u/sudofatsu

The new Steam Machine is arriving soon and many people in my local community are asking about this machine because in our country, buying new desktop parts is very expensive and hard to find. I learned we cannot change the CPU or the graphics card inside this machine. I want to write a close to realistic talk about how powerful it is and how many years it can stay good for heavy gaming before it becomes old.

Because you cannot upgrade the main chips, here is my calculation for how long it will stay good for high end games:

First 3 years (2026 to 2029): I think this is the best time. The machine will play any big new game easily. The Zen 4 processor inside is very fast for game logic. You can play heavy AAA games on High settings at 1080p or 1440p resolution, or 4K with upscaling. For us who cannot change hardware every couple of years, this three years will be very beneficial to us.

From year 4 to year 5 (2029 to 2031): The machine can still run new games, but you must change settings to Medium. The biggest problem for the future is the 8GB VRAM memory for graphics. In a few years, new game engines will need much more texture memory. You will have to make textures lower and use heavy upscaling to get 60 frames.

Year 6 and after (2031 and more): I believe It will become very difficult for this machine to play new high end games. By this time, the PlayStation 6 will probably arrive in major parts of the world and change the minimum rules for games. Because we cannot change the soldered parts inside, this machine will fall behind. It will become a machine just for Indie games, CS or Dota, and older games in your Steam library.

My final conclusion is that you get 3 years of perfect high end gaming, then 2 years of medium gaming where you must compromise. By year 5 or 6, the locked hardware is too old for the newest biggest games.

TL;DR: I think it is like a base PS5 (launch) today and gives ~6 years of total gaming life. For places where upgrading a PC is too expensive, this is good for 6 years, but it stops there because you can only change the RAM and the SSD storage. And Steam Machine 2 is quite a stretch for me to think about this early...

What do you think? Do you buy it when it arrives even with locked parts, or do you try to save money for a normal custom PC? Will handheld gaming become more prominent?