Ever since Valve announced the Steam Machine to a decidedly mixed reaction, competitors and clones have been appearing left, right, and center. Valve’s Steam Machine was deemed to be too expensive by the general public, starting at $1,049 for the 512GB version without a Steam Controller. Moreover, concerns were raised about the Steam Machine’s mediocre performance, leading to increased demand for a worthy competitor.
We have already covered the Terk Box v1.1, a passion project by AMD engineer Jacob Terkelsen, that had a 3D-printed chassis with an RTX 5060 inside. It couldn’t run SteamOS because the platform is incompatible with NVIDIA GPUs, but the rest was spot on. Then, a competitor appeared from France, amusingly dubbed the “Stim Machine.” It nailed the specs and the price, and even came with SteamOS, but it was a bit too big.
Now, a new competitor arrives from Meta PCs, optimistically named the SteamRoller. They are directly advertising the SteamRoller as a pre-built Steam Machine competitor, pricing it at $1,299. That falls in between the 512GB Steam Machine with controller and the 2TB model without one.
For the specs, the SteamRoller offers an AMD Radeon RX 7600 GPU, along with a six-core Ryzen 5 9600X CPU. The SteamRoller has 16GB DDR5-5600 memory and a 1TB NVMe SSD. For the rest of the components, we get a B650M or B850M WiFi motherboard, a META 240mm AiO liquid cooler, and a META 650W 80+ Gold power supply. The case is particularly interesting because the build is housed in a Jonsbo D32 compact black case.
Right off the bat, the CPU is a huge improvement over the Steam Machine. It is a much faster Zen 5 chip, and the Radeon RX 7600 is a slight improvement as well. The SteamRoller’s GPU has more compute units, a higher clock speed, and a much higher TDP, which will allow it to perform better than the GPU in the Steam Machine. However, SteamOS optimization for the Steam Machine remains an unknown that may slightly tilt the scales in favor of Valve’s system.
Speaking of SteamOS, one of the big selling points of the SteamRoller is that it comes pre-installed with Valve’s Linux-based operating system instead of Windows. It can do that because it uses an AMD GPU rather than an NVIDIA one, as we saw with the Terk Box. Regardless, that will be an advantage for users who want to streamline their gaming experience with SteamOS.
However, the SteamRoller is not perfect. There is a reason Valve spent almost a decade perfecting the Steam Machine’s form factor. The SteamRoller, although compact, is a full-fledged microATX pre-built PC, rather than a console. It is still much bigger than Valve’s offering, clocking in at about 25 liters, compared to the Steam Machine’s FOUR. Therefore, even if it provides better performance at a similar price, it is not a direct rival to the Machine.
So, it looks like there are three key pillars to a successful Steam Machine competitor: performance, price, and size. We are seeing early rivals hit two of these three points, but none have hit all three. I suspect we will get closer and closer as time passes.
Still interested in the SteamRoller? You can pre-order one on the MetaPCs website for $1,299, with an additional 2-year warranty for $180 and a 3-year warranty for $240.
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[PC Hardware Specialist]
Usman Saleem brings 8+ years of comprehensive PC hardware expertise to the table. His journey in the tech world has involved in-depth tech analysis and insightful PC hardware reviews, perfecting over 6+ years of dedicated work. Usman’s commitment to staying authentic and relevant in the field is underscored by many professional certifications, including a recent one in Google IT Support Specialization.
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