Mini machines have been my envy for quite some time now. Our hardware overlord Dave shared a picture of his home setup featuring a dinky Framework Desktop earlier today, and I am, as they say, well jel. So naturally, I've had my beady eyes on the equally dinky Steam Machine since it was announced.
Let's be clear from the start: Yes, there is a mini PC tax on this one, as there will be for any pint-sized gaming rig. For $900 in a standard-sized rig, you could get a build with a newer CPU and more RAM. But really, the tax isn't too bad here, and more importantly, you're getting more gaming juice than you'll get in the Steam Machine.
We reckon the Steam Machine will be a fair bit cheaper than this, of course—$300–400 cheaper, by our guesstimations—but we can't say for certain yet. What we can compare for certain are specifications, and on that front, this AVGPC Mini-X leaves the Steam Machine in its wake.
The CPU will be newer and probably faster in the Steam Machine, based on what we know, but it's not exactly going to be a productivity powerhouse, and neither is the Ryzen 7 5700X in the AVGPC build these days. Similarly, on the RAM front, both machines are getting DDR5 memory, and again, the Steam Machine will have newer DDR5 memory, but this difference will be far from make-or-break for budget gaming.
What will make a great difference for gaming at this level is the RX 9060 XT in the AVGPC build, compared to the custom RDNA 3 GPU in the Steam Machine. As best as we can tell, the Steam Machine's GPU will be equivalent to something like the RX 7600M, which performs a little worse than the RTX 3060. The RX 9060 XT performs far better than the RTX 3060. So, we can expect this mean li'l machine to perform significantly better than the Steam Machine on average.
When we're in the budget range, as we are here, the GPU makes much more of a difference than the CPU or memory, so if it's gaming you're focusing on, the AVGPC is a winner. That's even considering its mere 8 GB of VRAM, because the Steam Machine will only have that much VRAM, anyway.
Plus, as I argued in the Steam Machine's favour, 8 GB of VRAM is fine for budget gaming, i.e. for 1080p gaming in most games and even for some 1440p gaming, as long as you don't mind not gazing upon full-fat textures in some titles.
If you don't want to wait to see what the Steam Machine holds on the pricing front, I reckon you can do much worse than this mini PC right now. It comes with a Cooler Master air cooler for the CPU, and fits everything inside a dinky Cooler Master NR200 case with a windowed side panel. To hold fire or not: the choice is yours.
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