The Steam Machine may have been a commercial failure, but its legacy lives on through the DIY community.
For those who missed out on the original Steam Machine launch, there's a surprisingly easy alternative route to getting a SteamOS gaming PC up and running – build one yourself.
With the latest updates to SteamOS and expanded support for AMD graphics cards, the process is now straightforward and doesn't take too long.
To prove it, I built one myself using a spare partition on my main PC and a spare drive. I started with a spare partition on my main PC, which had a dedicated GPU and a CPU that's within the last couple of generations.
The hardware I used included a AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU, an Asus ROG X670E Crosshair Hero mini-ITX motherboard, 16GB of Corsair Vengeance 3000 MT/s DDR4 memory, a 512GB Samsung 980 storage drive, and a PowerColor Red Devil RX 7900 XT 20GB graphics card.
The CPU is older than the custom processor Valve uses in the real Steam Machine, but it packs two extra cores, support for four more threads, and double the cache.
The real kicker here is the GPU, which is still one of the fastest graphics cards AMD has ever made and should be roughly 2.5x the performance of the graphics chip in the official Steam Machine.
Installing SteamOS was the easy part, thanks to Valve's simple instructions and widely available resources.
I downloaded the SteamOS Deck Image, grabbed a spare drive, and used Rufus to make it bootable with the SteamOS image.
I plugged the bootable drive into my DIY Steam Machine and booted it, bringing me into a Linux desktop environment.
I saw several desktop icons in the top-left, and double-clicked the one titled "Wipe Device & Install SteamOS." The process was straightforward and completed quickly.
Once installed, I just needed to log into Steam and start installing my own games, which was all very straightforward.
However, DIY PCs are tricky regardless of OS, and I ran into a few classic PC building issues, including a weird shorting issue with the AIO radiator mount and some trouble formatting my Samsung T7 portable SSD in Windows.
Despite these issues, I didn't run into any driver issues or games that flat-out didn't work with SteamOS, and the end result is quite handsome.
However, there are some limitations to my DIY build, including the lack of support for Wake on Controller, no built-in HDMI-CEC, and no Steam Controller touchpads for mouse-and-keyboard games.
My solution is also louder and much hotter than the official Steam Machine, but it can do 4K/60FPS, especially when upscaling is available, and it plays everything really well.
I've thoroughly enjoyed several couch gaming sessions with my wife playing TMNT: Shredder's Revenge and Children of Morta, and my DIY Steam Machine is great for playing some of my favorite relaxing games, like Kingdom: Two Crowns and Stardew Valley.
