I’ve already been using a “Steam Machine” for months, and I think it’s great

Valve’s second big foray into first-party PC hardware isn’t a sequel to the much-imitated Steam Deck portable, but rather a desktop computer called the Steam Machine. And while it could go on your desk, Valve clearly intends for it to fit in an entertainment center under a TV—next to, or perhaps even instead of, a game console like the Xbox or PlayStation 5.

I am pretty sure this idea could work, and it’s because I’ve already been experimenting with what is essentially a “Steam Machine” underneath my own TV for months, starting in May when Valve began making it possible to install SteamOS on certain kinds of generic PC hardware.

Depending on what it costs—and we can only guess what it will cost—the Steam Machine could be a good fit for people who just want to plug a more powerful version of the Steam Deck experience into their TVs. But for people who like tinkering or who, like me, have been messing with miniature TV-connecting gaming PCs for years and are simply tired of trying to make Windows workable, the future promised by the Steam Machine is already here.

My TV PC setup

I had always been sort of TV PC-curious, but I can trace my current setup to December 2018, when, according to a Micro Center receipt in my inbox, I built a $504.51 PC in a tiny InWin Chopin case centered on an AMD Ryzen 5 2400G processor.

At the time, the Ryzen brand was only a couple of years old, and the 2400G had impressed reviewers by combining a competent-enough quad-core CPU with a usably performant integrated GPU. And the good news was: It worked! It was nowhere near as good as the graphical experience that, say, a PlayStation 4 could provide, but it worked well for older and indie games, while also giving me access to a TV-connected computer for the occasions when I wanted to stream things from a browser, or participate in a living room-scale Zoom call (something that would become the box’s main job during the pandemic-induced isolation of 2020 and early 2021).