Steam Hardware
A place to discuss and support all Steam Hardware, including Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and SteamOS in general.
As Lemmy doesn't have flairs yet, you can use these prefixes to indicate what type of post you have made, eg:
[Flair] My post title
The following is a list of suggested flairs:
[Deck] - Steam Deck related.
[Machine] - Steam Machine related.
[Frame] - Steam Frame related.
[Discussion] - General discussion.
[Help] - A request for help or support.
[News] - News about the deck.
[PSA] - Sharing important information.
[Game] - News / info about a game on the deck.
[Update] - An update to a previous post.
[Meta] - Discussion about this community.
If your post is only relevant to one hardware device (Deck/Machine/Frame/etc) please specify which one as part of the title or by using a device flair.
These are not enforced, but they are encouraged.
Rules:
- Follow the rules of Sopuli
- Posts must be related to Steam Hardware or Steam OS in an obvious way.
- No piracy, there are other communities for that.
- Discussion of emulators are allowed, but no discussion on how to illegally acquire ROMs.
- This is a place of civil discussion, no trolling.
- Have fun.
view the rest of the comments
No need to assume. I run SteamOS on my personal machine and don't have any of these features. These are all hardware features.
Sleep/resume, background updates, and efficiency/noise/heat are not hardware features.
Every computer has sleep/resume.
Background updates is a software-based idle mode. It reduces what's running to the bare minimum and only runs a check for updates/the updater occasionally.
Efficiency/noise/heat are all the same thing and has little to do with the hardware. The hardware they're using isn't any more efficient than what you can buy yourself. The software is possibly more efficient (for the Deck it is at least) to reduce power draw/heat/thermal throttling/noise. However, you can get the same yourself with Arch, only installing what you need. It's not exclusive to Valve.
Try it on your desktop in the middle of a game and let me know how that goes.
It's not, it requires a special processor.
Uhhh it has EVERYTHING to do with the hardware?
Not in this compact size.
Oh, you mean application sleep/resume. Yeah, that's not standard. It's not hardware-based though. It just needs to offload the data in cache and RAM into storage, then put it back when it's needed. That's handled by software, and I would wager on it being available on SteamOS at large, and probably all of Linux, once it's published.
I have not heard about it having a "special processor". It's a AMD Zen 4 CPU. It doesn't seem to have anything special there. Do you mean an additional processor? I haven't heard any discussion of that. They've said they want to add it to the Deck too, so I'm pretty sure you're incorrect.
Their hardware isn't special. It's stuff you can buy off the shelf. Sure, choosing efficient hardware is important, but it isn't exclusive to the Steam Machine/Valve. That's what I was discussing. Anything extra they're getting out of it is software and/or firmware.
First, yes, you can, if you make it yourself. Sure, it's hard, but not impossible.
Second, the size has nothing to do with the efficiency! Sure, it's nice, but it doesn't reduce power draw. It's got the same amount of heat generation as any other computer with the same hardware. Yes, it has a fairly large radiator/heat-sink, but you can get the same size (or larger) yourself if you want.
Look closelier. It's "semi-custom".
Which shelf is that?
No.
It has everything to do with heat and noise.
They clarified, the silicon is off-the-shelf and the firmware is modified. It doesn't have some "special processor" or anything.
What? It being small only means the heat has less room to be removed, so it needs a higher power fan (or thermal throttling). It does have something to do with heat and noise, in that smaller is worse for them. If it's quite or cool, that's despite the size, not because of it.
I don't care to argue about this, but you're making unfounded claims that this device is somehow special, because it's made by Valve I guess, and they need to be worshiped? It seems like a nice kit, but it isn't particularly groundbreaking. It's just a well designed and put together computer. Most of what it does is the same as any other computer, running Linux/Arch is capable of.
The firmware is not part of the processor. Every processor has custom firmware.
Being custom allows it to be both small and quiet. Find me another PC in this size, with this much power, that's as quiet. You can't.
I've already stated why several times. Now you're just being disingenuous.
We don't know how quite this will be! Even the ones that were shown aren't necessarily final. Again, you're making claims without any evidence. I can't show you something as quite as small, because we don't know how quite it'll be. To show you it isn't anything crazy though, there are fanless PCs that you can get. As powerful? No. As quite? Even more. It's a trade off. It isn't magic. If you do something custom you could get even quieter with more power. Just connect a giant copper radiator to it without a fan.
I see you didn't address the other points I made. Now we're down to just the one. Whatever. This one is pure speculation, so can't be disproven.
Im not arguing this will be a bad device. I expect it to be fairly good for the price. It's just not really going to be something you can't get elsewhere without Valve, with the exception of Bluetooth resuming.
You can tell by looking at the design, and by who made it.
Please go back and read my first comment on this thread. I said quiet, powerful, and compact. All 3.
I did. Several times.
Alright, I'm done. By the "who made it" comment, I know there's no reasoning. There's nothing special about this device! The same amount of energy is used, which means heat, as any other device with the same hardware, and the hardware is just about off-the-shelf. Either the fans turn up, which means noise, or it thermal throttles. There's nothing here that could change the physics. Valve does not employ wizards.
LOL no you don't.
There is no other device with the same hardware. You know there isn't. I don't understand why you're making this up.
No wizards required, just some smart engineers and novel design.
This again... Yes there are. Here's the specs: https://thegamepost.com/valve-steam-machine-full-specs/
The "semi-custom" GPU they said is only firmware. The silicon is off-the-shelf. Everything else is also off-the-shelf. What don't you get about this? You can buy these parts yourself.
I know what the specs are. Here's what your link says:
You seem intent on ignoring the package as a whole. Even if you could buy the CPU and the GPU, You cannot buy the motherboard or the case or the coolers or the power supply. If you buy comparable ones piecemeal, "off the shelf", it will be significantly larger and louder because the package is simply not optimized that way. What don't you get about this?