This is one of the quietest steam machine available on the market made by Zotac. After a year of usage, this computer is still performing well as a desktop and gaming PC. Comparing to PS4 or XBOX ONE this device is virtually noiseless. The processor i5-6400t isn’t the fastest processor on the market, but it gets the job done. And it’s a Skylake, that means you can still install a windows 7 instead of the Steam OS included.
Technical Specifications
CPU – Intel i5-6400T 2.5ghz-2.8ghz
Memory: 8GB(Max 32GB)
Video card – Nvidia Geforce 970m 3GB GDDR5
Chipset – Intel 100 Series, NVIDIA
4x HDMI2.0
1xSteam Controller
1TB 2.5“ SATA hard drive
1 x M.2 SATA SSD slot
So why would you install windows 7 on a Steam Maschine?
The answer is simple, it runs more games and runs them much better. The idea of SteamOS itself is great; however, games aren’t still optimized to run on Linux platform. Even Steam native titles such as Counterstrike GO, Half Life2, Portal 2 runs fluently on Windows 7, which cannot be said about SteamOS. It just doesn’t feel smooth enough. Many of users will probably install the newest operating system from windows 10; although, it’s full of bloatware and it gets slightly less FPS in games. Windows 7 is still one of the best-operating systems for gaming PCs and workstations, and most of the programs are optimized for this OS.
So what is the actual FPS in games?
Most of the games run fine without any issues; although this machine has a slow processor, the video card Nvidia 970M(960) is capable enough to render 30+ frames/second even in the newest titles on highest settings.
Counter-strike GO (1280×720) low – 120-300FPS (It could go down in certain situations)
Counter-strike GO (1280×720) medium – 100-200FPS (It could go down in certain situations)
Counter-strike GO (1280×720) high – 80-200FPS (It could go down in certain situations)
The performance in games should be on par with the video card 1050ti. You can check the performance in games in the following link
https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-970M.126694.0.html
Is it Nvidia Geforce 960 or Nvidia Geforce 970m 3GB?
Actually, it is both. The performance of these two are close; however, 970m is more efficient. This computer has a rebranded version of mobile version of 970, Nvidia Geforce 970m with 3GB GDDR5 memory.
Internal Hardware
