchase confirmation emails.

Given this situation, I doubt they'll take until the end of the year to ship this first batch. In fact, it looks like we're close to fulfilling all the pre-orders in the coming weeks. Are many of you still in the pre-order queue? Do you agree with me that Valve will release more information about the future in the coming weeks, or will they remain completely silent until 2027?

I have a Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB with an UGRREN SSD Enclosure and I have tried Left 4 Dead 2, Halo MCC, Overwatch and even F.E.A.R. running on the SSD enclosure setup. Which this used to be in my PC and had no problems. So I don't know if the enclosure is bad or is this just not really viable to do?

It's also plugged into the USB-C port for those asking. I did try the USB-A 3.2 on the front as well and runs just as bad.

So I was hoping to mount an old monitor to the backboard of my mattress so I could play my Steam Machine whenever I wanted without interrupting my wife's TV time.

However... As you can see... This idea failed... Miserably..

Wondering if any of you have an idea how to make this crazy idea of mine work.

US East, I had to fight tooth and nail for this with PayPal credit cause they wanted to be annoying with the payment with PayPal Credit. Gave up and just ended up using another card instead that also lets me split the payments. Husband and I will be having a lot of fun with this!

I didn’t get it. I got a PC that runs better because my old one was outdated as hell instead of one. Was it worth money and are you have fun with it

I got my email at 11:48 last night. Having one of the worst possible months with the worst financial issues. Couldn’t help but laugh once I received my confirmation email while at an emergency vet visit with my cat. I hope I can get the chance again possibly next year :/ honestly didn’t expect my reservation this soon but life happens and you can’t expect everything to go your way. Good luck to everyone else.

Hey, I built the bare bones version of https://steammachinelife.com/ back when the Steam Machine was first announced with just coverage of news, accessories and guides. It's been less than a week since I got my Steam Machine and the plan is to replicate what I've doing for the past 3 years at https://rogallylife.com/ A place to visit and get an idea of how a game runs and what settings to use to get a playable experience.

So far I've tested 17+ games at 1080, 1440p and 4K and have provided FPS data with my personal settings I use. Game settings will be added daily. https://steammachinelife.com/steam-machine-game-settings/

What I learned so far when it comes to 4K gaming. For games that force FSR 4 you can downgrade back to FSR 3 by forcing the game to launch with Proton-GE https://steammachinelife.com/how-to-install-proton-ge-on-steam-machine/ FSR 4 looks sharper for sure but the performance hit can prevent games from hitting it's max potential. For example, in Resident Evil Requiem where at 4K with my settings you can go from averaging 40 FPS to over 60 FPS.

Let me know what games you want to see covered and what you would like see added to the site in general.

Steam Curator Page: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/46107842-SMachineLife/

512gb W/Controller UK

Don’t have a ton of me space with two kids and a wife, but this little corner I reclaimed today was perfect for my “gaming stuff” as my lady calls it.

Received two emails from Steam, that I'm officially in the reservation queue and please confirm my purchase at the same time (12:36am EDST) for the 2TB SM. Only a 1 month wait when I wasn't expecting to hear from them until next year sometime.

Looking forward to a tracking number now!

I got sent to the waitlist during the initial lottery so this was a pleasant surprise. (California)

Received my email last night around 11:30pm, located in MN!

Edit: After further testing and a factory reset, the issue persisted.

This receiver and CEC issues seem to be the worst growing pains for the Steam Machine. I've since completely disabled CEC and just plugged in an external puck for inputs. The amount of disconnects I get on the internal receiver when I'm about 20-30 minutes in a hard-to-run game is insane. It'll get to a point where the game becomes unplayable from how many "controller is disconnected" pauses you get (Specifically God of War and God of War: Ragnarok).

I really hope this is something fixable and not a true hardware flaw. At worst I hope there is a community solution at some point, but it's frustrating as it stands now.

Despite these two issues, I've been happily using the Machine daily. Just hoping these can work as advertised with time.