We have already seen some Steam Machine, a leisure center and game console that has nothing to envy to Sony's PlayStation machines or Microsoft's Xbox, and of course not to Nintendo's Wii. The prices of the Steam Machines that we have seen are very uneven, from about $ 500 to 1000 and something, it all depends on the manufacturer and the hardware that they integrate, since Valve has allowed these machines to be built by anyone.
The Steam Machine is a hybrid between a console and a personal computer and therefore not much more difficult to assemble than the latter. That is why in this article we will teach you how to assemble your own console and assembled according to our needs and budget, yes, never with hardware below the requirements recommended by Valve for its SteamOS distribution so that the system works properly:
- CPU: Intel or AMD 64-bit
- GPU: NVIDIA, Intel, or AMD (Radeon 8500 or better)
- RAM: 4GB or more
- HDD: HDD or SSD of at least 500GB.
- Others- Internet connection, USB and UEFI ports.
At these specifications, we will have to add those of the video games we want to play, since if one of the games exceeds these specifications it must be satisfied. What I recommend is that you select the most powerful game from the list of games available on Steam for the Steam Machine you want to play and that is your minimum, since I would put a little higher hardware in case new titles come that we do not know. quickly become obsolete.
Hardware mounting guide:
In LxA we have chosen a specific hardware, but this is not an obligation, the guide is indicative and you can modify it according to your needs or to save us money in terms of other official options. For example, in my case, my preferred game is Dying Light and for that I would need the recommended requirements of a 3Ghz quad-core CPU from AMD or Intel, 8GB of RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 GPU or a 7900GB AMD Radeon 2 VRAM, and a hard drive with at least 20GB of free space.
As we can see, both the CPU, GPU and RAM exceed the minimum requirements of SteamOS, so the hardware must be more powerful than the one previously exposed. In my case I have also chosen a special box that gives the feeling of a console. You can browse the websites of the manufacturers of towers and barebones, etc. Some options are the Raven RVZ01, Lian-Li PC-Q19, Ante ISK 310, Chieflec FI-01W-U3, ... I have finally opted for the Chieflec and now we adjust the rest of the components to this case (since it has a factor mini-ITX and does not work an ATX motherboard, etc.):
| Product | Price |
|---|---|
| Chieflec FI-01W-U3 box | 69.90€ |
| Gigabyte GA-F2A88XN-WIFI ITX Motherboard | 104.90€ |
| AMD A10-7850K QuadCore 3.700 Ghz APU | 127€ |
| Integrated Radeon R7 Series GPU (not the best choice | but this configuration does not allow another ...) |
| Corsair DDR3 16GB RAM | 98.90€ |
| HDD WD 1TB Blue SATA | 80€ |
| Optical Reader BD / DVD / CD LG GH12NS30 | 60€ |
| HDMI Cable | 7€ |
| Steam Controller | 54.99 € (Pre-purchase and Portal 2 and Rocket League gift) |
*You can use a keyboard and mouse that you already have to make the appropriate configurations, so you save buying these components. And we will use our TV in the living room for the screen.
All this for just under € 600 and with pretty good hardware for most of the current video games found on Steam. It would be a good idea to beef up the graphics with a dedicated GPU by investing a little more in this regard. You can modify it as I said, you can opt for an Intel configuration if you wish, but the problem is that since it does not have a dedicated GPU, the Intel HD graphics do not convince me as much as the integrated AMD Radeon ...
Steam OS installation and configuration guide:
Once we have our equipment assembled, we only need the software part. PTo finish our homemade Steam Machine, we are going to install SteamOS:
- Download SteamOS
- We format a Flash drive of at least 4GB in FAT32 format and we put the label name SYSRESTORES. You can do it from the Windows, Mac OS X formatting options or from the Linux console (or using a graphical tool like GParted).
- Unzip the ZIP downloaded with the SteamOS image and copy it to the pendrive.
- Now we connect our pen on the Steam Machine and start it up.
- Just turn it on we access the BIOS pressing a key (see the manual of the motherboard you have chosen, normally you can use the Del key, F8, F11, F12,…). And once inside.
- We must select in the Boot menu the priority of the drives, in this case, to find the system on our USB drive (USB UEFI option). If we see that it does not appear, we must activate the UEFI system within the BIOS. You can see all this in detail in your motherboard manual if you don't know how, since it may vary depending on the brand of your BIOS / UEFI (Award, Phoenix, AMI,…).
- Now we save the changes we have made and exit, which will produce a reset of our system. And now we will be attentive to choose Restore Entire Disk in the menu that appears.
- We wait for SteamOS to be installed And when it shuts down and starts up again, we'll have our homemade Steam Machine ready to start having fun.
- You can log in with your Steam accountIf you don't have it, you can go to the Valve Steam website and create it. This way you will have all the games you bought, if you already have any ...
- And the last and most important step: Have fun!
Please don't forget to leave your comments, doubts or suggestions. All will be welcome.