I The Steam Machine is here, giving PC gamers a console-like living room experience and giving them access to their Steam library and many other PC games beyond. Ramageddon could not leave a good thing alone, so the Steam machine is more expensive than we expected starting price of $1,049.
It was enough to make me wonder how hard it would be to build my own Steam machine. With the hardware compatible, I’m willing to see if I can install SteamOS on the desktop I already have on my “free” Steam machine-like device. There were a few bumps in the road and one dangerous pothole. Here’s how to do it.
How to start
Valve has instructions for installing SteamOS and provides the app image file you’ll need. The instructions are mainly focused on existing mobile devices such as The Steam Deck, Legion Go family and Asus ROG Ally the family. Devices with different AMD GPUs are listed as supported in Beta. For now, you’ll only want to try this if you meet those requirements. Valve is working with Nvidia to support its graphics cards, but the work isn’t done yet.
CPUs are a different matter. My system has an Intel Core 12 processor, running SteamOS. Valve doesn’t mention any other specific hardware requirements, but various forum threads (like this one on Tom’s Hardware) note that an NVMe solid-state drive is also required. Using the installer, I saw that it was looking specifically for NVMe SSDs, so that appears to be true.
You can create a bootable USB drive to run SteamOS.
Beyond those hardware requirements, you’ll also need an 8GB (or larger) USB drive that you can use to install media. Using my desktop PC with Windows 11, I downloaded Valve’s SteamOS recovery image and created a bootable USB drive using Rufus. Valve recommends using Balena Etcher to create a recovery drive if you’re on macOS or Linux.
Before you continue, protect your data
The SteamOS installer doesn’t seem to have an easy way to select a specific drive for your new OS system. My soon-to-be Steam PC has several drives that hold important files and my Windows installation. During the setup process, I just clicked over to write down all those drives for a clean SteamOS install.
Depending on your donor computer, that might be great. It was mine. Without an obvious tool in the installer software to remove a specific drive, I did it manually by removing all drives except the one I wanted to use for SteamOS. You’ll want to do the same if you’re trying to save your data or set up a dual-boot system. If you built a new desktop with empty drives and installed SteamOS as the only operating system, you shouldn’t have to worry about this.
How to install SteamOS from a USB drive
To install a new device, you’ll want a clean SSD.
Valve’s instructions say “Select the Image Device option again” at this point, but that’s not actually one of the options. Since we are installing a new SteamOS on a new device, we are looking for the “Erase Device and Install SteamOS” option. Remember, this will wipe the system, so if you haven’t removed any drives with data you want to keep, you shouldn’t continue. There is at least one useful caveat.
A warning before you delete all data on your drive.
Once you proceed with the wipe and install, the software will launch the console and go through several steps and should prompt you to restart the system. In my case, it ran its process once and shut down the console itself without any prompt or clear error message, without installing SteamOS. I simply ran it again, and this time it finished the install and prompted me to reboot.
Look for the reboot message once SteamOS is installed.
SteamOS is up and running
You will need a keyboard and mouse or a game controller to continue.
Once the program is up and running on SteamOS, there are a few steps before you’re off to the races. SteamOS will prompt you to connect a game controller or keyboard and mouse. Since I was using a desktop with a keyboard and mouse already installed, I went that way. Next, you will select your language and time zone, and connect to your Wi-Fi. SteamOS will then attempt to update and restart.
I’m done. When restarting, you will adjust the image size in case your TV, monitor or, like me, projector is clipping the source signal. You will also select your audio output. After that you can finally log into Steam.
The Steam Controller is also an option.
SteamOS will be in Large Image Mode by default, providing larger tiles and easier controller navigation. You can get a desktop-like interface as well, although SteamOS will require a restart in that mode. From there, you can install and launch games as usual.
Why SteamOS?
SteamOS can be installed on hardware you may already have. It’s not too hard to do. Is there a good reason to do so? Actually, yes.
PC games on the big screen.
I am very happy with the performance of my Windows 11 PC (although I was very happy with the performance of Windows 10 until this year). It has many features to power the OS and run games smoothly without any problem. Windows can be a nuisance at times, though, and I can understand anyone who doesn’t want to hear its pop-up ads, powerful extra features or data collection processes. I also understand that anyone developing a new system may not want to pay for a Windows license, especially given the other concerns. If so, choosing SteamOS is an obvious alternative.
There is also the weight of Windows to consider. I said my system can handle Windows and heavy games, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be better without the weight of Windows.
Easy navigation of your game library on Steam is a definite plus.
I recently checked the ways in which my computer was tied by the CPU, watching as the upgrade from the Radeon RX 7900 XT to the Nvidia RTX 5080 did not provide an improvement in the effective performance of Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1080p and at the highest settings. Since my computer was CPU bound in that situation, anything that lightens the CPU load would seem to be beneficial for performance. Indeed, running Shadow of the Tomb Raider on SteamOS with the same settings, I saw frames drop from 208 frames per second on average to 219fps.
That’s a modest improvement, but an improvement nonetheless. There’s no guarantee of getting better performance across the board, though. Most games will not be CPU bound. Also, problems often appear in beta apps like this. Many games can see performance hindered by Proton’s compatibility layer, so it’s hard to say for sure.
Building your own “Steam machine” doesn’t include what you might miss from the original The Steam Machineor, as a low-power draw, the dedicated Steam Controller antenna and its compact size. Then again, there’s the unoptimized CPU and GPU to consider as well.
All that said, if you’ve got an extra SSD lying around that you’re not trying to hunt down for the gold-filled gold it deserves right now, you can see that SteamOS in your system is an upgrade with no extra cost and just a little bit of your time.
