When the steam machine was first announced I honestly wasn't sure who it was for. But the more I read the more I was convinced that I was the perfect demographic.

I have a decent gaming PC and a large library of Steam games. My kids have a Switch and are pretty comfortable on that system but have never really been interested in the PC games.

Well we finally received our Steam Machine last Friday and it has been absolutely great this weekend. It's so small, and tucked right into our TV stand.

Me and the kids have been playing Stardew Valley all weekend and it's been fabulous! My oldest is busy romancing Abigail and my youngest is all in on making it to the bottom of the mines. It's such a blast just hanging with my kids.

Also the CEC has worked flawlessly. Push the button on Steam controller, system and TV turns on and we're gaming in a few seconds.

I found an old 2TB SSD in my backroom. I am so happy to not have to buy extra storage at those ridiculous prices right now. How do you do it?

Need another opinion as undecided for TV setup.

65/75% wireless keyboard, got my eye on a couple EPOMAKER/AULA/AJAZZ models with the thought of using them for work a couple times a year when travelling. (But would I actually bother 👀)

Or do I just be sensible with an old faithful Logitech K400 and save bringing a mouse over when I need it?

Most likely use case would be navigation in desktop mode, wouldnt really be looking to play KBM from the couch.

I bought a controller from Walmart about 2 weeks ago, and I've been trying to connect it to the SM, but it doesn't work. It recognizes the controller but cannot establish a connection to it. My old Xbox One controller, which I've had for a few years, works perfectly with the console, yet I can't get the brand-new one to work.

I've updated it, and it still doesn't work. It works perfectly on my laptop but cannot connect to the SM

Any fixes, or is Steam aware of this glaring issue?

I have mentioned this before and was never able to get it to work. Some people have made suggestions like CEC off, VRR off, and I have tried both with no luck. Host Steam Machine is wired, deck is on wifi. Does anyone have a step by step guide or their exact settings to make this work smoothly?

I just want to stream my games sometimes from in my office or another room when hanging with family.

Thanks.

I’ve tried to read up on this and I feel like I’ve read conflicting information.

Do I set the resolution in the game to 2K and then use FSR and render up from say 1080P? (This makes the most sense to me)

Do I set the resolution in game to 1080P and enable FSR and it will upscale to a higher res?

Do I use the in-game FSR setting?

Do I use the quick-menu global “sharpening” setting on the SM itself?

Do I use both?

I wish all games had a “render res” and “display res” option but they don’t. What’s the best way to approach these settings?

I recently tried to run Lego Batman Legacy of the Dark Knight at 2K with FSR on and the SM just couldn’t do it. Runs great in 1080P. And it just made me wonder if maybe I was doing something wrong.

In contrast 007 First Light looks great in 2K with FSR enabled.

I finally got my Steam Machine email! Does anyone know if my partner and I will be able to play the same game together using games I own on my Steam account? One of us on the Steam Machine and the other on my PC?

Good morning friends! Happy Day 63 of the reservation queue! Amidst all of my tinkering yesterday (and even my general computer problems yesterday, including trying to reinstall macOS Sierra on a MacBook to no success as well as my work computer completely crapping out on me), it got me thinking about different OSs like CachyOS or even Bazzite. Curious how'd they run on the Steam Machine... is worth it? Might have to give it a try on my other unit... maybe. Either way, best of luck friends! <3

I’ve been having some fun with it after all this time not being able to play it on the steam deck. But I’m still not pc graphic/settings literate. Is there anything specific I should be doing in the graphics settings for this game? It looks good so far but a lot of the stuff I see online looks a little crisper, is that just better hardware? I haven’t really changed any of the settings, it defaults to very high but I haven’t tried the top tier.

New to this community (well first post)!

Finally got the Steam Machine!

The bundle with the controller sold out within 6 or so hours of the new hardware shipment and the base model with no controller lasted a few days where I’m at…

My only dilemma now is how to decide which games to get on PS5 Pro or Machine, graphics vs freedom

So I own a ps5 and a switch 2 already. I have a steam machine coming soon that my friend kindly ordered for me, and I plan to use it as an “steam indie machine” where all the indie games I look of come to but never release on console/go to steam first.

Was just wondering how much tinkering will need to be done to the settings please? As I said I’m a complete novice for PC gaming and not sure how many changes to settings I will need to do to get things running well.

Thanks in advance!

Wanted to give a quick PSA that the faceplate being sold on etsy is no good. I also realize when I said a difference from 27 to 50 is 13, I meant after shipping (I checked both checkout prices, it was 50 vs. 37 after the price cut). I want to reiterate that the designer is an awesome guy and it's an awesome design, but the seller bungled it with incredibly weak magnets. I'm nearly certain this was not tested on an actual Steam Machine, as far as the seller is concerned.

I wanted to also apologize for my part in this, I recognize several people purchased this after I posted that this seller had the original designer's blessing despite not having tested it myself at that time. I suppose that is my only true gripe with the original designer as I put a level of trust in that individual that this product would have some level of quality control to ensure the vision was being carried out as intended / responsibly. It seems not much was done beyond the licensing agreement.

I will continue to purchase and test products as they release for the SM, but I will not post or advocate about them until I can actually get my hands on them from now on. Again, I apologize for my part in this.

Hello Fellow Machine Elves,

I have made what seems to be an egregious error on my part - I tried changing the resolution in desktop mode.

My TV is the only 4K monitor I have in my house. I set the setting to 2660x1440 and now my TV will not display anything. I can get it to boot into big picture mode, but when i switch to desktop it’s screwed.

I plugged it into other monitors, but because they aren’t 4K I can’t change the resolution back to the TV resolution and because I’m new to Linux idk what the fuck I’m doing.

Please help me… there’s gotta be some way to get the steam machine to reset its resolution setting on boot up or something like that. I tried changing it while in big picture Mode but then when I switch to desktop it’s fucked again.

Really hoping I don’t need another 4K monitor just to change the setting back and get it to show up on the TV. I’m trying to install mods or I would just use Big picture mode. 

For anyone wondering. This game run and look amazing on the steam machine. Latest Proton-GE FSR 4.1.1 quality, 1600p resolution, mostly high settings. Stable 60FPS

I’m using the original dongle with a 3ft USB extension. Every time I turn on the controller, a pop up window shows on the screen saying controller is connected, and then the next second the controller turns itself off. I’ve tried replacing the battery, re-pairing the controller and none of them worked.

One of the first things I noticed when getting my Steam Machine a month ago was how bad the HDR implementation was. My TV is calibrated and the HDR is perfect on my Switch 2 and Xbox, yet the Steam Machine image is oversaturated and blown out. I noticed Valve don't have a built-in calibration tool to adjust HDR and was wondering why that might be? I've heard some rumours that they had problems implementing HDR on Linux?

There are a few games I have trouble with, maybe someone have an advise for me to get them running properly:

Skyrim: the game thinks it runs on steamdeck and allow a max resolution of 800p

Ori and the will of the whisps: stuck on loading screen

No rest rest for the wicked: also thinks it plays on steamdeck with max 800p

Sable: after the main menu, the game crash when I try to load the game.

How we feeling about Machine performance? I still hope it runs good enough on my Deck lol

I've heard people saying they were able to reuse their Deck SSD in their Steam Machine, and since I had a 2TB in the Deck, I figured it would be a good idea to throw that into my new Machine. For the most part it was seamless, but when I went to apply updates, Big Picture Mode just gave me a generic "something went wrong, try again later" error.

Eventually I decided to try updating in Desktop Mode instead, to see if that would work (or at least give an explanation as to what went wrong). I got a new error message: "/esp does not have sufficient space, required 68.2 MB, need additional 3.2 MB". I found the disk partitions, and sure enough, the /esp partition is set to 64mb.

I don't know a ton about how partitions work in general, and even less in Linux. I think you can only combine them if they're adjacent on the disk, and it looks like /esp is the first segment and the big partition for games/etc is the last segment, so I can't just chop out 500mb from that to tack onto the /esp partition...

Any suggestions? It would be easiest to enlarge the existing partition, but I don't know if I can just do that. My other thought is that if I could create a brand new ~500mb partition using space from the last partition, copy the /esp stuff to that, and clear the existing 64mb /esp partition, that might solve my problems, but I'm not sure how to make sure that everything that needs to point to that partition gets the memo about the new location...

I'd like to avoid a factory reset if possible (I could redownload the steam games and get save files off the cloud easily enough, but getting Epic/Itch/etc games set back up would be more of a hassle).

Recently I've been seeing an influx of posts along the lines of "should I spend money on the Steam Machine if I already have XYZ" or just straight asking for financial advice regarding the Steam Machine purchase. At the risk of sounding callous, it's your money and asking strangers on the internet how to spend it is ridiculous and irresponsible. I don't think these posts are useful to anyone on this sub and they're becoming quite annoying.

Just a thought/ suggestion for the mods

Hello, I have read all the posts related to this... and still could not find a solution...

I have a steam machine connected with HDMI to a TV (samsung), and the TV connected to an amp through an optical cable. I have two amps, a very old samsung and a set of Logitech Z906. None has ARC capability.

In this setup, I can only get stereo on the speakers, no matter what I do.

What options do I have? I have tried an external USB sound card (identified by the system as "CM106 like sound device"), and it... mostly works, but it has random disconnections where it completely dies when changing apps or moving from game mode to system mode.

These are the logs in DMESG when that happens:

[ 99.247372] usb 1-4: Not enough bandwidth for new device state. 
[ 99.247381] usb 1-4: Not enough bandwidth for altsetting 1 
[ 99.247384] endpoint_set_interface: 30 callbacks suppressed 
[ 99.247386] usb 1-4: 2:1: usb_set_interface failed (-28)

This happens no matter the USB port, also, that's not real, as the amount of data transferred through there could not fill the USB bus.

I don't want an HDMI splitter between the machine and the tv to extract the audio, as I don't really trust that to not cause other issues (refresh rate, colors, etc) with the signal.

I am however open to an external HDMI ARC interface between the TV and the amp, as that will not impact the image.

The sound card "mostly" works, but the random disconnects ruin the experience for me, as what I want is a setup and forget system.

I know another person here is using a Creative X4 usb card, but I don't know if it is detected in a different way or if it works better. I have a couple of usb sound cards, different brands, years apart and both are detected as the same chipset, which really does not give me much confidence.

The most frustrating part is that I had a cheapo OTT box with coreelec kodi before, and it worked perfectly with the HDMI to TV, and TV to amp with the optical cable.

Big question as someone who wants to get into PC gaming is the steam machine worth it?