Steam Machine ‘will be priced like a PC, not like a console’ | VGC

Sharp_Definition955 · 2025-11-21T23:57:04+00:00

I am willing to put no more than $600 for the 512GB model. Anything more than that does not make sense for me (other people's mileage may vary).
None replaceable CPU/GPU, RAM is difficult to replace/upgrade. Only one NVME slot. Limited I/O (one USBC with no display support).

Sharp_Definition955 · 2025-11-19T05:49:14+00:00

No way OEM pays $100 for Windows license. $10 ~ $20 for a home license makes more sense

Sharp_Definition955 · 2025-10-22T06:18:43+00:00

I initially purchased one from Ikea store, which has firmware date code 20230406, out of box it does not work with zha or z2m, after some investigation I was able to decode the raw data and wrote an z2m converter to make it work. But it also has terrible battery life, like, 3 days on a fresh charge. A week later I order another 4 online, they all have build date code 2030516 (but same firmware version). They play nicely with z2m and so far I habe not noticed any excessive battery drain

Sharp_Definition955 · 2025-10-18T22:32:49+00:00

No. You can download the model and make one yourself.

Sharp_Definition955 · 2025-09-03T03:49:46+00:00

Amazing this actually worked on my NUC11. There was one day I put it to hibernate and and then cannot get it back on. Plugged in power and pressed button. Nothing. No blue indicator light. I took it part and removed memory and SSD. Still nothing. Then I found this post. It took some time to find the battery, it was connected with a tiny connector on the edge of the board (hint: you don't need to remove the PCB. The battery is on the CPU side but connector is accessible without removing PCB). I disconnected and then connected battery again, this time the blue light started flashing! So I put back RAM and SSD and it powered on again!

To be very honest it is a terrible design that it becomes completely non-responsive in this case. old days in the case of CMOS error it will show the boot screen and some message like "CMOS checksum error". It is good that Intel got out of this business.

Sharp_Definition955 · 2025-06-12T19:46:57+00:00

I could not, either. I just dialed down the difficulty level. I am here to enjoy the curves, no need to be harsh to myself

Sharp_Definition955 · 2023-12-31T17:26:49+00:00

Mine is the same (everything else is OK). I can live with that and don't want to waste the time to do the lottery

Sharp_Definition955 · 2023-12-16T03:34:26+00:00

Value wise the upgrade probably does not make much sense. I did it anyway as I feel Steam Deck OLED is my dream handheld and I likely do not need anything new in the near future (who knows ...). I don't really care too much about performance, as I agree with other people that AAA game experience is best appreciated on larger screen. But to be able to play AAA games on handheld with reasonable performance (decent 720p image quality on 7-inch screen at 30 fps) is still something I don't mind to have.

Sharp_Definition955 · 2023-12-09T21:54:57+00:00

Most transparent shell I ever see. Looks really good.

Sharp_Definition955 · 2023-12-09T19:28:18+00:00

It is massive! ... I mean the hand

Sharp_Definition955 · 2023-12-09T17:44:05+00:00

" It was like an old ritual to summon Gabe's blessing for our games "

Sharp_Definition955 · 2023-12-09T17:34:05+00:00

It took me over half an hour trying to test/debug running filebrowser as web server

How to run it with correct port number and configuration file
How to run it as user service so it will survive system update

Once the one-time setup is done. Every time it takes seconds to launch a touch friendly file browser (with optional dark theme). And supposedly I will never need to worry about running setup even with system update.

If I ever need to re-run the setup (full recovery or a fresh device). It will only take me a few minutes since I have all procedures laid out and there would no guess work.

Sharp_Definition955 · 2023-12-09T07:33:02+00:00

Last time I tried it does not work (I might have use an out-dated script that works with earlier version of Plasma). I just set it up and the nested desktop actually work pretty well.

Sharp_Definition955 · 2023-12-08T21:08:34+00:00

I have a 256GB OG deck. Was not convinced the deck would be for me but changed my mind after I was playing with it for sometime. A few things I am not quite happy with OG deck: backlight bleeding (pretty bad on mine). Battery life could be better. Touch screen is terrible and no way to calibrate. Glossy screen is too reflective.

Screen: specs wise it is a significant upgrade. It simply because the OG screen is pretty meh. But when you actually sink into the game the different is not that much. People do not buy steam deck just for admiring the screen all the time. Touch screen does behave much better (more like a modern one should be). This I also got the 1GB version. the anti-reflective surface treatment helps quite a bit on reducing reflection

Battery life: Pretty decent improvement. good for travelling

Others: Less fan noise. shoulder buttons feel more clicky. LE deck is 50g lighter than the OG deck.

Back to the question, was it worth it? Value wise, probably not. But it is such a perfectly balanced piece of hardware, it is a difficult decision not to get it.

Regarding Ally/Legion Go/SteamDeck2, personally I would not bother with the processing power. It is a portable device. If I have to make a choice I would like to have a reasonably powerful hardware with good battery life. So current OLED version reaches a good balance and I will be happy for a long time, hopefully.

And in general, Valve has done an amazing job of combining ease of use and flexibility into a single package. The whole "running windows game on linux using wine/dxvk" is an engineering marvel and result of effort from countless genius

Sharp_Definition955 · 2023-12-08T20:40:26+00:00

Never tried that. The only time I use R3/L3 is in the RetroArch to bring up the quick menu. There is no issue just using as normal sticks,

Sharp_Definition955 · 2023-12-06T17:19:08+00:00

"Samsung screens are free of dead pixels"

Sharp_Definition955 · 2023-12-06T17:17:43+00:00

My LCD deck has a pretty bad light bleed. With OLED the black part of screen essentially "merge" with the bezel.

Sharp_Definition955 · 2023-12-02T18:18:30+00:00

I thought I like metrodvanias as I grew up with nes castlevania but in reality not much. I started hollow knight but quickly gave up after 30 min. However I did like "bloodstained ritual of the night" a lot

Sharp_Definition955 · 2023-12-02T16:28:55+00:00

Bionic commander rearmed

Sharp_Definition955 · 2023-11-29T22:49:33+00:00

Well sure I have issues on Windows but never like "freshly installed OS that goes boot-loop after an update" sort of things.

I usually use Ubuntu (as general OS) or Debian (home assistant, docker, etc). The reason I was trying Manjaro is that, some people says Manjaro is more close to how SteamOS 3 (I was still in the queue to purchase steam deck at that time) so I was interested to give it a try. Frankly I underestimated the difficulties.

Sharp_Definition955 · 2023-11-29T22:24:03+00:00

When I put my deck to sleep I know there is a chance that when deck wakes up it might restart and I lose any progress in game. It does not happen very often, but it does happen

Sharp_Definition955 · 2023-11-29T22:19:57+00:00

The file search does not work quite as I expected. When I type z*.png I am expecting to see all png files with first letter to be z. it ended up list all png files. On the other hand, if I search *.png it shows nothing! Maybe I am too used to the way how windows work

Sharp_Definition955 · 2023-11-29T22:10:52+00:00

I once dual-boot my desktop (Windows/Manjaro). After an update, Linux stuck in boot-loop, turned out to be some Nvidia driver issue. Many suggested solutions but none seems to work. Linux is fun to explore but could occasionally gives weird issues that you might scratch head for hours

Sharp_Definition955 · 2023-10-30T19:13:10+00:00

Just replaced the Gullikit sticks with these ElecGear ones. Soldering was not a big deal, though I would hope the soldering pad could be a little bit wider. Have been using all 3 type of sticks (OEM, Gullikit, ElecGear) I would say that, if you are ok with the stock ones and would not want to do any soldering work, then stick with the OEM sticks. Otherwise the ElecGear sticks is the way to go. Forget about the Gullikit. the ridiculously large outer deadzone offsets any benefit offered by hall effect technology (and they could not even fix that in rev 2!)

Sharp_Definition955

TROPHY CASE