Valve's steam machine may or may not be prohibitively expensive for most buyers. Time will tell. But given the upward trajectory of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox series of hardware over the past few years, and the ever-present possibility of Nintendo following suit with the Switch 2, even casual observers can say something: PC parts are at an all-time premium, and that's going to affect consoles in any way.
Content creators need, well, material. The type of content that drives views and enables subscriptions. YouTuber Zac Builds has definitely hit paydirt with his own attempt to build a Steam Machine ahead of Valve's postponed schedule. Not only has he built a nice replica for himself using a mix of public knowledge and his own ideas, but he's done so for “only” $900 USD. Given the state of the industry, that's not bad.
Not a one-for-one copy
“I didn't want to just make a one-for-one copy,” Zac says, as first noted by PC Gamer. “Instead, with a little ingenuity, I think we can make it cheaper, faster and overall better than what Valve is offering.”
Those are some bold words, but the builder supports them fairly, I'd say. The video is full of interesting choices, tricky maneuvers around unexpected issues, and impressive knowledge of the field. While Zac's declarations were certainly a bit ballyhooed, he humbly subjected himself to a painful realization early on, as he significantly exceeded his self-restricted budget on the first try. It was only in an improvement that he landed on the following solution:
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Ryzen 5 5600X CPU
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Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB GPU
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16 GB DDR4 RAM
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Gen 3 XPG 2TB SSD
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Gigabyte B550I motherboard
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650-watt PSU
Worth noting? Zac used a 3D scanner for all of this. If you don't have one (and I certainly don't), this will set you back a bit more cash. But this is all fantasy fare, so let it slide. The grand total for the above parts came to $835 USD ($1135 CAD, in Zac's case).
“Now, obviously I can't do a direct in-game comparison because the Steam Machine isn't out yet, but what I do know is that my GPU is more than twice as powerful in terms of raw performance, and I haven't found a game yet where my CPU is the bottleneck, so I feel very confident in saying that I'm going to outrank the Steam Machine in any official way. 50 to 100 percent.”
Zac admits the obvious, which is to say, he can't really make any real comparisons until the Steam Machine is out and in his hands. But he managed to pull off 4k 60fps in games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Arc Raiders, partly through the FSR upscaling methodology. That, in my mind, is a good result for $835 in today's economy.
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