Transcript & Summary: Even Valve is Disappointed - Steam Machine Review

[00:00] Valve's Steam Machine is probably the most anticipated gaming PC of all time. I would argue, alongside the Steam Deck, one of the most important. But, that doesn't mean that our last 2 weeks with it have been all good. There are the highlights, like the unbelievably polished experience of Steam OS, not to mention perfect integration with your home media setup. But, there's also been the lower lights. Performance in the latest titles being a big one, alongside some hard truths. It costs more than we [00:29] hoped, and Valve confirmed they feel the same way. But, if you can stomach the upfront investment, Valve's game cube is yet another massive step on their now decade-plus journey of saving gamers from the closed ecosystems that demand pricey subscriptions. And it is hands-down the best solution that I've ever seen [music] to solving the inconvenience of PC gaming on the couch. It's not the biggest or the baddest, but that one-two punch is why the Steam Machine is so damn exciting. It combines the strengths of PC gaming with the [01:01] conveniences of console gaming, and all in a nearly silent cube that's about [music] half the size of a real console. But, with this kind of hype, can Valve possibly hope to live up to gamers' expectations? If we're being realistic, probably not. But, I still love the Steam Machine for what it is today, and I'm really excited about what it means for the future of gaming. And I'm also excited, okay, but actually this time, to tell you about this companion product from our sponsor Dbrand. Their robot [01:32] sent over this companion cube case for the Steam Machine. We'll look at it in a bit more detail later, but pre-orders are live now, so go to shortlist.com to reserve yours. I mean, even if you don't want a Steam Machine, this thing would look so good on yourself. Back to the Steam Machine, though. >> I need this for b-roll. We're on a tight schedule, baby. >> Okay, that makes sense. We unboxed and explored the setup of the Steam Machine over on ShortCircuit this morning, and we gave our in-depth thoughts on the [01:56] controller last month. So, we're going to be laser-focused on the experience of the Steam Machine itself. Right out of the gate, if you're a Steam Deck or a Big Picture user, you're going to feel right at home. The Steam Machine comes with SteamOS pre-installed, Valve's Linux-based operating system that they've spent over 10 years optimizing for gaming. Why did it take so long? Well, because most games still don't support Linux natively. But, thanks to Proton, a translation layer that allows Windows games to run on Linux, we found [02:25] that almost any game made for Windows runs surprisingly well on SteamOS. No command line, no driver conflicts, just press the button and play your game. It's been one of the Steam Deck's greatest strengths, and that remains true here. And even if, somehow, you don't like SteamOS, well, great news. Valve takes a very open approach to their hardware, or should I say, your hardware, you know? The way it should be. So, the Steam Machine allows you to install any OS you want, even Windows. It's just that, if you did so, you would [02:54] lose out on some of its best features, like a personal favorite of mine, the ability to suspend your software and resume at the push of a button, just like a console. Seriously, thank you, Valve. Okay, we did find that there were sometimes that resuming a game would take a little longer than we'd like, but most of the time it was really quick. I'm talking like 5 seconds, which is a huge edge over booting up your PC, loading your launcher, and starting a game. We did notice that sometimes the SteamOS UI would become laggy while a [03:24] game is suspended, but realistically, we're dealing with pre-release software here, and with how much Valve has refined SteamOS on the Deck over the last few years, which is much less powerful hardware, I can say confidently that they're going to get that sorted. The other big one for me is HDMI CEC. It doesn't have the best marketing behind it, and it doesn't have a sexy name. In fact, most people don't even really think about CEC, because when it's working properly, you literally aren't supposed to even notice it. But, it is [03:53] hugely important to the living room experience, especially if you have multiple devices. CEC, if you're not familiar, is a protocol that's built into the HDMI standard that allows your various media devices to communicate with and even control each other without running any additional cables. The most common uses for it are allowing your soundbar volume to be controlled by your TV remote or having your Android media box and AV receiver power each other on and off in sync. Now, most PCs straight-up do not support it. This is [04:23] both a hardware and a software problem, and there's no hint of a solution on the horizon. So, achieving any kind of seamless operation involves, like, janky IR receiver boxes and or complicated home theater automations. Well, Valve hated that, so they built their own software and custom motherboard for the Steam Machine that, from our experience, just plain works. You press the Steam Controller button, it turns on everything, selects the right inputs, and bingo bango bongo, seconds later you are gaming exactly where you left off. [04:53] But, there's more to a good gaming machine than just living room integration, as Microsoft so painfully learned. >> Go to Internet Explorer. Oh, nice. >> And the Steam Machine's raw gaming hot spa leaves a fair bit to be desired, unfortunately. To be clear, it's not terrible. Valve chose a semi-custom six-core Zen 4 CPU with 16 gigs of DDR5 memory rated to 5,600 megatransfers per second along side a semi-custom GPU with 8 gigs of dedicated VRAM. So, that's more CPU performance and a lot more RAM than the current crop of mainstream [05:29] gaming consoles, but the current crop of gaming consoles is 6 years old now. And if we look closely at the specs for these chips, they look more semi than custom with a strong resemblance to laptop chips from 2023. Now, according to Valve, that's not a problem for most buyers. The Steam Machine should outperform approximately 70% of the gaming PCs that are out there in the wild. And if the Steam Deck is anything to go by, developers will squeeze blood from a stone optimizing for a popular hardware config like this one. But with [06:02] all of that said, I still feel pretty strongly that these are not the kinds of parts that I would expect in a 4K gaming machine even with the asterisk of FSR upscaling. But I could be wrong, right? So, let's take a look at the numbers. Right out of the gate, the Linux port of Shadow of the Tomb Raider absolutely crushed Valve's target hitting over 120 FPS at 4K. Not bad, but that is an 8-year-old game and sadly, the rest of our suite ended up sitting with average frame rates between 40 to 50 FPS. In [06:34] fairness to Valve, some of these games were probably running at settings that are a little ambitious for the humble Steam Machine and you could absolutely turn Cyberpunk for instance down a little bit and get a more fluid experience, but that wasn't the case for all of them. Doom the Dark Ages for instance was already cranked nearly as low as it could go. This whole situation feels like a completely self-inflicted wound. Like if Valve had never said 4K gaming at 60 FPS and had they instead offered a more nuanced, "Yeah, 1080p on [07:05] medium details, maybe high or ultra for older titles and in some cases, you know what? 4K upscaling looks pretty darn good." I wouldn't even have to be talking about this. But now I have to go spelunking for what the heck Valve was talking about and it seems like for newer titles what they meant was low settings with FSR set as low as ultra performance, which means we are upscaling from a mere 720p base resolution all the way to 4K Ultra HD. >> [music] >> At these settings, all right, sure. All five of our games did hit averages that [07:38] are comfortably above 60 FPS, but at these settings, all five of our games also looked pretty ugly. And there's [music] more bad news. Even with 28 ray tracing cores, RT is pretty much a non-starter on this thing. This is true [music] both for games where it's an option, like Cyberpunk, where we saw an average of 15 FPS at 1080p Ultra, [music] and especially true for games that force its usage, like Indiana Jones or Doom the [music] Dark Ages, where only one configuration we tested managed to consistently stay above 60 FPS. [music] [08:10] >> And that was the handheld one, right? >> Yep. >> Yikes. To be clear, it's not the end of the world today, but whether you love ray tracing or hate it, there will be more titles in the future that will require hardware support for it, and the Steam Machine just plain doesn't have the horses. Once again, I'd love to be proven wrong here. Valve did contact us hours before recording this to say they are aiming to patch it, but guys, it's a 7600M GPU. There is no path that I can trace that will lead to acceptable [08:39] performance on this hardware, especially in light of your unqualified claims of 4K 60 FPS, which still wouldn't be a huge problem if it wasn't for the big white elephant the PlayStation 5. On paper, the Steam Machine and the PS5 trade blows, but in real life, I'm sorry, Valve, but it just doesn't quite seem to work out that way. Now, I do have a disclaimer here. The PS5 doesn't support any kind of frame time analysis, so any numbers we give you guys are going to be kind of rough-and-tumble ad hoc. We explain the [09:12] methodology, by the way, of both this test and the rest in our accompanying labs article. We'll have that link down below, but anyway, in God of War Ragnarok, the base PS5, which upscales from 1440p to 4K, was chilling around 75 to 78 FPS. Meanwhile, in the same scene, the Steam Machine, with mostly medium settings and FSR set to quality, landed in the 60 to 63 range. >> [music] >> This isn't the end of the world. We actually found that upscaling was hampering our performance more than we expected and at 1440p native, we were [09:44] able to break 70 FPS even with our details turned up. But, what it isn't is a win. With that said, choosing the right games and enabling variable refresh rate is going to help to mitigate some choppiness and you can absolutely have a really solid gaming experience on this box. Also, as these things go out in the wild, I do expect Valve's verified for Steam Machine program to incentivize developers to [music] optimize for this hardware specifically. It's just that you got to keep your expectations in check. [music] [10:11] It's not magically going to get way faster. Coming back to good news though, the Steam Machine's download speeds are solid. We saw close to full gigabit speeds over a wire and a little less than half of that via Wi-Fi 6E. [music] That's partially probably thanks to Valve's four dedicated antennas in this box, two for Wi-Fi, one for Bluetooth, and one for Steam Controllers. And we also saw an average power draw of just 175 watts on their heavy load with a mere 66 watts for lighter games. That contributes to a cool, quiet experience [10:41] with the Steam Machine landing right in line with the PS5 for acoustics and averaging just [music] 68 and 66° across our CPU and GPU respectively. Good [music] job, Valve. And good job making this such a repairable and serviceable machine. Not only can the Steam Machine be easily opened up, including the ability to upgrade both the RAM and SSD, but Valve has once again partnered with iFixit to make guides and replacement parts available. Absolutely amazing. [music] Maybe consider an LTT precision [11:09] screwdriver if you ever need to make any upgrades or repairs. It's got all the bits you need and a [music] convenient magnetic parts tray that's included in the lid. lttstore.com. Another highlight is Valve's open approach to peripherals. I mean, can [music] you imagine Nintendo just allowing any old thing to be plugged into their precious gaming machine? Meanwhile, in Valveland, the Steam Machine played nicely with every mouse, keyboard, or headset that we plugged into it, including random Bluetooth accessories. [music] [11:33] One thing of note is that some of our audio accessories were a little quieter than usual on the Steam Machine, even with the volume maxed, but again, this feels like one of those don't worry, Valve's going to fix that things. Bringing us finally to something Valve couldn't fix. The detail you've all been waiting for. You can order your Steam Machine today, and it will cost $1,050 US for the 512 gig storage version, and $1,350 [music] for THE 2 TERABYTE. I THINK WE BETTER TALK ABOUT THIS. Is that reasonable? [12:08] >> It is reasonable in this current market conditions, but it is >> You sound like you're being held hostage. >> I mean, Valve was held hostage by the parts makers. >> So, reasonable, yes, but like, is it too high? >> Yes. >> And that's a tough thing. I think it's fair to say that both of those things are true. >> Yes. >> Based on the costs that Valve is seeing, and also based on other options that are available in the market, it can be both reasonably priced and still too high. >> I was really hoping that this was going [12:39] to bring PC gaming to the mainstream living room, that I could pitch all my friends and be like, "Oh, get a Steam Machine, it's so cool." But this is a premium price, even though I wouldn't say it's a premium product. >> fairness to Valve, they did telegraph this. They were explicit when I came down there for the reveal, that it was not going to be subsidized by the 30% cut that they're going to take on games, because they have no guarantee that people are actually going to run Steam OS on this, or buy any games. And the [13:08] PS5 is such a giant, even bigger elephant in the room than I even said before. The fact that you can still, even at the increased price, buy a PS5 for $600 US, or a PS5 Pro, which is a much more powerful machine, for 900. And then you'd still have money left over for your first year of PS Plus. >> And both of those PS5s include a controller, too. So, that's going to cover almost another year. >> With that said, if you're keeping it for a long time, I mean, let's talk TCO. That's a term that not everybody's [13:37] familiar with outside of like business or the data center. It's total cost of ownership. It often gets said that on the PC side, pricing of games is a huge boon compared to consoles, but you've actually opened my eyes to the PlayStation Store having a lot of deals. >> There was a week a few weeks ago where there wasn't a sale going on and people freaked out. So, I think the there's sort of a myth around Steam sales being way better than console, but I think we've balanced out. That being said, you [14:04] can play online games for free >> Right. >> on a Steam machine and on a PlayStation, you're going to be spending 110 bucks a year. >> That is brutal. >> A lot of money. That's a game and a half. >> Another big benefit, though, I mean, we touched on this, but accessory support. Nintendo's not the only one that keeps things locked down with respect to plugging things into their consoles. I mean, for years, entire brands that make gaming headsets, their only reason for existing at all was that they managed to [14:30] get the license to produce compatible Xbox gaming headsets. >> Turtle Beach. >> They were awful audio quality. Like, had no reason for existing other than licensing. >> Even controllers, we're living through a renaissance in the PC space, but to find something good for the PlayStation 5 that doesn't have that has back paddles for less than 200 bucks, so impossible. >> Yeah, we're actually Shout out David's upcoming video. We're doing a a modding video on the stock DualSense to add paddles to it. >> It sucks. [14:58] >> Going to be pretty pretty freaking cool. >> I don't even know if I care about bringing this up, but there is one thing the PS5 does that the Steam machine for now doesn't, and that's VR. >> Yeah, I'm not a big VR guy. >> I don't think most PlayStation gamers are right now. >> No, they they have like, what, 12 games? >> I don't think there will ever be another PSVR. >> No. I mean, the other white elephant in the room is the the custom PC you build in a white case. Literally tomorrow, we have a video coming out where we build a [15:23] PC for the price of the Steam Machine to compare performance. >> I think we're going to see better value. I think we're going to see better upgradeability and serviceability. We're going to see better performance. >> We're going to have to talk about it tomorrow. >> I know I shouldn't be that surprised, but the performance really was a downer for me. >> I think if they hadn't made the 4K 60 promise, it would be a little less painful. >> Or if they had [music] left the door open for Steam Machine Pro. Like if I [15:47] knew there was going to be something based on a 9070 coming. That would be the legitimate 4K machine. >> [music] >> Then I think we'd be having a really different conversation. >> Or eGPU support maybe. Some way to upgrade more than just the RAM and SSD. >> Okay. We've spent a lot of time harping on the price, but what would be the right price? What's the no hesitation I buy one tomorrow price? >> Me or I'd recommend to people? >> You recommend. >> 800 bucks I think >> [music] >> is reasonable. It's slightly worse [16:13] performance than a a console, but it has so much more openness and features that I think balances out that value. >> Yeah, I mean we barely even touched on the fact that you can use it as a full-fledged desktop PC. Like they have done a lot of work not just on the big picture gaming aspect of Steam OS. I'm actually planning to once we get the real Steam Machine back from labs, throw it in my backpack and use it as my daily driver machine for a month. >> Oh, that's pretty fun. >> Yeah. So I'll have to do everything, [16:39] gaming and work on it. And it's actually portable enough that you just could. >> Portable. >> Portable. >> [laughter] >> Do you want to hear something that's really sad? I do. I asked them specifically what was the original price point in mind for the Steam Machine? And they're like, "I can't give you that, but if you look at the price increase of the Steam Deck, that tells you what we were the targeting for." And that's about a $200 price increase. So we would have hit our price if it wasn't >> the RAM-pocalypse. Do you think it's [17:04] still going to sell anyway? >> It'll sell a certain amount to the Valve diehards. I think that there's enough people out there that are like, "I believe in this. I want to support this." I don't think it's going to cross into the mainstream even to the level of the Steam Deck. I think the Steam Deck's greatest strength was that it was a really slick console-like experience for a really aggressive price. And this is not an aggressive price. This is a enthusiast price. >> I hate the words you're saying, but I [17:29] think I accept them. For now, if RAM pricing were to normalize, I suspect mostly good guy Valve would make adjustments to [music] the pricing. I can just also understand their perspective that they can't just operate this thing at a loss. And >> Do you think scalpers are still going to jump all over this thing? >> Yeah. >> And then I hope they they they get stuck with it forever. >> One thing I would never hope they get stuck with is a sponsor like dbrand. They've done everything to me from wasting my time to making me stick my [17:57] arm in a terrible, horrible trap, but you got to give them credit where it's due. They really knocked it out of the park with this one. It could have just been a skin, but no, they put in the extra effort in manufacturing something this detailed at this scale is more complicated than you guys probably think. All you got to do is use the included embedded Allen key to pop the back panel off and then start assembling your Steam machine inside the case. And once you've got the case open, dbrand didn't miss any details here. They added [18:26] these rubber strips on the inside to make sure that your machine gets that extra bit of padding, not to mention is oh so satisfying to slide [music] in. Once the machine's in, you just pop the back plate back on and well, like David said, our Steam machine is in B-roll right now. The point is boom, companion cube. And it's got a few other notable features. It's got removable port covers, a removable front panel with a gap to show off the LED strip, and a mechanical button pass-through so you can hit the power switch. In terms [18:57] of intake and exhaust, the bottom is fully open and on the backside, you've got an unobstructed exhaust vent with full access to all of the IO. And if you're worried about the volume of air that's coming in from the bottom, you can actually reverse the little rubber for to make it stand just a little bit taller. I need dbrand to make one of those for me. >> Hey! >> I imagine Portal fans are going to absolutely love this one, even the ones who aren't buying a Steam Machine right away. So, guys, make [music] sure that [19:21] you head over to shortliners.com and be one of the first to reserve yours. Thanks for watching this video. If Valve's ecosystem interests you, or even if it doesn't, check out our review of the Steam Controller. There is a lot to love with that thing, even if you're not that into the Steam Machine.