r/SteamOS • u/HonestEgg1973 • Jul 19 '26
help wanted Switching from console to pc and making my own steam machine.
So like the title says I’m thinking of ditching my ps5 pro and Xbox series X in favor of a pc. Problem is I’m not familiar with pc’s as I hate windows and switched to Mac about a decade ago. Also I want a console like experience. Controller not keyboard and no complicated settings. I just want to play my games not spend time tweaking graphics or whatever else pc gamers are obsessed with. Also almost my entire game library is digital on Xbox and ps5. I would greatly appreciate insights, advice and any helpful comments.
Thanks.
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u/subtly_irritated Jul 19 '26
Hey, you sound like me. Just pieced together a custom built PC, pcpartpicker is your friend here. Create a bootable SteamOS drive and viola. The "tweaking" you'll have to do is just adjusting your graphics settings once-per-game so that you're getting the best resolution/performance you care for. Super simple stuff.
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u/KyleB2131 Jul 19 '26
Just curious: if you don’t wanna mess about with settings and “just want to play games,” why ditch the most advanced console available today, one which you already own? You’re probably only gonna fetch around a thousand dollars selling what you have, which puts you at spending at least another thousand on the PC, plus another who knows how much on a monitor that’s capable of putting out the kind of quality PCs are capable of. And then you gotta buy games.
Don’t get me wrong. I did exactly what you wanna do about a year ago and don’t regret a single bit of it, but it did cost me six grand or so for my PC and monitor, which would run well over 7k in today’s inflated market.
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u/HonestEgg1973 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
Oh that’s easy to answer lol. Cause fuck Sony that’s why. I don’t plan on giving those greedy cunts another dollar. And as far as the pc I found what chat gpt says would be my dream steam machine based on what info I gave it. It’ll cost $2700 plus tax. I don’t need a monitor but might get one down the road.
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u/IIIIIIIIIIllllllllIl Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
I just built my steam machine with the best specs you can get right now and it has been performing amazing in 4k on my tv. And it was around €1700 (with tax) the only downside right now is you have to get a amd graphics card since nvidia is not supported yet. For me this is not really a issue. Nvidia graphics cards are way overpriced anyway. The 9070XT is basically between a 5070 and 5080 but i found my card for 600 bucks instead of the 1200 bucks a 5080 will cost ya. i can run the newest games in 4k 60-80fps with FSR4 and i sometimes use frame-gen.
Amd 9800X3D 32gb cl30 6000 ram 9070XT 1TB m.2 7000Mb/s
I was very patiently waiting for deals on each individual item, my original price was around 2100
https://i.imgur.com/PfSsA6h.jpeg
It is all in here, the case isnt that small but i wanted a quite system without thermal issues
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u/grilled_pc Jul 19 '26
Personally i wouldn't trust a word out of chatgpt. Do your research. Understand the parts. Understand the price level. I have no idea what it suggested to you but if it told you to get an nvidia card for starters, you're already gonna have a bad time lol.
TLDR: If you have the cash and want something that can nail 4K 60fps gaming with some RT? AMD 9070XT GPU and a 9800X3D/7800X3D CPU. 32GB of ram, 1 - 2TB SSD.
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u/acnh-lyman-fan Jul 19 '26
I may be a PC gamer and I’ll choose PC gaming over console gaming 9 times out of 10 but this is just extremely performative
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u/nariz_choken Jul 20 '26
You could say that if you had not bought something that is now being taken away, I don't plan to ever buy another game in PlayStation or continue ps plus, I had bought terminator 2 movie which now Sony yanked away... No refund, and now without discs what is stopping them from shutting off my access to my games library? Nah dude I buy games mostly on GOG which let me have offline installer or in cartridge for the switch / switch 2
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u/Destado1 Jul 19 '26
Depends on how much you want to deal with troubleshooting if something comes up. If you are cool with diagnosing, researching, and fixing problems I would say go for it. If you are looking for a true console experience where you just turn on your machine and it consistently just works without worrying about messing about with the system ever, then you may want to stick to the PS5. I have been PC only since the early 90s (with a brief time playing on PS3 due to family). My wife plays on a PS5 as she doesn't want to mess about with it even though she has me (I have built all of my systems since the days of the 386 and am A+ certified for the last 25 years or so). Cost of ownership on both is hard to say, as I spend more on hardware with upgrades but save a ton on games with the Steam sales, where she spends less on the PlayStation hardware but games almost never go on sale.
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u/IsamuAlvaDyson Jul 19 '26
You will always need to tweak settings on PC
That's just the nature of it
Unless you get Steam Machine but that is significantly less powerful than PS5 Pro and even less powerful than Series X but it's the only PC that comes closest to a console like experience
But the not needing to tweak settings only comes from games that are Steam Machine verified, you will still have to tweak settings for all the other PC games that are not and even then being verified does not mean it's optimized for it as we have all learned from the Deck being verified can basically mean anything
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u/HonestEgg1973 Jul 19 '26
I thought installing steam os on a custom or prebuilt machine was the same as buying the steam machine (same os set up etc) just on better hardware
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u/IsamuAlvaDyson Jul 19 '26
No because you put your own hardware so it can't optimize settings for it so you have to change settings on your own
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u/HonestEgg1973 Jul 19 '26
But once it’s properly configured I shouldn’t have to tweak the setting anymore right? Steam os is just like a console isn’t it?
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u/Red_n_Rusty Jul 19 '26
No, you will probably have to tweak settings for each game. Steam Machine has one specific set of hardware so pre-made optimized graphics settings can be created for it. Your configuration will just be some random set of hardware. I'm guessing that Valve will create an automated game graphics optimization settings that would work for any set of hardware (similar to what Nvidia does) at some point but that doesn't exist yet. So be ready to fiddle with graphics settings. To me it sounds like you should stick to Steam machine or a console.
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u/xeosceleres Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
You're 100% definitely going to need to fiddle. For example, once there was a bug where the max audio volume was lowered at times, and the fix was to goto desktop mode and readjust the volume.
All consoles, Macs, and manufacturer pre-builds put the same components together in a box. That way, they can optimize fans, dust, heat. Every box is the same. That's why they're cool and quiet.
When you build or buy a pre-built PC, it won't be optimized the same way because there's so many parts that can fit into the box. Every box is different. Because of this all the part manufacturers overcompensate - such as GPUs having higher than needed fan speed - which causes more noise.
Playstation for example have system wide upscaling called PSSR which is just a one-time toggle and it works for all games. In SteamOS, you either have to do it by game by game. Or if you use SteamOS' implementation: you need to toggle it on, go into the game and turn down the resolution so it upscales. It's more work and time.
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u/MukLegion Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
I just did a custom "steam machine" build and installed bazzite
Has been very painless, boots automatically into steam gaming mode so it's a console experience. I've got all my games and ROM via Emudeck added to steam so it's one seamless library.
I will say though, I don't play any multiplayer or games with anti-cheat issues. So YMMV, check protondb for games you want to play
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u/HonestEgg1973 Jul 19 '26
This is what I want. I also don’t do multi player games. I prefer stuff like halo resident evil tomb raider Spider-Man etc
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u/Mission-Albatross576 Jul 19 '26
I ditched ps4 for Xbox SX (thought they were going to do great things with the acquisitions lol), ditched the Xbox for windows pc, ditched that for steam os pc.
It’s great but building and installing it is a thing. If you have done this before it’s straightforward, if you haven’t well you’ll need to learn a bunch of things but it’s fun. Just be prepared to make mistakes and do a lot of troubleshooting.
Also it’s expensive but what you build could outlast the current gen and depending on what you play have you covered for many many years.
But once it’s built, add an 8bit do ultimate controller plus a mouse for the odd occasion and you are covered. But the steam controller has been a game changer for couch gaming.
Games wise you’re ditching your console library but realistically are these games going to run on ps6? More likely most will be locked to current gen to make you buy remasters. So building a pc library has some risks but your games will continue work as you upgrade.
Don’t bother trying to get hdmi cec to work. Just accept it’s a downside and save yourself the time and pain of trying to get it to work.
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u/Beneficial_Waltz5217 Jul 19 '26
I want to see the outcome, I have a freind who is a serious console gamer and I’m not sure if he will ever be at peace with a PC.
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u/Mission-Albatross576 Jul 19 '26
Just to add once you figure out what settings work you don’t need to mess about much.
You get a feel for what’s going to be good and can just dial it in and move on. Only people who care about squeezing max fps will tinker.
I usually go 4k resolution, lock max fps to 120fps, put FSR on performance, textures and all that on high or ultra.
If that doesn’t get good results I bump it down to 1440p and move on. Cant see the difference between 4k and 1440p unless I move my chair closer lol.
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u/TheYungSheikh Jul 20 '26
Just ditched PS for my own Steam machine after only ever using console my whole life. Sony seems to be going down an anti-consumer route and even though it’s an expensive time to build a PC, it’ll pay off to ditch console.
I also hated the idea of PC gaming, mostly because of Windows. Also been a Mac user my whole life.
I love SteamOS. It’s definitely nowhere near as easy as a console, but I feel much better investing time in and building a library on Steam and avoiding the lock-in of console. And I feel it’s completely worth it over windows unless you have to play the few games it can’t run, like Apex and CoD Warzone.
For GoW Ragnarok, I had to enter a tiny command in the properties to get it to run, as it gave me an error otherwise. If you ever get an issue, you need to check ProtonDB for people’s solutions. And I bought a cheap little keyboard+trackpad combo for if/when I need a mouse and keyboard.
But games are so much cheaper. Way more games. I can play them pretty much anywhere with almost anything. I highly recommend.
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u/nightryder21 Jul 19 '26
If you want something simple... DO NOT build your own PC. Just buy a pre built with steamOS already on it. Look at the MetaPC SteamRoller pre built.
Either way don't let your own hate for Windows think you will get console experience from SteamOS. It is a still a PC with PC quirks and PC settings.
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u/HonestEgg1973 Jul 19 '26
Yeah I was going to buy a prebuilt one. Found a really good one meets all my requirements.
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u/GetVladimir Jul 19 '26
SteamOS seems to be perfect for your use case.
Starting the PC from a wireless controller and changing the TV input automatically to it is something that is often lacking out-of-the-box (can be done with adapters and the Steam Machine does this natively).
Regarding using Xbox Controller as a Mouse, I was just looking into that myself and made a short tutorial about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7CGVLIJnas
It uses the share button to toggle between Mouse and Gamepad mode easily.
Hope it helps for some apps and games that don't have a layout already and require a mouse to play.
SteamOS with Big Picture Mode already handles most of this stuff really well.
If you have any specific questions about it, please feel free to ask
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u/Umholzer Jul 19 '26
I am currently doing the same.
Your sweet spot would be the steam machine, but not for new AAA titles.
There are only two ways I see:
Stick to PS5 Pro and just play
Get a PC and do deal with some adjustments.
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u/leonredhorse Jul 19 '26
I’ll be 100% real. You’re never going to have a PC experience where you will NEVER need to tweak things, but you may realize as time goes on that there is a lot of joy and power in that. You may also find that you will need to still use a mouse and keyboard sometimes, but yes you will be able to use a controller in a lot of games. Your PS5 Pro is probably the best controller-only and just turn-it-on experience you’ll have. SteamOS is great and I daily drive a Linux distro on my gaming PC, but it will never been completely smooth sailing all the time. Console games are developed for consoles. Playing many games on Linux, especially with Proton, means you’re translating gaming calls designed for Windows into things Linux understands. Sometimes this has issues, but many times it works.
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u/TheGeekno72 Jul 19 '26
Fair warning : as much as PC gaming has been simplified to death and a lot of thing is essentially seamless now, you WILL have to take some manual actions on occasion. Especially if you get SteamOS, which is based out of Linux because of the whole software stack it is on; you're running Windows games through a compatibility later (Proton), if something's wrong, it can be fixable, if you're willing to look up community-sourced solutions from protondb.com
And I think you're massively overestimating the complexity of the graphic settings menu in PC games, you get in, tweak a few sliders and toggles in a whizz, resume playing. Simple as. If you want to take the easy way out, just use the graphic presets, set it to high, ultra or medium as desired/necessary, but if you get a PC on the lower end, I'd recommend you at least look up which type of settings are typically the ones with heaviest impact on performance so you can reduce those and not everything at once.
Also, there is a sort of limitation as to what games you can run: some games use an Anti-Cheat that only works on Windows (or that also works on Linux but the game studio disabled/didn't enable support for) so consult AreWeAntiCheatYet to see which games you can play on Linux/SteamOS, forget about the popular ones like CoD, Apex, Fortnite, Marathon, etc...
I'm a PC guy, I made the switch to CachyOS which is a different Linux distro from SteamOS -but it's still Linux, so a lot of things apply cross distros- and I made my own Steam Machine under SteamOS and nearly everything just works, very rare are the games I have to do any pre-launch tweaks and when I have to, it's usually something very simple.
SteamOS doesn't take NVIDIA RTX GPUs at all, all Linux distros "favor" AMD Radeon GPUs (because the support is better, more widespread too) otherwise you can basically pretty much build any standard PC or build a prebuild and it'll work.
If you're stuck deciding, feel free to ask further questions, we'll be more than happy to provide answers and resources.
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u/TONKAHANAH Jul 19 '26
I just want to play my games not spend time tweaking graphics or whatever.
You're probably gonna have to do this part regardless of if you use steamOS or windows.
While Steam OS is very console-like, it's still a PC and still runs a PC version of whatever game you are playing. Most games will try to launch with ideal default settings but that's not always the case, especially when running through compatibility layer like Proton.
You're probably going to have to go into any given game settings and tweak some of those things to make sure that it's running with ideal settings for your hardware.
Unless you just throw money at the problem and the buy top of the line hardware, then I suppose it won't be a problem for a while.
Either way, you're going to need to get familiar with some of the graphical settings eventually. Once you understand some of the more important ones, though, it becomes very easy to set these for future games.
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u/ItzBoshNet Jul 19 '26
If you are brand new and don't want to mess with jank you should just buy a pre built and use windows for your gaming. SteamOs is brand new and you will probably run into plenty of annoying bugs for a few years.
Get a nice monitor and a good pre built and you can be gaming right out of the box. If you have games on your ps5 might as well just keep your library for a more casual couch session also.
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u/HonestEgg1973 Jul 19 '26
I was aware the initial set up might be complicated and I figured I would just be buying games off the steam store and installing just like my ps5. But it’s starting to sound like I’m not going to have the console like experience I’m hoping for. And I thought I’d just have to instal an emulator and download some roms. Other than the emulation I’m not really interested in piracy. Seems complicated and risky I’ll just buy games on sale.
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u/Pochichi Jul 19 '26
Bro, i JUST finished making my new steam machine yesterday. Followed a pc part picker list someone shared on here and watched 2 videos on YouTube and now I’m having a blast!
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u/HonestEgg1973 Jul 19 '26
Does it run steam OS? How console like is it?
I was looking at this machine and other than upgrading the ssd it seems perfect.And maybe it’s naïve of me but I’m hoping I just buy this PC reformat it with Steam OS and log into my Steam account to download some games install emulator and find roms and there we go.
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u/Pochichi Jul 19 '26
That’s better than what I built. I just copied this fella’s list:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/cvXgBv
Then I bought a second stick of ram. I got the pro ultra version of the case. Only thing i regret is not going for at least 2tbs of storage space. I’m already at 500~ gigs. But I can buy more anyways
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u/HonestEgg1973 Jul 19 '26
I used chat gpt to build me one then found the closest prebuilt machine to the dream machine that chat gpt made.
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u/Pochichi Jul 19 '26
That’s pretty smart. I think the smaller the case, the more console like it will feel. Steamos is smooth experience overall
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u/HonestEgg1973 Jul 19 '26
Yeah I wish it was a smaller case and it was on the custom build but I was having a hard time finding everything I wanted prebuilt in a smaller case. I think the only way I can do that is if I build it myself which I just do not wanna do.
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u/Early_Lawfulness_348 Jul 19 '26
Ahem. Pulse 8 Cec adaptor. Set it up with an hdmi from pc to the best port on tv and one from the adapter to any other port and tell the software to activate the port your pc is in. If you want anything above 60 4k and want hdr.
Headache level: 5.
Controller wake-up. 2.4gh dongle and an Xbox controller. May need to buy a few dongles before you find one that is legit. Bios settings, hardware settings, keeping usb on, etc. Xbox controller usually stops working because the windows drivers crap out. Nothing you can do but restart. Get your favorite bt controller (I like ps5) and just connect it via Bluetooth after you wake the pc.
Headache level: 10.
You can use various software to customize the steam os so it doesn’t look crap like the stock does. Can also have Steam start in big picture mode on startup and wake.
Headache level: 2
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u/HonestEgg1973 Jul 19 '26
I was also hoping to get your guys opinion on what the better operating system is to get the most console like experience Steam or bazzite? Or maybe something I haven’t even heard of.
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u/Mister_Badger Jul 19 '26
You will definitely have to invest some time and energy messing around with stuff, that’s just the price we pay for a more open platform. I think it’s well worth it, and once you get everything dialed in, it can be very smooth and painless
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u/TheCrach Jul 19 '26
I just want to play my games not spend time tweaking graphics or whatever else pc gamers are obsessed with.
I will say while it's never going to be as easy as console with 2 options, performance mode & quality mode.
PC has what 5 modes, Low, Medium, High, Very High, and sometimes even Ultra presets.
Same thing with the drivers argument either. It's still supposedly 2001, where you have to log into the mainframe, calibrate the quantum combobulator, reroute the giga-transfer protocol, sacrifice a goat to the GPU gods, and then brace yourself for the PC to crash every couple of hours.
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u/Bright_Eyes83 Jul 19 '26
you're gonna have to swap back to windows probably. i know there's steam os now, but if you're not buying a steam machine you should be using windows until you learn more. i was a mac user and console gamer too
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Jul 19 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/HonestEgg1973 Jul 19 '26
You must have missed the part where I said fuck Sony. I’m not giving them another dime.
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u/HonestEgg1973 Jul 20 '26
One last question guys. Appreciate all the great input. So anything I can buy on the steam store would be playable on my steam machine build correct?
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u/purpl3nubela Jul 20 '26
I built a a pc to run steam os I have dubbed it the steam engine I also purchased the steam machine. From what your describing I feel I should warn you especially with an arch based system things are janky sometimes you will have weird errors or issues, it is a great os for sure I have 2 PCs with it and my main system also runs an arch based distro. All I'm saying is you will NEED to be prepared to do some tinkering and learning. It will not be as seamless as something like a ps5.
In addition to that controllers sometimes behave strangely especially if you use Bluetooth best bet is a steam controller they are amazing second best is probably an 8bitdo
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u/Bigfacts84 Jul 20 '26
Steam os should do what you need, my only experience with steam os is my steam deck. Steam os is almost like Mac os, its very streamlined, you might need to adjust settings depending on game,resolution, hardware but its very easy to do.
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u/Lilredmachine Jul 20 '26
SteamOS is pretty dang good.
I recently ditched the old Xbox X, cancelled my decade plus Xbox live subscription, built a 9070 SFF PC and have been enjoying that just fine. Few hitches here and there, no sound in one game but just proton shuffled a bit and it fixed it.
There are enough guides on YouTube etc. for you to do it easily, trust me.
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u/urlond Jul 19 '26
since you've used a mac prior if you want the pc/gaming like environment i'd suggest BazziteOS since you can have gnome environment and it'd be familiar to yourself. You can also used Nvidia on Bazzite as well if you select the Iso image to use.
But if you're really keen on Steamos you could build everything up to your GPU which you'd need an AMD GPU since SteamOS doesn't have full fledged Nvidia drivers.
You wont be able to get your digital library from console onto your pc, not be able to really use your Gamepass on Linux as a native app like what you can on Windows, but steam offers a majority of Xbox games and Playstation games on their store.
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u/HonestEgg1973 Jul 19 '26
Yeah I know I’ll have to buy new games and maybe repurchase ones I already own. And as far as Xbox games considering a dual boot setup. I had chat gpt help me find the perfect pc as I don’t want to build one.
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u/urlond Jul 19 '26
You dont need to build a new PC yourself, you just need to make sure it has an AMD GPU if you want to install STeamOS instead of Winblows.
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u/HonestEgg1973 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
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u/urlond Jul 19 '26
Noice, if you go with that I wish you luck on your adventures into PC gaming!
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u/HonestEgg1973 Jul 19 '26
From all the research I’ve done this is an almost perfect machine for my uses I believe. And the price point isn’t as high as some other machines. And I should get many many years without having to do any upgrades.
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u/mango_carrot Jul 19 '26
SteamOS is great and it’s the closest you’ll get to a console like pc, but please don’t go in to it thinking you won’t ever have to play around with settings and config.
You need to be open to some pc “jank” not least because SteamOS is playing the vast majority of games via the proton translation layer and not natively