[00:09] announced last year, I thought to myself, "This is it. This tiny little PC the thing that is going to replace my consoles. This is the thing that's going to replace my Windows desktop, a OS I
[00:22] have been desperate [music] to get off of. Hell, if this thing is priced competitively, it could change the entire landscape of video game hardware entire landscape of video game hardware and then the actual price got announced.
[00:39] don't think this thing is going to disrupt the console space in any meaningful way, but I am still curious if it can be my all-in-one gaming solution. So, the plan is I'm going to take this thing home with me
[00:54] take this thing home with me before any of these losers notice it's before any of these losers notice it's gone.
[01:16] this thing hooked up to my uh entertainment system over there, and I'm going to be using it exclusively. That means I'm not going to be touching my PlayStation 5 when I switch to uh my Series X, which I admittedly already
[01:29] don't really use all that much. If I'm playing something on the TV, playing it on the Steam Machine, that also means I'm going to be using it for my desktop. Maybe I'll even edit this video on the Steam Machine. Wouldn't that be fun and
[01:43] interesting? Maybe I'll give that a try. Yeah. No, that didn't really uh work out. But that's for later in the video. For now, let's start at the beginning.
[02:05] I do with any new piece of hardware, install a bunch of random crap on it and test it out. Cyberpunk 2077 runs pretty decently. Not a bad start. Next up, Oblivion Remastered. Uh, that runs like hot garbage. However, that game just
[02:20] kind of runs bad in general, so maybe not the the best thing to to test out. Seriously, Bethesda, it's been over a year since the last patch. Uh, you're for God's sakes. Just give us give us something. Then I started to get a
[02:34] little outside the box. Install GTA 4 because I'm working on a video for that. Wait a minute. This is a PC, so can I just put the Fusion Fix mod on it? Turns out I can, and it works great. Awesome. Hey, while we're here on the desktop,
[02:48] why don't we install some non Steam games thanks to programs like Heroic Game Launcher. Alan Wakeake 2 is one of my favorite games the last couple years and is an Epic Game Store exclusive. It admittedly runs a little spotty, but
[03:01] after a lot of troubleshooting, I I got it to a place I was happy with. But what about emulators? Thanks to Emu Deck, emulation installation on the Steam machine is incredibly simple. Simply copied over all my ROMs from my Naz and
[03:15] yeah, retro games on the Steam Machine. Easy. Let's get even more outside the box. My wife, she loves Clone Hero. There's a Linux version of that. Easy installation. Works no problem. Now she can play her weird Indian new metal
[03:28] songs or whatever the heck it is she does. guitar controllers that we own uh just work out of the box with the Steam Machine. You just plug in the little dongle and uh yeah, recognize it as a
[03:43] third party controller. In fact, most of my controllers worked fine with the Steam Machine if I wanted to use them. Although, I found myself really falling think this is going to become my default PC controller from now on. But back to
[03:57] rhythm games. I have a modded copy of Guitar Hero World Tour. Surely it can't be as simple as copying over the files to the Steam Machine, can it?
[04:13] [music] So, I basically had two big takeaways from my first day with the Steam Machine. The first is that this is by Machine. The first is that this is by far [music] the easiest PC I have ever
[04:27] used. [music] Every time I've plugged a PC into a entertainment system, like a TV, I've always had some sort of weird annoying issue I've had to deal with. With this, I can just turn it on and it works. It turns my TV on [music] for me.
[04:44] I can control the volume through the controller. I can use only the controller. I never had to pull out a mouse and keyboard once, even in desktop mode, because I can use the trackpad [music] as the mouse. It's incredible.
[04:58] They did such an amazing job of making this thing feel like a console even though it's a PC. Which brings me to my second takeaway. It's a PC, which means second takeaway. It's a PC, which means I can do all this other cool stuff with
[05:13] it if I want to. I'm having fun with the Steam Machine. I want to mess around with it. I want to tinker [music] with it. I'm having fun. Fancy living here we come. >> Make way for a couple of tripers.
[05:30] >> But I do think it is now time to stop messing around and pick a game to play.
[05:44] [music] that the Steam Machine arrived, Ubisoft sent over codes for Assassin's Creed Black Flag Reynct. This would end up being the game that I spent the next two weeks with the Steam Machine. I ended up spending around 50 hours with
[05:58] the game. Had a great time, but it wasn't entirely smooth sailing. So, let's talk about some technical performance stuff. When I started playing, I wanted to target a 4K resolution. Thankfully, the game has a
[06:13] really good built-in dynamic resolution scaler. Uh, I was targeting 60fps and the game defaulted itself to low settings, which is how I played for the first few hours. Turns out I could have gotten a lot higher. Uh, I was able to
[06:27] push the game up to medium settings and still hit a mostly 60 fps, dropping a little bit in the cities, but that's okay. But I really wanted to then see if okay. But I really wanted to then see if I could push it even further. So, I
[06:40] boosted everything up to high settings and instead of targeting 60 fps, I targeted 40 fps, which is a really great sweet spot. And this is how I played a huge chunk of the game. Things were smooth sailing until certain cutscenes
[06:56] started tanking the performance, and that's when I noticed this red line on the Steam Machine. A quick search reveals that this signifies either the CPU or GPU are overheating at dangerous temperature levels.
[07:11] It certainly doesn't help that there is a heat wave right now and uh I don't have any AC in this apartment. The good news is that when I checked the built-in performance uh tools on the steam machine, it does not seem to be hitting
[07:26] the temperatures uh that would put it at risk of overheating. But I did notice risk of overheating. But I did notice that the GPU is maxing out at 100%. And that seems to be what correlates with this red ring over here. Um, still I
[07:40] rather not risk anything. Uh, it would really suck to break this thing after really suck to break this thing after only having it for a week. So, I needed to dive back into the settings to [music] change things once again. This
[07:53] [music] that is a little bit lower than 4K. and I changed it from high settings to a modified high settings [music] with a few settings turned down. Now, to be clear, the majority of my time with
[08:08] Black Flag was smooth and frictionless. I would come home every day, [music] grab the controller, sit on the couch, and just play the game. It was that consolelike [music] experience that this machine is going
[08:22] >> And that is why even though I'm not that bothered by the amount of time I needed to spend adjusting graphical settings for me, it just comes with the territory for me, it just comes with the territory of being a PC gamer, I do think it is at
[08:36] odds with that console [music] like experience. And I am curious if this is something that Valve could eventually solve. But I do genuinely wonder if that's truly possible because at the end of the day, this [music] is still a PC,
[08:50] which means it can accept uh oddball resolutions and frame rates. There are other things that it needs to account for that consoles don't have [music] to that can affect performance. And this leads very nicely into what I want to
[09:04] talk about next, the uh the desktop.
[09:21] all, I did want to also see how the Steam Machine handled as a desktop [music] PC. And off the bat, I already ran into a pretty weird issue. Whenever you turn the Steam Machine on, it will always default to game mode. And there's
[09:37] no option in the settings to switch it so that you can default [music] to desktop mode. This is hopefully something that Valve can add in the future, but it kind of speaks to where their head is at with this whole thing.
[09:49] It's designed for the living room first and for the desktop second. That said, the actual desktop experience is pretty great. I'm not really much of a Linux person. The experience I've had with it is solely with the Steam Deck and now
[10:03] the Steam machine. So, I was pretty worried uh not having Windows for an entire month. I figured that uh there were going to be things that I wouldn't be able to do on uh the Steam Machine with Linux that I I would need my my
[10:16] Windows desktop for. [music] Um that is technically true. There were a couple of things that I couldn't do, but uh honestly, for the most part, I did not honestly, for the most part, I did not miss my Windows PC at all. Linux these
[10:29] days is very intuitive and easy to understand as a Windows user. Long gone are the days where Linux is this like inscrutable thing for only likeing nerds to understand. Anyone these days can use Linux. It just really comes down to what
[10:45] are the specific things that you want to do on your PC and can your version of Linux do that? These days I do all of my work on a [music] MacBook. So, my desktop is primarily meant for playing video games and browsing the [music]
[11:00] internet. For the sake of this challenge, I did try and see if I could get some sort of video editing software running on this Steam machine. Adobe is completely out of the question. That that [ __ ] does not
[11:13] work with Linux like at all. [music] Your best bet is Da Vinci Resolve, which does have a Linux version. That however comes with all sorts of caveats. uh requires specific versions of Linux. You got to make sure you have the right GPU.
[11:28] Steam machine just fine, but I quickly hit a roadblock where it would not detect the Steam Machine's GPU. I spent I gave up. That's that's not happening on this thing. It became very apparent
[11:44] very quickly that the Steam Machine is not a replacement for folks that have like a power desktop. And what I mean by that is somebody who is using it with a lot of different devices, a lot of different monitors. The IO on this thing
[11:59] is pretty limited in terms of how [music] many ports there are. I ran out to plug in like half the [ __ ] I have here at my desk and the ports themselves [music] are kind of slow. I tried copying over some photos off of an SD
[12:12] card and that ended up taking way longer than it should have. But as a desktop that is meant primarily for gaming and then you just do some like you know light additional things browsing the web the occasional application this thing
[12:27] the occasional application this thing gets the job done. By now you've surely noticed that I have an ultrawide monitor and of course I wanted to see how games could be handled on the Steam machine in ultra wide. So I
[12:43] loaded up Stalker [music] 2. Yes, in retrospect that is probably not a very fair game to throw at the Steam machine, but it's the game I wanted to play in the moment. And it's
[12:56] the [music] kind of game that I want to play on a mouse and keyboard. When I had recommended medium settings, which was honestly not terrible in certain spaces,
[13:08] frame rate was really starting to tank. So, I did have to switch everything to low. By the way, in order to capture ultra wide gameplay, uh I had to use OBS
[13:21] totally fine on the desktop, but the second I actually loaded a game up, uh the video capture would just kind of crap [music] out. So, we're using the camera instead. Actually, u I I would prefer if we uh move that out of the way
[13:37] now so that I can just enjoy the game. Ultimately,
[13:49] I didn't really play more than that one evening with Stalker 2. The hit to visuals for low settings uh really just brought down the experience for me. [music] and knowing that uh I have a more powerful PC that I can eventually
[14:03] use to play the game once uh this challenge is over, it just kind of dissuaded me from continuing with it. So, what kind of games did I end up playing at my [music] desktop? Well, me and my wife really love those cozy co-op
[14:18] crafting games, and those all end up playing pretty well on the Steam playing pretty well on the Steam machine.
[14:34] the steam machine. It's the end of the month and tomorrow I bring it back to the office. And you know what? I really wish I didn't have to. I really did end up falling in love with this little guy over the last 30 days. So, I guess to
[14:50] over the last 30 days. So, I guess to answer my original question, does the answer my original question, does the Steam Machine act as a suitable all-in-one replacement for my gaming needs? For my entertainment system,
[15:03] absolutely. This is by far [music] the best living room PC experience I have ever had. It can do everything that my consoles [music] do um and more
[15:15] because since I like playing a lot of smaller games that are only available on Steam. So for myself, I ended up not missing those other systems at all. And
[15:28] the Steam Machine can do more than those systems can thanks to [music] systems can thanks to [music] its open-ended uh approach to storefronts and to hardware. This thing would replace my PlayStation 5 and my
[15:42] Xbox Series X. No [music] question. Probably wouldn't replace my Switch 2, but you know that's because of Nintendo games. But could the Steam Machine games. But could the Steam Machine replace my Windows desktop PC? The
[15:55] answer is no. But it's a little complicated. There's a lot I really like complicated. There's a lot I really like about the hardware of the Steam Machine. It's quiet, it's cute, it's very wellmade, but when compared to my
[16:11] currently existing desktop, uh, it does not hold a candle, not in performance not hold a candle, not in performance and certainly not in IO functionality. But here's the thing, I didn't fall in love with the Steam
[16:25] Machine [music] because of its hardware. I fell in love with the Steam Machine I fell in love with the Steam Machine because of Steam OS. because of Steam OS. I think Valve has done an incredible job
[16:38] I think Valve has done an incredible job of making a platform that is for gaming first and foremost. It is so userfriendly [music] and yet it is so userfriendly [music] and yet it is so flexible in what you can do to it that I
[16:51] think it blows Windows completely out [music] of the water for gaming. If there is one thing I can take away from this entire experience, [music] it is Windows Linux all the way. And I'm probably going to go dual boot Cashio OS
[17:07] on my Windows PC starting tomorrow. Anyone can download Steam OS and put it on a computer if they want. Hopefully, the Nvidia GPU support will be happening next year as they promised. We're already starting to see third party
[17:21] manufacturers make their own Steam machines. The true success of the Steam Machine, it's not his hardware, [music] it's its software. And that will be its it's its software. And that will be its legacy going forward.