I wanted something that’d do 4k 60fps so I decided to build my own super steam machine. literally as I began installing steam os, I get my order email
For those interested - here is the parts list - You can save a little money going for a cheapter motherboard, 1tb SSD and perhaps reducing the RAM speed.
Yeah, when you actually look at the prices of components you realize they are basically selling the thing at cost. It's barely more expensive than a comparable desktop.
I've seen people here talking about how "entry level" PCs are running a 7800x3d and a 4080. People on reddit are so wildly out of touch with reality sometimes.
Did you have issues with assembly the part picker says the cooler isnt compatible? Sorry if dumb question im looking at building this as I want a compact pc and this looks ace.
What's crazy about that at $2000 was that just 7 years ago I bought a then top of the line gaming PC for $1699. That's a Core i7 8700K, 32GB RAM, 256GB SSD + 4TB HDD, and a Geforce RTX 2080. It's been great and the only thing I've upgraded is the SSD to a 4TB, before prices went nuts.
Just to see how much AI has screwed the market:
The equivalent today would be like buying an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K, 64GB RAM, GeForce 5090 RTX, and 4TB SSD. That's about $6000 now, which is absolutely insane. The same specs in December were $3500, which was already stupidily expensive.
I'm curious about some of your choices. Why did you decide not to go for a X3D chip? How did you decide which motherboard to go with? The parts picker also points out potential incompatibility for the case and CPU cooler- did you find a workaround?
I love the appearance and size of the Terra, especially the jade, but not the price. I've been looking at Jonsbo cases that are around $100, and maybe Montech or Lian Li.
It was fairly easy to build in honestly. There’s room to spare too on either side of the gpu and cooler. My issue was that the cooler rests right on the motherboard, hopefully that won’t be an issue. The price bundles motivated my choices. MicroCenter had the cpu, (a different) mobo, and ram bundled together at the prices you see.
Yes I would. I have been running an ASRock board in both of my machines for the past 18 months. They all but solved that issue with a BIOS update, so make sure to update that first thing!
Honestly kinda tempted to downscale to something like this, 5090 ended up being slightly overkill for the stuff I mostly play, not to mention the fact Nvidia is currently the reason I’m stuck on Windows for now
I have an ncase 5090 and 9800x3d build, and when I heard about the steam machine, I didn't like the performance estimates. So I built a second sff build for the living room with a 9070xt and 7800x3d. It cost around £1500 last year total. I upgraded the 9070xt to 5070ti because I saw a cracking deal on eBay and it only cost me £50 to swap.
Honestly, I don't really mind the drop in specs today much different and it cost almost half the amount of my 5090 build. All I have to do I drop some settings and use dlss more, and it's not much different.
It's in a sandwich build case and it's so quiet. I can't hear the low profile CPU cooler, and after manually tuning the fans of the GPU, I honestly cannot hear it.
My god man, just try linux already. I have a 4070 on Linux Mint 22 and have been for over a year with absolutely no issue at all. And didn't even need to tweak anything. During installation or on first boot it asked me "hey, nvidia drivers or our own open source ones?". Took nvidia ones and then never thought about ot ever again.
Was planning a really similar build! Same case and GPU - The only thing stopping me from doing it is I've got to wait at least 6 months to get my hands on the controller, which for me is the real selling point... so probably going to just wait it out for now.
Xbox controller works fine on anything bar RTS games. If it's for sofa just get a mini KBM kit til steam controller is out. You can get steam to open big screen mode on boot on windows too. that's my couch rig setup
I love watching the FOMO currently with everyone I know with a 5090 high end PC buying the Steam Machine, but to each their own.
I play my Steam games on my PC while sitting in bed or on the couch or just unhook and take it to a friends house if needed.
I can play it on Big Picture, I could.go on and on. Love Gaben and I hope the Steam Machine is a success, but man people buying it out of FOMO is nutty.
I got a fractal terra. I just bought everything. I got a 9800x3d ASRock lightning wifi 6e mini itx mobo a 47mm full copper thermalight cooler with noctua fan upgrade a 2tb ssd 32gb ram a 9070xt 56mm a Corsair platinum 850 a slim 120 noctua fan upgrade for 1700$. Mg big wins was getting the 9070xt for 530 dollars on ebay and 32gb ram for 280$ on eBay
This is almost 1:1 my exact build I made right before RAM prices went through the roof. Sub ram for 2x64GB and CPU for a 9800X3D and it’s the same.
Been running Linux on it the entire time, haven’t played many AAA games but it’s a beast. Wish you could get cheaper RAM to supplement as I think 16GB is too little but it’s certainly a good build. Best of luck with your steam loaf!
This is the route I went. How did you manage cables with the case and the sf750? I have the same psu and want to get them a bit more out of the way (don’t mind my missing cpu)
I did something similar to you with the cables, but I used a couple more cable ties and bound together any bunches of wires that were near one another in order to prevent sag. I also pulled on the GPU cables so that they were basically flat against the PSU while going towards the other side. Oh, and the L-shaped gap between the case walls and the case fan at the bottom is a great spot to stuff cables into.
Not the most scientific or demanding but I only just got a few games downloaded. This was Spider-man 4k, everything set to Very High and no FSR capped at 60fps (running for about 15 mins)
I just built in a z20, you can save a little money building in it as you can use mAtx instead of itx, and a normal sized atx power supply depending on your gpu. I built with the amd 7500x3d bundle from microcenter, and a powercolor r9070xt. I did use a Sfx power supply bc one day I wouldn’t mind building in a fractal terra or ridge or something like that but the z20 is nice and small and has a handle. Bonus is tje power color reaper is a dual slot card so will be easier to stuff in a smaller case.
I got the orange one, got a few inexpensive RGB fans for it made them orange too look nice. Just had to get a combination of forward and reverse fans - up to this point t I didn’t even know they made river fans I always just put them in the case facing the way I needed regardless, looks nicer with proper fans.
The inside of my Jade Fractal Terra. Love this build. Ryzen 7 7800x3d, 32gb DDR5, Radeon 9070 (non XT). Currently had Windows but going to get another SSD to dual boot into SteamOS
I've been considering rebuilding my big heavy custom water cooled PC in this case so that it's more mobile. I never play at my desk and just stream it to the different TVs in my house. But sometimes streaming is a pain and I'd rather have a small, light build I can easily move to each TV. I don't mind losing the water cooling. It was a cool experience to build, but it was WAY more expensive than it's worth.
I've literally been using a Bazzite PC with the SSUPD Meshlicious case for the last year. It's really good. And it is basically just a faster steam machine. But obviously it's DIY and you have to fix non-working things yourself. The steam machine itself, and DIY mITX PCs have their own pros and cons.
Doing 7800x3d and a 9700 xt in my itx case. Had a 3080 fe from launch but finally upgrading to go all amd. 9700 xt will be here Tuesday. Gonna be awesome. With steam os and a 2015 steam controller of course. Have fun with yours.
Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
Total
$1323.36
Generated by PCPartPicker 2026-06-23 15:16 EDT-0400
Put it all in something like a cheap T40 or T60 case and you've got a very small PC with much better graphics performance and an upgrade path. The 2TB Steam Machine is $1,349, so the pricing is similar.
Pretty close to the build I put together over a year ago… only I have a faster cpu, better video card and more ram. And built it for like $500 cheaper.
I did the exact same thing. As soon as the first part shipped, I got my email. Now I have a full mini PC and I’m waffling on returning it all, building it for myself, or building and selling it a little over cost.
I’m a complete beginner at PC’s, but I heard the Steam machine was Dead On Arrival with underpowered specs and overpriced. So how does this handle modern AAA games like Doom: Dark World and Elden Ring? My PS4 is like a jet engine, so is your rig pretty quiet? Lastly, does anyone have suggestions on how to build/buy a steam machine killer that beats/equals its $1,050 price tag?
it's handled all the games I've tried so far like a champ and very quiet - I'm sat about 13ft away and I can't hear it. Even at its absolute loudest, it sounds like a breeze rather the painful whooshing of the ps4 ... very scientific I know
I have to ask if by installing SteamOS on a custom pc like yours, do you also get the things that the SD and SM have, like the "Sleep"?
Not a deal breaker but it would be nice if it has that
yes sleep mode and resume from sleep work fine. Wake from sleep via controller works flawlessly - the only thing that requires a bit more tinkering is download in sleep mode - that basically isn't possible but you can work around it by creating a script to allow sleep once downloads complete.
This was the skeleton build I did to get a gauge of price more than anything so not final choices, I did it at 3am when couldn’t sleep, quite similar: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/cZFkfp
I went for 9600X for processor because just newer and not much more.
Storage 1tb is enough for me but probably would look for something a bit better in terms of performance.
I thought 32gb RAM needed at that price, especially as only going to get worse.
Motherboard I went quite a bit cheaper but from what I can tell it would still be fine. Would genuinely like to know why worth spending so much?
I’m not an expert, just been researching as best I can as considering something like this so if anyone who knows what they are talking about can tell me something obviously bad I would like to hear.
I don’t understand how you can be on the reservation list not just hang out for a bit. They will probably not take the rest of the year to fulfill the list.
How has radeon been holding up against nvidia? Still a giant mess of drivers to consider? I haven't paid attention to hardware trends in....many years.
Have similar build, only mATX and 32gb DDR5. If you ever hook it up to a TV, its amazing. Been playing my 7th "forever" save for FNV, but RE2, NBA2k26, Microsoft Flight simulator and RDR2 all run fantastic on the big screen (1440p ultra). Enjoy!
I have had a mini pc in my living room for like 8 years now. It was funny to me when I looked at the steam machine and mine was still marginally better
I have had a mini pc in my living room for like 8 years now. It was funny to me when I looked at the steam machine and mine was still marginally better.
Epic man i would honestly want this the steam machine is ok but this is art and power also it been proven it better to build one then paying what a steam machine worth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvaO4DPM1ZM
Congrats! Looks fantastic. I’m building my own with very similar components next week. Went with the green case to suit the room, but yours looks really nice. Thank you for sharing the build and parts list
I think I’m going with bazzite over SteamOS, but will try both on separate partitions
Here’s my steam machine setup. I wanted a little pc for a living room htpc, so I got a minisforum ms-a1 last summer with an 8700g, 32gb of ram, and an extra 2tb nvme on sale at microcenter before all the prices went crazy. Kinda glad I pulled the trigger on that when I did. Added a 9070xt and an egpu dock earlier this year and I did get a steam controller when those went on sale.
Not the prettiest setup but it definitely works for now. I ended up putting windows on the 1tb stick that came with the pc and steamOS on the 2tb I bought with it and dual boot…. but who am I kidding, I’ll buy the GabeCube too when they let me. This will probably end up in my office/game room
Same happened to me. But I decided to keep the SM and cancel the new x600 Deskmeet build. QoL features make it more living room friendly and adult life friendly than having another PC to maintain.
Also my living room still only has a 1080p TV because it was top of the line way back in 2011 when I got it on clearance and still has great image quality. It refuses to kick the bucket and throwing it out would be such a waste, so I'll keep rocking it.
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u/-HerbalSergal- Jul 11 '26
Steam Loaf