Steam Machine is too expensive, so I’m telling my friends to just buy one of these gaming PCs instead (and install SteamOS on them)

Doubling the RAM here for $3 less than the 16GB builds below. Yes this tower is bigger than the Micro ATX options you’re about to see, but for the extra headroom in AAA titles and multitasking that 32GB of DDR4 memory can give you, that is significant for 1440p gaming.

Don’t expect the world with this thing — it is a budget build after all. But this does have the bare essentials to do 1080p gaming (provided you play some AAA titles at a mix of medium to low settings with FSR). The Steam Machine will take a slight lead over this performance-wise, but at $380 cheaper, it’s actually got value for money.

Packed into a nice Micro ATX case for a smaller size, alongside that Arc B570 with 10GB of video memory (and XeSS 3 support for multi-frame generation), this machine hits a sweet spot for me. In testing, that GPU is at its strongest in 1080p raw performance, but the AI trickery means you can extract a little QHD action from it too.

Now here’s something I didn't expect — a PC with one of the latest Nvidia GPUs for less than $1,000! Same build as the Stormcraft above, but with a Team Green GPU that is going to give you stellar 1080p gaming, and unlock a lot of QHD gameplay too with DLSS 4.5 using AI trickery to do a lot of the heavy lifting.

If you want a similar RTX 5060 build but in a bigger case with better thermals for quiet fans, that’s where Thermaltake’s system comes in. That does mean if you wanted to dabble with some of the overclocking settings in the Nvidia app to push this into the 1440p region, you could without hearing the fans start working overtime!