This AMD mini PC outperforms Valve's Steam Machine, but it comes at a significantly higher price.

      Valve’s choice to officially back SteamOS 3.8 on standard gaming PCs has created new opportunities for a different range of Steam Machines—eliminating the need for gamers to purchase Valve’s hardware. Recently, a benchmark by YouTuber ETA Prime indicates that a high-end mini PC with an AMD processor can significantly outperform Valve’s forthcoming Steam Machine. The drawback? It comes with a substantially higher price tag.

      The testing underscores both the versatility of SteamOS and the improving popularity of AMD’s latest integrated graphics, while also posing a crucial question: how much additional performance is worth the extra cost?

      SteamOS demonstrates its independence from Valve’s hardware

      With the launch of SteamOS 3.8, Valve has made its Linux-based gaming operating system available for compatible desktop PCs, especially those utilizing AMD hardware. While Nvidia support continues to progress, SteamOS now enables users to construct their own console-like gaming PCs without dependence on Valve’s official products.

      ETA Prime showcased this potential by installing SteamOS 3.8.14 on a mini PC equipped with AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ 395 processor. This chip features 16 Zen 5 CPU cores, 32 threads, and an integrated Radeon 8060S GPU with 40 RDNA 3.5 compute units, offering significantly greater power than the semi-custom AMD processor found in Valve’s Steam Machine, which is said to use a 6-core Zen 4 CPU alongside an RDNA 3 GPU with 28 compute units.

      To enhance graphics performance, ETA Prime designated 96GB of the system’s shared memory as VRAM, leaving 31GB for system memory. The performance improvements were clear across several tested titles using native rendering without upscaling. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the Ryzen-based system averaged 138 FPS at 1080p versus 118 FPS on the Steam Machine. At 1440p, it scored 103 FPS compared to 86 FPS, and at 4K, it achieved 62 FPS, surpassing Valve’s hardware by 41 percent.

      This trend was also seen in Cyberpunk 2077, where the mini PC averaged 84 FPS at 1080p, 52 FPS at 1440p, and 27 FPS at 4K, compared to 74 FPS, 45 FPS, and 18 FPS on the Steam Machine, respectively. Similar enhancements were noted in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, where the AMD setup achieved 72 FPS at 1080p, 56 FPS at 1440p, and 32 FPS at 4K, consistently outpacing Valve’s hardware.

      However, these performance benefits come with a hefty cost

      The setup used in the demonstration is priced around $3,999, while the Steam Machine starts at $1,049. Justifying an extra $3,000 for frame rate enhancements between 15 to 50 percent will be challenging for most consumers.

      AMD Mini PC ETA Prime

      There is a more feasible option available. Systems such as the GMKtec EVO-X2 AI Mini PC, also utilizing the Ryzen AI Max+ 395, can be purchased for about $1,999. Despite this model featuring 64GB of LPDDR5X memory, which prevents the allocation of the same 96GB of VRAM shown in ETA Prime’s test, this restriction is unlikely to significantly affect gaming performance. In fact, even the most powerful consumer graphics cards typically do not require more than 32GB of VRAM.

      The benchmark ultimately underscores the broader implications of SteamOS 3.8. Valve is no longer pressuring gamers to buy a Steam Machine—they now just need compatible hardware. As SteamOS evolves and hardware support broadens, especially for Nvidia GPUs, gamers may have greater freedom in assembling their own console-like gaming PCs without being limited to a single manufacturer.