elijah.run/blog/steam-machine

Steam machine

published 2026-08-22 | tags: #gadgets

I built my first gaming PC with my dad when I was 13 in ~2009.

Before that I was using a bunch of really low powered laptops and desktops that didn't have dedicated graphics and were certified for Windows 98 so you know... they barely connected to the internet.

Building a PC really is just like complex legos, but much like building Ikea furniture, the fact that I had a hand in building this machine made me way more invested in it's operation and empowered me to fix, tinker, and upgrade it over the years.

On top of building though I also sort of designed the machine, choosing the parts, double checking that everything would fit together and was compatible, and finding a good deal for everything, forced me to have a deeper knowledge of the machine.

It was fun to assemble this complex device and then to be able to play any game I could want on the pretty budget hardware, around $1,000 all told at the time.

The PC served me well, going through a few rounds of upgrades including graphics cards, hard drive expansion, and every other generation of Windows.

In 2023 I bought a Steam Deck to help me play games in my increasingly sparse free time. I would still turn my PC on from time to time, but seeing as it's core purpose was Gaming hardware, and I wasn't playing games on it very much, it gathered dust.

After a few months of not being turned on, I decided to shelve the tower all together. Between work laptop, my Linux laptop for personal projects, and the Deck for gaming, I didn't have a need for it.

During this time I was also being "radicalized" (with the most luke-warm hot-take) that Windows sucked so bad I just shouldn't use it at all.

10 years ago Windows might be considered a "necessary evil" for a PC gamer. In that decade though it has gotten much worse injecting ads, AI, and just buggy core software into a product that was just OK to start with.

Thankfully, Valve has been building up an ecosystem of software to play Windows games on Linux so well that it Just Works (TM) -- something I never would have said about anything Linux related when I was 13.

So here I was at the start of 2026: an avid gamer without a gaming PC, a traveler adrift, limited by the hardware. The Deck was nice, but had it's rough edges; while it could technically play all of my games, it would need to be on the absolutely lowest settings for newer titles which was tolerable but frustrating.

The Steam Machine really did answer all of my needs. It was a PC in a small form-factor, promised 4k 60fps performance on most games, and was designed for the console gamer audience. The day it was announced, I entered myself into the queue and a few months later got it in the mail.

Honestly, it's not revolutionary -- or at least none of it feels revolutionary.

Especially if you are a 1080p monitor kinda guy, this really does feel like a PC-console experience we've been promised.

Before this I didn't really have a "Couch Gaming" setup. When I had the gaming PC, that was also a workstation so I needed a desk to work at. And my Deck can connect to a TV but it only supports 720p which like... even I have standards. We also don't have a standard living room couch + TV for setup that I grew up with to encourage the kids toward non-tv activities like reading and playing.

So I took this as an opportunity to setup a small gaming nook with a couch, small monitor, Steam Machine, and speakers. As much as I still love gaming on the Deck, it has been really nice to sit back and veg out in a way that I haven't since I was a kid playing xbox 360 at my parents house.

Is the Steam Machine good? Yes. It is delivering on exactly what I feel it promised. If you are a PC gamer with a sizeable steam library, and you don't yet have a couch gaming setup, but you want one, you should check it out. The device is small and sleek, very quiet, and again Just Works (TM) in a way I never would have expected from a Linux PC 13 years ago.