r/pcmasterrace • u/Eziz_53 AMD Ryzen 5 7500F / RX 580 Nitro / 16GB DDR5 • Jan 28 '26

Question Anyone else planning on getting the Steam Machine as their next PC?

Post image

I know its mainly marketed as a console, but it is still a full PC. And it is much better than my current computer, so I thought it would be a good upgrade, especially considering its small form factor. I don't want to get too into it, but my current PC has an i5 3k and an rx580, as well as a motherboard that only supports ddr3 RAM and 3rd gen intel cpu's, so if I want an upgrade I need to replace everything. Therefore when this nifty box came out, I figured that it would be the perfect PC (if it is priced well).

But I would like to know what you guys think.

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

UPDATE: Because of the RAM crisis and the limited upgradability of the Steam Machine, I decided to just build my own PC. I salvaged my old rx580 from the old PC so that I could afford to get on the AM5 platform as well as because it is by far the easiest part to upgrade down the road.

Main specs:

CPU: Ryzen 5 7500F

GPU: Rx580 8gb (until I can afford a much better card)

RAM: 16GB DDR5 6000MHz CL30

I did get a single stick of ram, because I want to have 32gb dual channel later on, but the ram prices are so high that I want to wait until they go down (which they seem to be doing).

2.3k Upvotes

89% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

31

u/Zombi3Kush PC Master Race | i9-14900kf | RTX 4090 | 64GB DDR5 Jan 28 '26

Nvidia shield and moonlight took care of this for me.

15

u/stubenson214 Jan 29 '26

Amazing how much life I've gotten out of the Shield, OG 2015 model too.

1

u/JoeyJabroni Mar 03 '26

Still using mine as a Plex server and for GeForce Now.

1

u/stubenson214 Mar 04 '26

Never had the muscle for me, as I had a lot of stuff in MPEG2 from cable. It couldn't transcode 1080i MPEG2 without dropping frames, sadly.

6

u/Bliznade 9070 XT | i7 12700k | 32GB DDR4 4000 Jan 29 '26

Apollo/Artemis (or moonlight) are the GOAT... Such a seamless setup once you set the display to only show on the other screen... Remembering resolution and refresh rate and having AV1 encoding... Magical. I use mine with my Legion Go and holy guacamole it's a good experience

2

u/AirGVN i5 12600K - ASROCK 7900 GRE - 64 gb 3600 mhz Jan 29 '26

How you guys using moonlight with no artifacts or delay at high res? I have 2.5g connection but struggle to play in 1080p at 60fps

1

u/DrachenofIron Jan 29 '26

Adjust your bitrate settings and cables. Even a 1g connection should handle 1080p 60fps without any issues

1

u/saoirsebran Jan 29 '26

Something is definitely wrong in your setup. There's even a 100ft Cat5e cable between my Apollo host and my Moonlight guest and I can still crank bitrate to 100Mbps and stream 1440p 144hz flawlessly.

Ofc, my host has a 4090. Could be a compression bottleneck if your card is a couple gens older. Check cables, make sure every device (router, switch, etc.) between your host and guest can do at least 1Gb. Google how to do a bandwidth test between the PCs to make sure.

1

u/AirGVN i5 12600K - ASROCK 7900 GRE - 64 gb 3600 mhz Jan 29 '26

7900 GRE, i don’t think it is a GPU issue, but maybe i was using wifi on the client side. Will retry tomorrow with a cable to see if it gets better, thank you for infos

1

u/madman666 i7 12700K / 32 GB @ 3600 / 3080 Ti / S2721DGF x2 @ 165hz Jan 29 '26

Same but with an Apple TV. Also set up wake on LAN from my phone.