The main thing I'd worry about is long-term reliability

You're not modding a pre-built $1049 device. The faceplates are removable and swappable with no disassembly needed, and this fancy one connects via bluetooth and is powered via a battery. Entirely non-invasive.

Compared to buying from parts? No.

Compared to an average prebuilt? You can probably find large tower PCs at a lower price, but they'll likely have a low quality motherboard or power supply.

Compared to an average prebuilt that ships with Linux? Absolutely

Gamers Nexus did a very in depth review of the Steam Machine [1], which includes a comparison to a build yourself similar machine.

The result is that for about 70 dollars less you can put together a somewhat more powerful PC than the Steam Machine, but not for that form factor, it would still be bigger.

IMO, the Steam Machine is not a bad purchase if you are in the market for that type of product.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=66QzlDewigE

Wildly depends where you live.

For the same price I can get a prebuilt desktop PC with double the performance (Ryzen 7 5700 + RTX 5060 Ti)

Even if you go mini ITX you can get a better PC with 50% more performance (Ryzen 7 5600x + RTX 5060) https://pcpartpicker.com/forums/topic/498435-diy-45l-steam-m...

You can't build a machine which is as powerful, small, quiet, and cheap, nor can you take for granted that a machine you build can have a controller that can wake it from sleep, or which has HDMI-CEC (both are possible, but take extra work or hardware). You can rather easily build a machine with multiple of those attributes, but you'll have to pick ones to sacrifice in the name of the others.

For a small gaming box it is a good price.

If you don’t care that much about size, HDMI-CEC or SteamOS there are faster alternatives for the price.

so probably waveshare or some other ODM? got it.

If we can’t extract all the value, no one can.

Same, but the front is important for airflow in the Framework Desktop, so I don't think covering it with an e-ink screen would work. But maybe with some space between the screen and the fan intake?

A little e-ink status tile for temps, build status, now playing, or just a static label would be much more interesting than most decorative inserts

Yes but saying "it would have justified the price if they had included extra expensive things" is the same as saying "it should be cheaper". Sure, but stuff costs.

Given computer part prices recently because of new datacenters, I think the price is already justified, as they don't want to sell it at a loss

Anyone know what the refresh rate for these displays are, at least with the stock firmware? Reading the datasheets didn't help, though maybe I didn't know what to look for.

Full color, except for certain shades of blue

That's an interesting case of a display being off actually indicating something ("loss of power") which can't be replicated with a bistable screen.

On the other hand, you probably don't want that glow of an active screen all the time. Status LEDs are annoying enough.

The only thing you might lose by building your own and running SteamOS is HDMI-CEC.

The steam controller would work just fine.

Valve supports SteamOS on other hardware.

The refresh rate of eink is kind of...muddy. It depends on temperature and target contrast. With the right waveform and voltage, you can push it pretty far(like 30hz+).

The thing is, Eink's waveform is kind of secret afaik, everyone has different tuning.

Supports full color (images of the German flag)

If you do care about SteamOS, any machine with a reasonably recent AMD GPU will run SteamOS or a similar distro just fine.

Data sheet seems to say (Page 8 -https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/product-files/6397/P6397+C2226...):

> Image update time - 25 ºC - - 4 - sec

I'm guessing you could probably push that somewhat by going beyond the specifications, would wager a guess how far though.

The datasheet says 4 seconds for the image update time. However, I didn't found the time for partial refresh.

Partial refresh on these can often be surprisingly fast, even when full refresh takes seconds

Probable seconds per frame at least.

Assume slow

This screen is entirely independent, with its own power source, so unlike most bistable screens this one could also report when its connection with the Machine is lost, and in a different way than simply turning off.

Especially since, afaik, you plug it in and it just works. No messing around with installing operating systems, setting up users (aside from signing into steam) or anything. It's essentially a console that plays PC games, but it's also a PC for the purposes of upgradability and ability to do other, non-console stuff with it

I like the SteamDeck I have, but it doesn't do HDMI-CEC or controller wake from sleep today. Valve needs to prove the Steam Machine doesn't fail here.

As I understand it going faster typically skips steps that are necessary for maintenance of the panel. Fine for a while but if you don't periodically run a "proper" cycle the panel could eventually be permanently damaged.

It's own power source... Let me guess, solar cells? Batteries? A separate power plug?

>No messing around with installing operating systems

This is the real killer feature. So many people that I talk to know they want Linux, but are deathly afraid of installing it themselves.

The Steam Deck itself doesn't have an HDMI port, but the official dock does, and that does support HDMI-CEC (support was added to SteamOS a couple years ago). The Steam Deck also does support controller wake from sleep (added in the past year or so); I've actually seen people complaining about their Steam Decks waking up when they didn't realize that feature existed.

And all of the reviews I've seen about the Steam Machine talk about how well both of those features work.

That's exactly it. I was a firmware engineer at reMarkable making the latest tablets.

We had some secret eink sauce (propriety waveforms) to get the high refresh rates and colour contrast without a full flashing screen reset, but even then you need to run longer maintenance refreshes occasionally.

Pixels are just vertical columns of viscous fluid with charged ink particles. A waveform is just voltage changes over time to these columns to shift the particles up and down. More black to the top = darker shade of grey. Colour (in the gallery display, at least) is the same, just with each CMY particle group having different charges and responses to different waveforms.

Every once in awhile this vertical column gets messy with loose particles distributed through it (ghosting, muddy contrast) so performing a hard rail-to-rail voltage reset forces all the particles up and then down, and gives you a clean slate.

Just a lithium battery.

Out of interest, what (vaguely) is the amount of time you need between maintenance refreshes?

It does not. Source: have a dock. Latest firmware installed from deck. And because the current Steam controller is a recent release, I had to try a whole mess of third party controllers before settling on PS5 controllers because everything else I tried had Bluetooth pairing issues / disconnects as you approached four controllers.

SteamDeck as a handheld is great plus or minus a few nits baked onto the power / battery life choices Valve made. SteamDeck -> TV and SteamDeck -> USB-C KVM are both workable, with caveats. I had hoped we would see the bug fixes you describe before the Steam Machine release. Alas, no.

Now I wonder how it gets recharged.

You are confidently incorrect.

SteamDeck supports HDMI-CEC as of 3.7 ~2 years ago, using the original dock or select third party docks.

---

How to Enable CEC:

Press the STEAM button and go to Settings.

Navigate to the Display tab.

On the right side of the screen, find and toggle on Enable HDMI CEC Support.

Ensure Wake TV when device resumes from sleep is also enabled.

CEC support was added in to the Dock in May 2024 https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1675200?emclan=10358...

Bluetooth wake made available for LCD Decks in September 2025 (it was already available in OLED models) https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1675200/view/4983336...

I will say that the Deck has less than stellar bluetooth reception in my experience too. I settled on an 8bitdo controller because my XBox Elite couldn't stay connected from across the room. The Steam Machine has a dedicated antenna for Steam Controllers though.