Wife friendly Steam Machine alternative
Long story short. Like many others I put my name into the draw to get a Steam Machine, and like many others my number didn’t come up. As patience was never my strong point, and let’s face it, the Steam Machine power restrictions are only going to get worse over time as my wait goes on, I decided to raid my PC parts cupboard and build my own. Full transparency, I did buy a few things and spend around the same the 2GB model Steam Machine would have cost me.
Ryzen 7 5800x (already owned)
Kingston Hyper X Predator 3200mhz 16gig DDR4 (already owned)
WD_Black SN850 1TB M.2 (already owned)
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB (already owned)
Gigabyte Aorus PRO AX
Thermalright AP90-X47 Full Copper
Corsair SF850 Power Supply
PowerColor RX9070XT Reaper 16GB
Noctua NF-A9x14HS - cooler fan swap
2 x Noctua NF-A6x25 - exhaust fans
Noctua NA-FD1 Fan duct kit (already owned)
3D printed pegs to mount Fan Duct (printed at home)
Tetra S case (bought second hand)
I could have got a cheaper case (it was still expensive 2nd hand due to the waitlist) but it does not look out of place in our living room and slots nicely next to the TV unit in vertical orientation. Also, the walnut fits great with our furniture. I’m not sure I would put it horizontal into the TV unit though. The S5M was my second choice but having to order the wood panel etc from the US would have been very expensive.
Building in the case was a bit fiddly using the Corsair stock cables. Using bespoke cable would definitely make your life easier. AST the Reaper is quite a small GPU, at least the cable up to it were easy to manage.
As the 5800x can run very hot I have undervolted it and so far I have not had any issues.
I installed SteamOS 3.8.10 and it went fairly smoothly with a couple of stumbling blocks :
Apart from that I have not had any issues and Steam OS seems to run smoothly.