I’d just build my own PC, duh.

Never understood the hype behind pre-builts. Over half the fun of owning a gaming PC is picking your own parts and assembling it yourself. By having someone else do that part, you’re robbing yourself of the joy of owning your own custom machine.

What others are saying plus install bazzite

The only way to get steam hardware, according to support, is to have a credit card, address and steam account from an EU country or other supported country. Or wait if a local reseller (like digitec) gets their hands on them.

Look into MiniPCs!

I’m not sure what will have availability in your country, but MinisForum, GMKTec, AOOSTAR would be where I’d start looking.

If you go for a MiniPC with an OcuLink external port… well, then you can get a GPU cradle and a small PSU for it, plug that in to MiniPC when you need the graphical power.

Its hard to find exact numbers on this, but basically, OcuLink appears to perform better than Thunderbolt 4 as a kind of eGPU data transfer method… there is some efficiency loss as compared to directly slotting it into a MoBo, but in practice, its often 10% or less.

And, now that FSR 4 works on 7000 series AMD GPUs, you may be able to find such a GPU that is cheaper, yet still performs somewhere between a Steam Machine and a more powerful PC.

This kind of setup is about as spatially small as a Steam Machine, and allows you the ability to upgrade to either a new GPU or MiniPC when you want to.

The MiniPC will be the CPU and storage memory and RAM.

MiniPCs often use laptop style SODIMM RAM and M.2 SSDs… so… if prices for those remain high, you can at least take those out of your old MiniPC, and then get a new ‘barebones’ MiniPC based around a newer CPU, and slot them into it.

So they sell the steam deck in your country now? You can probably just wait a good while for them to sell the console in your country.

If you wait long enough they might offer a barebones kit kind of like the old Intel nuks. You can get for cheaper and buy your own ram and storage. Its rumored that the failure for many ai data centers to come to fruition, will line up with the ram manufacturers getting new facilities up, will cause a crash in hardware prices. Don’t know if that means cheap ram or if it gets more expensive in the wacky economy anymore, but its something to gain or lose from when you wait long enough.

I would definately not buy from a scalper though. The thing is barely worth it to me at 700 dollars as a fan boy who would love a new toy from valve. I could not imagine paying close to double for it, or risk getting just scammed. I’m sure I could do something like a charge back, or having to get on some Ai customer support to get my money back but its not worth it to me anymore.

Even if it available in my country I still wouldn’t buy it at the current price, nothing is special about steam machine it’s basically just a box standard computer. For 1500$ I can get a 5060 laptop that come with a decent screen keyboard and probably faster too even with Linux driver overhead

Just for your information: the steam machine is not availne anywhere right now.

I honestly really want one and will wait some months, to see how the supply situation changes.

I just installed SteamOS on a mini PC that costs about half what the Steam Machine does (and less than the Deck under current pricing), and runs on an AMD 7840HS with 32GB of RAM in a form-factor that’s the size of 3 stacked pieces of bread.

While that APU is likely powerful than the Steam machine’s with its dedicated VRAM, I did test a few games and it definitely outperforms the Deck and the higher system RAM makes it potentially more versatile than either.

If you want to keep sole ownership (ie. invoice in your name, your CC etc.) and can’t go through a friend/relative in a neighbouring country - you could use a VPN and a freight-forwarding service in said country?

I’ve utilised similar methods in the past to get EU-only goods here into Australia.

BUY A DOCK. CONNECT TO YOUR TV OF CHOICE.

Once you have that set up, pair a controller/keyboard/mouse to the deck. You just replaced your PS5. Not in the sense of complete power or graphical fidelity, but its bananas what the games pumped through my docked steam deck look like on the tv.

I have been linux gaming for a couple of years. I was in a transition away from Playstation already due to expense of multiplayer and the general value that I WASNT receiving from Sony. I was a day 1 adopter of the original deck, and it has worked very well for me in handheld mode, so I bought a dock to try it out. I only use my desktop gaming PC for true keyboard and mouse games that make me want to be close to the screen.

Gruezi, I built my own steam machine, with the following specs:

• AMD ryten 7 5800X cpu
• 16GB DDR4 leftover memory (2666MHz)
• AMD RX 9070 XT graphics card (they’re a great deal at the moment compared to other graphic cards, great bang for bucks e.g. https://www.brack.ch/acer-grafikkarte-predator-bifrost-amd-rx-9070-xt-16g-oc-1841447)
• Lian-Li A3-mITX case (can accomodate graphic cards up to at least 32cm)
• asrock b550M pro-4
• be quiet pure rock slim 3
• lian - li edge gold 850W PSU (I bought this as it was advertised SFF on galaxus but it is in fact a regular ATX, which still fits but prevents graphic cards of 32cm or larger, mine just barely fit).

The main difference with the steam machine is that it is larger, does not have HDMI-CEC (which turns on your TV automatically when the pc turns on, but I don’t mind), or the official valve support, but frankly, my experience with steamOS has been stellar, I’ve run it for multiple months and I really love it. But with the official steam controller (which I’m also waiting on) I’m sure my experience would be close enough to perfect for myself. Good luck!

I haven’t seen anyone suggest Bazzite here so I will. Especially if you like racing titles, compatibility with most racing peripherals have better support under bazzite as its goal is to support the most devices it can while steam OS is purpose built for a few specific devices.

If you’re savvy enough to, check out some channels like eta prime on YouTube. Maybe that can inspire your purchase.

I personally run a minisforum BD 775Si motherboard with a mobile ryzen cpu in conjunction with a Radeon 7800xt sapphire nitro + as my Bazzite box for the past two years now and it’s been a pretty stellar experience.

Yeah VALVe seems not to like Switzerland, as no hardware has ever been released here. Additionally, they do not allow resellers, so you literally cannot buy it with proper warranty.

What I did with the Index was ask a friend in Germany to order and ship it to me. This time, I will use my legal entity in Estonia. Costs a bit of extra shipping and taxes, but there is no other option.

I’d suggest joining the EU.

Build one! If you’ve already got the money, building a computer is not as hard as it might seem. You can put SreamOS on there but Bazzite and CachyOS are good gaming options too.