Over the years, huge players like Microsoft, Intel, and even Valve
themselves have tried to [music] create the ultimate living room PC. Tried and
failed. But this time, this time is going to be different, guys. I am so
excited for the new Steam Machine. And hey, look, there he is now. Hey, come on
in here, little guy. What? Oh, you know
what? I don't think he's ready just yet.
But I want a game in my living room now. What am I supposed to do? Wait. No,
forget this. I'm going to do it myself. And I'm going to do it upright. I got my
hands on one of the OG Steam Machine prototypes that Valve seeded out to
lucky testers way back in 2013. Only 300
of these were created. And this is number 228. You can tell by the pixels.
I mean, this hole right here. This incredible little piece of history was
rescued from the recyclers a couple of years ago. And ever since then, I've
been waiting for just the right moment to modernize its hardware and turn it
into the ultimate sleeper steam machine
gaming box for my living room. Gabe Cube, please. It's time for the Gabe
Tangular Prism. Really rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? Like this segue to
our sponsor, >> the forging of code. the strength and
will to bend a silicon to a purpose. Not
all can wield this power, but you may
with boot.dev.
[music]
According to Valve, their upcoming steam machine has more performance than 70% of
existing steam clients. To our enthusiast audience, that might kind of
sound like BS, but hanging out with the folks at Whale Land, it would be pretty
easy to get a warped image of the typical PC gamer and the kind of
hardware they're using. Both independent studies and Valve's own hardware survey
seem to back up their conclusion. The Steam Machine is a nice little box, but
it's also not a total powerhouse either.
The six core CPU is using AMD's proven but now 3 years old Zen 4 architecture.
The GPU is based on the similarly vintage RDNA3 architecture. And they've
opted for just 8 GB of VRAM, which is
kind of a tough pill to swallow in 2026,
especially if the leaked pricing ends up being accurate. I want something a
little more, you know, and I think I can
do that without deviating from Valve's original philosophy for the Steam
Machine all those years ago. I'm talking fully upgradeable commodity hardware and
housed in Valve's own custom case from 2013. Of course, the first thing we're
going to need to do is gut this thing
and immediately find some odd choices like the clipless power connectors for
the GPU, this screw that doesn't seem to
be actually threaded into anything, a non-locking PCIe slot, and
a fascinating method for securing the card into the case. They just took the
PCIe cover top and just bent it. Now,
these initial prototypes were sent out in a variety of configurations, but
according to the all- knowing internets, all were powered by some version of a
fourth gen Intel Core CPU on an ITX board with ironically an NVIDIA GPU, 16
gigs of DDR3, a terabyte of mechanical storage, and an 8 gig SSD cache. All
powered by a 450W SFX power supply.
Right out of the gate, either the internet's got something wrong or whoever had this system made some choice
upgrades to it because this right here is a 512 gig SSD.
Oh, yeah. This SSD was added later. It was manufactured 2 years after they sent
these out. >> Interesting. SATA power for the dual.
>> Yeah, I've seen this before in NAS cases, for instance. Uh, installing
these ones onto a cable is simply done by spreading out the wires and just
putting it on and putting a thing on the back. So you can put them at any spacing you want. This is super convenient for
putting a couple of drives really close together. There's a bunch of little
kind of custom touches in here. This shrouding, for instance, is really cool.
Basically, it ensures that even with an undersized cooler, right, you're
bringing brand new fresh air directly to the CPU here. And back then, cooling the
CPU was a much bigger concern than getting fresh air to your GPU, which
didn't even have vent holes above it. That may need to be addressed. Man,
cramming all modern stuff in here is not going to be trivial.
All right. Is this an injection molded part?
Injection molding for just 300 prototype units. It's also a non-trivial part to
design the mold flow pattern for. Anyway,
here's our board. Here's a PCIe riser.
It would be pretty good luck if we could reuse this. But, uh, this would have
been what, Gen 3 rated.
Oh, look at how cute it is. Ah, it's so cute. I don't think I've ever seen such
a short SATA cable. I mean, perfectly average length SATA cable. It's also
definitely the correct shape. Our cooler fell apart. That was not what I expected
to happen just now. In fairness, it's pretty old. Things
fall apart when they're old.
Okay, it seems that either as part of the process for installing this cooler,
which I'm not familiar with, or as part
of their own idea, Valve removed the ILM, that is the little arm and hold
down mechanism that goes over the CPU, meaning that it just it just comes out.
Um, a 4570
Core i5. All right, that was a nice
little chip back in the day. If only the recipient of this system had realized
what an investment these were. [laughter] 16 gigs of RAM. DDR3 though. DDR3 is
still not really worth very much. The last piece is our power supply. Now, if
we were doing a more modest build, I could probably get away with using this
one, but we're not. Interesting. Wait,
before we go any further, come check this out. You can see what they were
doing here. Even though there's no ventilation holes for this to draw air
directly in front of it, they've got it set up so that it's meant to draw air
from the vents on the side, then exhausted out the back of the case,
never to be reused. Yeah, NVIDIA doesn't really do these designs anymore because
they're worried that people will install GeForce cards in servers and AI
machines. That's the actual reason.
>> Another injection molded part. Those absolute mad lads.
>> I think it might have been a Silverstone case design. I couldn't find an exact
match. >> They almost certainly partnered with them cuz Silverstone does all kinds of
weird stuff. Anywh who, we can get the power supply out now. Pretty normal
looking power supply. Just Silverstone must have done up some custom cables for
them. And that pretty much gets us down to the bottom. This is a fun one.
The AC power plug is just held in by
clamping down this piece on top of it.
No screws. Then the last piece that needs to come out is the combination
power button and power indicator ring LED. This Okay, not necessary, but I
would love for us to modernize a little bit. Maybe put some RGB on it. How cool
would that be? Oh, interesting. It has a reset switch on the board, but there was
no access to that from the outside. >> I believe that's a reset for the LEDs,
not for the computer itself. >> Interesting hypothesis. But then why
would they have pins for a reset switch on here? >> Then I couldn't tell you.
>> Yeah, I guess it doesn't really matter cuz we're not going to use this, right?
We're going to do something cooler. >> Yeah. >> Oh, sick. And this is far from the only
thing we're going to have to change. As much as it pains me to say it, there's no outcome where we're going to be able
to build a modern system into this case exactly the way it is. So, when it comes
to modifying it, there were two main camps internally. There were the
preservationists and the terrorists. One
side felt that such an important piece of computing history should remain
untouched by the teeth of the Dremel, while the other side wanted to just hack
it up for ventilation and who knows, maybe even give it a sick looking paint
job. We settled for somewhere in the
middle, recognizing that we are going to need more cooling for modern hardware,
but also wanting to do so while changing the appearance of it as little as
possible from the outside. So, the front
as well as the sides and the top piece here are going to stay pretty much as
is. As for the bottom, it's going to need some speed holes.
>> All done. >> Wow, that was quick. >> Movie magic. I worked at the spacing of
the holes on top. Tas in the lab did a 3D scan of the bottom so we could figure
out where all these standoffs were that we wanted to avoid. And then Justin just
printed off a little jig to hold it in the tormok and started drilling like an
Albertan. Like I said, movie magic. >> You guys did a great job of this. The
spacing's the same from the outside. The aesthetics are like the same. Oh, dude.
>> Even did the hole. >> They did the hole. That's so cool. We've
even got a black mesh to put in, so it has kind of the same look. Dude, this is
so cool. Okay, down to business. A Yeah.
Not that it really matters. I'm just wondering if it looks any
better. Does look a little better.
>> All right. All right, here's your Floatplane exclusive, kids. If Lin is coloring in every freaking hole,
LMG.gg/flat plane. >> No one's going to want to watch that.
>> You'd [music] be surprised. >> Oh, yeah.
>> Oh, yeah. It is better. >> It does look so much cleaner, though. >> So, this goes in the front.
>> Uh-huh. >> Then the power button goes into there.
Oh. Oh. Oh. Okay. This pops on [music]
here.
Sounds clicky. >> That sounds clicky to me. Sick. I just
have to find somewhere to stash this Pico. Do we have any Capton tape here?
>> I'll check upstairs. >> While we wait, let's talk about the specs that we're going to be putting in
here. For our CPU, we've got a Ryzen 7 9800 X3D. Why? Well, fastest gaming CPU
on the market, but we uh may end up
swapping that out. And [music] the reason is that as you can see, even
though we've got a more modern cooler in here, there [music] just plain isn't a
lot of space. So that thermal rate AXP90X47
cooler is going to have to turn the RPMs up pretty high on this fan in order to
keep this CPU cool. So a 7800 X3D might
actually [music] be a better choice in the longer term. For our memory, we've got 32 gigs of GSkill, 6,000 mega
transfer per second RAM because we got it before the shortage. Lucky. And for
storage, a one terbte Crucial P5 Plus because this is the rubbing it in. We
still have this hardware before it went unavailable build. Apparently, it's all
mounted on an ASRock B650E PG ITX Wi-Fi
with actually really nice ample IO. Lots
of USB, 2 and 1/2 gig LAN, and Wi-Fi 6E.
Oh, wait. This is the one that has that cool connector. What does this do again?
I forget. >> I thought it might have been a display thing or something, but I didn't actually look it up. Yes, it does. It
has embedded DisplayPort out. >> Huh. >> So, it's great for like um like
commercial solutions or something like not that I need any of that, but that's
very cool. Yeah. And then it has another M.2 on the back if I ever wanted to have
more storage. Let's go ahead and get this installed. >> Is the back plate on this cooler a lot
thicker than the old one? >> Oh, yeah. She's beefy. >> She's boowing.
>> Just don't do that. [laughter] Okay, we're just going to bow out the
bottom of the case, apparently. >> I mean, it was in such good shape to begin with, too.
>> Well, that's fair. I'm having a heck of a time lining up the IO shield.
>> It's a [music] little crooked. >> Oh, wow. >> Came from a recycler. It wasn't in
amazing shape to begin with. >> All right, capton tape is here. And now
it won't short out on anything. There. >> Beautiful.
>> Oh, dude. This is so exciting. I've wanted to build in this thing for so long. We've got an RGB connector here as
well. RGB you can find. >> We can go ahead and plug in our front
USB 3 now. And now
this >> shroud for our cooling here. Try to give us a little bit of direction.
>> Genius. I love it. This way we're going
to be recycling less of the CPU heat than we otherwise would. Let's see if we
can make some small modifications here.
Here. Check this out. Oh yeah, that's better. Yeah. Uh there is one thing that
I felt was a little questionable. We have this shroud covering um the fins
here. I don't know if I agree. >> We're trying to pull the air down and
out. >> Uh but anything over here is not going
out anyway. It's just going to get kind of stuck. I think we should allow it to come out the side.
>> Further modifications. >> All right. I mean, I have been known to press my
luck from time to time. >> No, you'd never do that.
That 3D printer slaved away to make that for you. >> If it wanted to be paid, it should have
thought of that before becoming a 3D printer. Okay, so that leaves these fins
open. >> Here's a nice part. >> Uh
oh. For power. There we go. Oh. Oh,
that's so cool. I love it. And then I assume there's a top piece. [music]
>> It's called a video card. >> No. >> Yeah.
>> Okay.
So, power supply next. I see. We reinvented the wheel, creating our own
shroud. >> The bigger issue was that the power connector was flipped the other way
around. So, our 90° was the wrong 90. >> It's a left angle now.
>> We wanted a 270. >> Understood. Okay. Oh, for our power
supply, we've gone with this 850 W SF850
from Corsair. Why? >> Plenty of power.
>> Cool. Yep. Good chat. Oh, this is pretty clever. [music] Check this out. There's
a little spot for it. Ah, so cute. Beautiful.
Look at all the space in here. >> Not how I would describe it, but yeah,
sure. Time for our PCIe riser. Now,
Jordan, I couldn't help noticing we have a PCIe Gen 5 GPU. Are we worried about
losing any performance from this thing? >> No. Panker said it's good.
>> No way. >> Yep. >> It just worked with Gen 5.
>> Yeah. >> A much finer job of bending this than
Valve did. How did we do this? >> With a vice. >> Nice. We chose this because this is the
biggest card that would physically fit in here. >> Got it. Oh, I guess we never mentioned
the specs. It's a 9070 XT. So, the
fastest current generation card that [music] is out of the box compatible
with Steam OS, which obviously I'm going to want to use if I'm running a Steam
machine. It is worth noting though that we had to use the beta branch of Steam
OS in order to get such a new card to
work. Now, the last bit that I got to figure
out is [sighs] how to get these power connectors to the
GPU. Wow, that's actually a fair bit of space
for that to dry air from. >> Yeah. >> And right, we've got this ventilation
that we put in here. This might just work. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh, dude. Dude,
this is so going to work. >> How many minutes before he gives up and does it the right way?
>> Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. It's going to work. It's going to work. You just wait. Hold on. I need a couple more cable
ties. That's [music] the problem. >> Here, I'll hold that.
>> Thank you. We have a USB connector that's just kind of hanging out in here.
That's for this. It's the closest analog
to um integrated controller receiver
support that uh we could come up with. Oh, wow. That's a big stretch.
[screaming] All right.
She all packs in there.
This is flipping awesome. Eight 3D
vcache Ryzen Zen 5 cores, 9070 XT, 32
gigs RAM. Freaking wow,
she's dense. And she's got absolutely no
way to get fresh air to that GPU.
>> There you go. >> Thank you for that. Unless
feet. See, this is not a modification. I
don't count this. This is not permanent. These were holes that were already there, I think. Boom. She's done.
>> But does she work? >> Yeah. Hard to say with after all she's
been through. Let's give it a shot. >> All right. >> Big moment.
>> There's a light. >> Okay, that's cool. I saw a thing.
>> All right. Sick. And that's it.
>> It works. >> We're booted in Steam OS. Now, we did need the beta branch in order to get our
GPU to work, but is there downside?
Like, obviously, this isn't a Steam controller. This is an 8bit do Ultimate
2C, so I don't have like a dedicated [music] Steam menu button or whatever,
but I can use shortcuts so I can access
all the usual cool stuff that I would. We've got HDR enabled because Valve
[music] and the open source community are incredible and got that implemented
on Steam OS. Now, riddle me this. Does it [music] support waking from sleep
with the controller? >> Not exactly.
>> What about turning on automatically via CEC? >> No.
We'll get to those later. Very cool. So,
right away, we can try out the Proton compatibility layer by playing a game.
Not a demanding game, but we'll get to that in a moment. All right.
Heck yeah. Casual 400 FPS.
Freaking awesome.
Dang it. I warned us about the rattly great. >> I'm not sure you did.
>> There we go. That's Let That's Let's fix that for now. So, our GPU is at 100%
usage, right? >> 100% 70 Celsius. >> Okay. Wow. That's pretty good for how
quiet it is. >> It's not bad. >> It's the CPU that I was honestly more
worried about, though. And that we're going to hit a little bit harder when we get into Cyberpunk in a minute.
>> Yeah, that's at like 10% here with 65 Celsius.
>> Oh, wow. The skin temperatures of this
thing are nuts. You know what? For the
most part though, the airflow path that we designed is working.
>> Yep. >> Like we're getting all the heat from the CPU out this side [music] and then the
GPU is mostly kicking out here over on this
side. The back of the GPU where it's pulling in from the bottom and then just
like blowing against the top here though. A little spicy. [music] I think
the maximum performance version of this setup would actually have another grill
here to allow that pass through GPU to just blow up the top of the case. And
you think we can do 4K with a little bit of upscaling? Give it a try. I mean,
they claim the Steam Machine will. So,
okay. So, GPU 0 is at 300 W, which is
about what a 970 XT is rated for, if I recall correctly. Our CPU, meanwhile,
74 degrees C. >> It's like 20% use. It was not crazy.
This looks really good. >> This blows away the image quality and
performance of the Steam Machine. Not even close. The cooler is a major
challenge. [music] >> It's not even that loud.
>> It's a lot louder than a steam machine. [music] I can tell you that much.
>> Fair, >> dude. Is this this easy?
Let's go middle of the road. Clearly, there's a little bit more finetuning to
do here, but we've got temperatures on the CPU well under control. We're at
just over 70° now, and it is [music] way
quieter and still way faster than the
Steam Machine. Like, this level of quality that it's running at right now
is head and shoulders above what it was doing on the Steam Machine. It's not
even close. >> Like, I got RA tracing on, dude. Like if I turn RA tracing off, all [music] of a
sudden, forget [snorts] about it, dude. >> Bumps me up 30 frames easily.
>> Well over 60 FPS, 4K. Still looks great.
It's a good-look game with or without ray tracing. And
that's [music] way quieter. >> Yeah. >> But there is one more thing that an
official Steam machine does that this one won't. See, I would love it if my
controller could wake the system and if I could have seamless operation with my
TV just like a real game console. [music] And the way that works is with
CEC. It stands for consumer electronics control. And it's a really cool feature
of HDMI that lets devices use a single wire in the HDMI connector to exchange
commands like, "Hey, turn on or switch
your input." So that I can work right away just automatically. And it's really
cool when it works, but it doesn't work, does it?
>> It's complicated. >> Okay. Not a yes.
>> It's not a no. >> Okay. >> It's not a no. It's just that as Valve
found in their own development of Steam Machine, consumer GPUs don't support CC.
>> There are solutions that people pointed out to us. In fact, a wonderful member
of our community brought this to our attention. It's a dongle from Pulsate.
It has an HDMI input and then a pass through and it plugs into the system via
USB allowing you to inject CEC commands.
So why isn't it hooked up to the system? It doesn't just work. Unfortunately, I
had to I ended up having to install dev tools, compile their libraries, compile
the the actual program in order to get a debug program working. So I can actually
like see CC commands going and I can
issue them. But every TV is different.
You know how everyone rebrands the CC their own little special thing? Well,
they all implement them differently as well. >> Cool. So, what does that look like in
the real world? >> So, in the real world on this TV, I can get it to change inputs if we want it
to. >> I can turn off the TV. >> Oh, cool. >> I can't turn it on,
>> right? >> No matter what you do, it will not turn on.
>> We did some more digging and we found a DP to HDMI adapter that also claims to
support CC. So, we ordered that. Um,
>> same story. >> So, basically, you're telling me that it
is just not reliable enough to build it into the startup and shutdown sequences
of the operating system and have it do what it's supposed to. >> You couldn't rely on it. And then I also
found that Valve built in a special
[music] circuit into the controller to do the
power on, power off thing. >> Oh, so it's not just using like wake on
USB. No, apparently not.
>> Okay, >> other than that, if you can deal with pressing like two buttons, I think we
got it in a pretty good state. >> I think for the extra performance that's
on tap and the upgradeability, I can do that
>> and it looks pretty cool. >> And you know what else is pretty cool?
Our spirit quick.
>> Previously on the coding chronicles.
I am Boots. I shall aid you in your quest to
>> make learning to code feel like a game using boot.dev. >> Come with me.
The coding chronicles.
>> What? Where am I?
>> In the realm of boot dev,
[screaming] >> please. >> Ah, sorry. Have you thought about just
walking in like a normal magic lion? >> Bear wizard.
>> Bear wizard. Obviously that that's obvious. So whose house is this?
>> It belongs to a dear friend, a web developer. He named it back end.
>> Is that like innuendo or >> for he used boot.dev, the best way to
learn the ancient power of web development.
>> Ooh, that's a skill that's going to land me a highpaying job. Right.
>> Indeed. Let us begin with Python.
>> Wait, what? >> Python.
>> Good. >> And don't forget to use the code LTT to
get 25% off your first month or year with Boot. Dare.
[laughter] [yawns]
If you guys enjoyed this video, why not check out our last steam machine video
where we built something that is much closer [music] to the performance
profile of the real valve machine and took a shot at what we think the pricing
might be. Although the uh RAM Apocalypse
might [music] have. That probably made things go up a little