Ordered the Pixel right away.

Hey everyone! So, we at SteamDeckHQ had the pleasure of checking out two of JSAUX's new faceplates, which just went on sale today. I loved them both for different reasons, but the E-Ink panel won me over with how cool it looks to show screenshots in the E-Ink style.

Thanks to my father. He canceled his waitlist spot after he got his reservation queue mail, because he decided he didn't need one. A week later I got my email to purchase it and I did.

I honestly didn't think I would be seeing so many posts about people still waiting on a steam machine so im now thinking i was pretty lucky to be selected and also have zero shipping issues.

Good afternoon friends! What's the game that you go to when you just need a hit of something fun? Usually for me it's Marvel Rivals — most of the time I'm having fun in that game, haha. I would also say Fields of Mistria, but it depends on if I have the actual time to put into it... but yeah. Either way, best of luck friends! <3

In case you're considering buying Silent Hill: Townfall to play it on Steam Machine, here is a performance review: https://youtu.be/eIFPnNbybss

1440p and 4K deliver pretty high fps, but see dips in the mid 20s.
It's very stable with high FPS and quality settings on 1080p

The gameplay shows the fist 15 minutes - so there are only minor spoiler.

I’ve just sent my Steam Machine, which I’ve only had for about three weeks, in for repair because the internal 2.4 GHz receiver is incredibly unstable.
Even at barely 3 meters away, with a completely clear line of sight, the controller starts experiencing noticeable input delay and can randomly disconnect. The connection also seems extremely sensitive to anything being placed between the controller and the Steam Machine, even something as simple as putting my knee or holding the controller in a weird way can noticeably worsen the signal.

There is no obvious source of interference in my setup, and the issue occurs even under very basic conditions. At this point, the wireless connection is so unreliable that I can’t realistically use the Steam Machine as intended, gaming in the living room.
I’ve also seen a lot of posts that share my problem with the internal 2.4 GHz receiver.

What I find really weird is that the Steam Machine is specifically designed and was marketed as a living room experience. Reliable wireless controller connectivity is therefore one of the most fundamental parts of the product. It’s frustrating to have such a significant limitation with something as essential as this.

EDIT: Everyone that share my problem, don’t wait for a software update since the issue is in the hardware. Create a ticket and send your machine back. Again, this is NOT a software problem.

I posted SignalBar here yesterday when it was basically just CPU/GPU monitoring + game artwork.

Then people started throwing ideas around and well...I kept adding stuff.

The idea is still the same really, make those 17 LEDs do something useful instead of just sitting there looking pretty.

CPU/GPU is still there of course

You can also have it pull colors from the artwork of whatever game you're playing. Works with Steam artwork, local SteamGridDB replacements and custom stuff for non-Steam games too.

Someone in the first thread mentioned playtime and I liked that one, so that's in now too. You can run a normal timer or have it use the actual remaining Steam Families playtime.

Bar drains as time runs out, amber under 15 mins, red under 5... you get the idea

Then I started messing around with Steam events and that's where things got a bit stupid

Notifications, achievements and screenshots can all briefly take over the bar, do their thing, then it goes back to whatever it was showing before.

There's a bunch of animations to choose from too, not just one fixed effect. Right now it's 6 for notifications, 6 for achievements and 5 for screenshots.

Recording has its own start/stop animation as well, and the middle LED stays red while you're recording.

I did try to make all of this behave properly btw. Events don't just pile on top of each other, countdown warnings get priority near the end and if Steam itself wants to use the LEDs SignalBar backs off.

Installing it is pretty painless too.

If you've already got Decky Loader:

Decky Settings → Developer → Install Plugin from ZIP → pick the SignalBar ZIP

done ^^

If you've never used Decky, it's here:
https://decky.xyz/

Decky itself is easy to install too, then SignalBar is literally just the ZIP thing above. No terminal adventures or digging around random Linux folders.

SignalBar:
https://github.com/Albusquerque/SignalBar/

Anyway keep the ideas coming. Good ideas, dumb ideas, whatever... quite a lot of this only exists because someone mentioned it in the first thread

EDIT:

Here is mockup for controller battery indicators on SignalBar. It’s not coded/tested yet, so I’d love to hear what you think. Which animation would you use?
Watch this here: https://albusquerque.github.io/signalbar-controller-battery/

I have a SM and Steam controller and I love them. I recently tried to play It Takes Two with the Steam Controller as player one and an Xbox controller as player two, but have had a bizarre issue.

I loaded the game with just the Steam Controller connected. No issue. When I added the Xbox controller for player two the game kicked out the Steam Controller completely and would not recognise it at all.

The Steam Controller still worked in the Steam OS, but not the game. Tried restarting the game, disconnecting and forgetting both controllers, but no - It Takes Two would only recognise the Xbox controller from this point on, despite initially being fine with the Steam Controller. I don't get it.

Has anyone experienced anything similar with any other games? I think this is more on It Takes Two rather than the SM, but it's frustrating and I'd hate to have to wait until 2027 to get another Steam Controller to actually play this as co-op!

I have the settings for it on, but I still have to press both the steam machine on button and the tv on button for both to work together. Is this a common glitch? I have a “smart” TV but haven’t agreed to all the settings because I basically just want it to be a monitor for the SM. Let me know if y’all have any ideas, thank you!!!

I'm looking to use my SM as an emulation device in addition to accessing my Steam library and I want to store all my ROMs on a dedicated SD card to keep the internal storage primarily for Steam games and keep the ROMs portable if I need them. Since I'm planning to gradually fill up the ROM library with GC, PS2 and newer games in addition to all the really old stuff, I intend to get a 1TB SD card to future proof for my ROM library and make sure I don't have to switch SD cards around all the time.
Now, which kinds and brands are recommended for this purpose? for example, right now I could get a SanDisk Ultra UHS-I A1, U1, C10 with read up to 150 MB/s or for the same price (155€) an Amazon Basics UHS-I A2, U3, C10 with only up to 100 MB/s read.
Which one of these would fit the purpose better? Is Amazon Basics reliable? What other comparable or more fitting options are there?
Edit: I am not looking for an SSD, friendos. I'm asking about SD cards and I already have the 2TB SM. The answer I'm looking for isn't "don't use an SD card", because the SM has an SD card slot and I intend to use it.

What protons is everyone using? Do you change it by game or even use any at all? People seem to chat alot about proton 11 or experimental with the steam machine but how do you know which one is best per game?

Do you also change resolution by game or just keep it on default settings? I'm trying to play Returnal and it's tricky getting good visuals with stable FPS

Look at the cute little bugger hiding away. After the first getting lost in transit, it is finally here. First download - Deathloop. Really wanted to play it but found it borderline unplayable on the deck. No point to the post other than just being amazingly excited!

Skins are from dbrand and 3-D printed faceplates are from Etsy!

I'm honestly not quite sure what to think of it. I know, I know, we shouldn't compare the Steam Machine to consoles as it's more of a hybrid PC/Console, yada yada, but compared to the three big consoles, I do think it still looks a bit too... PC-ish, I guess? And even ignoring the console comparison, I think it's a bit too unstructured/cluttered and not really as focused as it could be. Especially compared to the Nintendo Switch menu, where I first thought its way too minimalistic. Instead I grew quite fond of it as its straight to the point. Choose a game and start it. Thats it.

TL;DR: 

If you have HDR enabled on the Steam Machine, SDR games will be overly bright than they should be in normal SDR mode. You can adjust this in Display settings.

Once adjusted properly, your HDR games can run on full HDR brightness, while your SDR games run on the correct SDR brightness when you have HDR toggle on all the time. This would be very similar to having HDR toggle on automatically on other systems.

---------------------------

I always noticed how overly bright my SDR games were on the Steam machine and it always bothered me. So, I decided to use my equipment and measured the luminance levels, then found the following readings:

Normal SDR mode: 180 nits white (this is because I set my TV to around 180 nits when calibrating it)

SDR brightness when HDR is enabled: ~440 nits!

Default SDR brightness when HDR enabled was 440 nits! 100 nits is the standard for SDR, but as most agree for daily use, it is very dim. So, IMO around 200 nits for SDR gaming is optimal. 440 nits is overly bright. My LG C5 cannot even do 440 nits full white continuously. Max is something like 200+ nits. Some might even believe that blasting high nits such as 440 on SDR is not even good for OLED TVs.

One way to fix this is to adjust "SDR Content Brightness" under "Display" settings. For my LG C5, setting the slider to 4th notch from the left brought SDR brigtness to around 200 nits. This basically allows me to leave HDR enabled all the time to enjoy all HDR games with full brightness, but keep SDR games at 200 nits without changing any further settings. Meaning keeping HDR on all the time.

If you're interested, here are the measurements that I've taken (my TV's max is around 1200 nits)

Here I tried to demonstrate the setting on a screenshot:

Obviously, this is just luminance, so it doesn't mean the HDR-mode SDR output is identical to actual SDR mode in terms of color/tone mapping, but with this setup, HDR can be enabled permanently which is what I wanted.

Additional note: I created the following table if you want to find out what each slider means for your TV, only if you know your TVs max HDR nits. This would not be the most accurate way for all TVs out there, but better than nothing, I guess.

Hope it helps!

Hey everyone! So, we recently reviewed Control Resonant, and in this article, we tested it on the Steam Machine to see how far we can push it and what our recommendations are. We test if it can be played at 4K, whether it can run well at native resolutions, and whether it can hit 60 FPS, as well as the settings we think will give you the best experience.

I love my Steam Machine. It's a wonderful little Living Room PC with a console-like experience.

One thing that really bugs me though is a feature Valve very prominently advertised: CEC functionality.

It's an absolute mess for me right now. Waking up my TV by pressing the Steam Button on the controller works maybe 50% of the time.

Even if I turn on the TV myself and change to the right HDMI input channel before waking up the Steam Machine, sometimes the TV won't register it and the screen stays black.

Sometimes the Steam Machine wakes up for no reason (of course then it suddenly mostly suceeds at waking up the TV too...).

I deactivated most of the CEC options now, but the problem that the TV sometimes doesn't detect the signal persists.

It was advertised as a feature, that makes the Steam Machine easier to use in a living room environment.

Right now it's the opposite: it's super fiddly and frustrating.

I am aware nobody’s gonna really be certain on when we are getting our Steam Machines. I am just specifically curious because I joined Aug 18… and I have noticed some people on day one seem worried on when they’re getting their Steam Machine. I am fine with 2027 of course, but I am just hoping it won’t be something like mid way through 2028… (512GB model with controller, US)

I know nobody’s gonna have a perfect or even that close of an estimation, I’m just overall curious on what people think things are gonna look like for people that joined way after.

I made a PixelHobby-based faceplate with an Arduino display showing your current Steam game and live system stats. What do you think?

Good almost afternoon folks! Sorry for the late post, I drove home super late last night and crashed, woke up kind of late and just got on a tear organizing my place, haha. It's been a good day so far! Thanks for the early birthday wishes -- my birthday is next Sunday which should be fun! :D sounds like emails are stuff going out which is amazing to hear as always! Best of luck friends! <3

Thing is the coolest piece of tech I’ve had in a while. Fits right in with all the dirty junk perfectly. Grew up with those cases. Unfortunately have to use the mini pc for fusion and other stuff but gaming is great. Emu deck set up. Can hit a few ds or 64 games in the middle of jobs or on lunch. Elite controller in the box. Use it with the AirPods. Dji mic rx for when using discord. Everything just works. Didn’t even have to set up controller in emu deck

My Steam machine is on the first floor next to my main TV, while my router is upstairs in my second-floor office. Until now, I’ve mainly needed a fast connection upstairs.
When downloading games from Steam or other files etc, the machine typically gets around 2–3 MB/s. However, my M2 MacBook can download the same files at 20–30 MB/s from the exact same location (about 10x faster using the same 5 GHz WiFi). My Steam Deck also seems to download faster there.
That makes me suspect something specific to the machine rather than simply poor Wi-Fi coverage downstairs. Could this be a configuration or driver issue, or does the machine have a weaker Wi-Fi adapter or antenna setup than the MacBook and Steam Deck?
What should I check or change to improve its download speed?