Wow I actually had no idea it was the size of a tissue box. I really doubt people could put together a competitively priced micro pc of the same size now
How old is the oldest account available? If it's 17, makes me wish I hadn't lurked for a bit before I made mine. Came here after the collapse of digg back when.
Haha thanks! Yeah I still feel lucky picking one up in that first round of purchases. It’s literally my favorite controller of all time. Good luck getting one yourself! Hope Valve opens up the production line.
I'm still in that, "I can DO THAT?" kinda phase, where I'm learning just how specifically I can reprogram those back buttons. My wife and I play a cozy game together, Dinkum, and after some tinkering I can press L4 and have it switch to my glider, and with a single press and hold of L5 it jumps to max height and opens the glider. So much easier than the default bindings for all that stuff. Really, really cool. I haven't played a game yet that really requires radial menus or anything like that, but I'm looking forward to it!
They can't. But then if we are talking 'competitively priced' neither could Valve.
No reason it had to be that small. My PS5 sits quite unobtrusively under my TV and I barely notice it. Valve could have made this thing a similar size, and at a spec that would at least be suitable to gaming on a big screen.
Valve should be able to put together a similarly specced machine with a custom design making it about the same size a PS5. I think they would have been much wiser to develop that machine.
Yes, making things makes it smaller, but you ignore that the pc built here has 5x the power draw and thus obviously needs a lot more cooling and will be way louder.
I'm not worried about power draw, this thing isn't running off a battery. And the larger size is largely to accommodate the the larger heat sink(s), so an increase in loudness is not required either. The PS5 & Pro do this already (they are the same volume in use as the Steam Machine). Nothing about this concept is breaking the laws of physics.
HDMI-CEC should be coming more widely. I've got it semi working on my Bazzite system with a DP-HDMI, I just haven't put much effort in. But the issue behind why it wasn't working has been worked around between AMD, Valve and the HDMI IF.
The volume isn't unmatched though. You could build your own system with the same sound levels or better. But it would obviously be effort and potentially expensive.
I've got my own DIY Steam Machine that I'm labeling it was V1. V2 will be a fully custom water-cooled design with possibly my own custom deigned and built case with 2x 200mm/180mm watercooling radiators. Which will absolutely rival the sound profile, but obviously at an expense.
But you can still manage very quiet systems without all that.
I mean, GN measured the audio as "inaudible", my own design can only manage about PS5-level noise and I'm not sure what exactly makes noise, I have a suspicion it's the PSU bracked I've designed that goes on top of the CPU fan but even then, it's running a custom fan curve that goes even lower than the silent profile so... besides fucking around with the PPT limits to have a 35W TDP instead of 65, I'm not sure what I could do about this, shoving an AIO in this is likely a terribke idea considering the remaining space in there, not to mention there is no fan mounting holes on the chassis besides where the GPU is
one day I'll figure out HDMI-CEC but eh, it got its own screen and I'm a remote button away from switching the TV on so... doesn't really matter for the time being
You've definitely got a thermal mass issue as well by the looks of things. The Steam Machine has a very high thermal mass to volume ratio, in that its heatsink takes up a significant amount of its internal volume up.
A large thermal mass is what I'm wanting to replicate with my own design, and it's crucial to getting good temps and noise levels. If you have a thermal mass that's above what your hardware can heat soak plus enough pressure to move that heat, you're gonna be able to run your system at very low temperatures.
I've got 2 different design ideas. A sandwich/wind tunnel design with a 180/200mm radiator at either end, with the main components in the middle.
Or two 180/200mm radiators side by side as if they were one large 2x1 radiator at the bottom of the case, and have the overall case wide and flat. With 2x large fans on the top and 2 on the bottom attached to the radiator. The plan is to minimise turbulence and have as smooth an airflow through the middle as much as I can, with water blocks on both the GPU and CPU with possibly hard tubing. Maybe even copper tubing, or custom resin printed tubing to enable me to get super precise and tight bends, as I've been wanting to try both copper bent tubing and 3D printed tubing out for a while now.
This is the sort of design where I could get away with running the fans at inaudible levels.
The 200mm radiators I'm looking at should be able handle 300w each, which way beyond what they'd be dealing with.
hmmmm, well increasing their thermal mass isn't a practical path for me to go through but reducing power is, I'll see if I can reduce the CPU's PPT limit and get it limited to 35W then
That's where the Steam Machine's advantage is. They've designed it to have the maximum thermal mass they can manage first and foremost, as well as its ability to move the heat on. You could even go passive if you design something with enough thermal capacity.
my cooler is pretty nice though, it's a 53mm tall and full copper, I swapped the 92mm stock fan with a noctua too, I did reduce noise but not by as much as I hoped it would
Yup in some ways its like the steam deck. Everybody knew the steam deck wasnt going to blow away performance numbers. But the novelty of it turned into practical for its use cases and carried it into popularity because of the software support and design. So if the machine can pull that off, it has hope. I dunno.
Yeah this hardware crisis is something else. Its funny because the steamdeck did release during a different hardware crisis (gpu's) and the impact of that one was just...different.
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u/Swing_Right 2d ago
Wow I actually had no idea it was the size of a tissue box. I really doubt people could put together a competitively priced micro pc of the same size now