The desire to turbocharge a Steam Machine is a palpable one, and one modder has managed to give Valve’s system a serious performance uplift via an external graphics card. However, before you rush to do the same to your device, you should know that their process to achieving much higher frame rates isn’t a straightforward installation.
Redditor Large_Customer_3840 shared the results and methodology of their experiment across several Steam Machine subreddits, attaching a Radeon RX 9070 XT to the system via an NVMe-to-OcuLink adapter and Aoostar EG01 eGPU dock. While this sounds simple on paper, getting this setup in a working state comes with several other considerations that diminish the size of Valve’s device.
The Steam Machine only has a single NVMe Gen 4 x4 slot, meaning the boot drive has to make way for the OcuLink adapter. This means you have to house the system’s SSD in a USB enclosure, settling for 10Gb (1.25GB/s) speeds from your storage. That’s a far cry from the stock drive’s 7,000MB/s maximum, and will likely affect load times.
With the cable in place, there are still obstacles to accept and overcome. For instance, there’s no way for the cable to travel from the rear of the Steam Machine to an eGPU dock without keeping the rear panel off the device. It’s possible that someone could use the open-source CAD files to create a custom panel, but otherwise, you’ll be contending with an open back.
You’ll also need to introduce an external power supply into the mix, in order to power your external graphics card of choice, as there are none present in the Steam Machine. However, there is a small silver lining here – as you’re only sating the appetite of a GPU, you don’t need as large a capacity as you would for a full system.
Finally, you’ll need two display cables to complete the setup. Running one straight from the graphics card can lead to black screens, according to Large_Customer_3840. It’s only when an HDMI or DisplayPort connection also runs from the Steam Machine itself to your display that output remains stable.
After all that faff, you can expect performance far above a stock Steam Machine. The Redditor reports that Crimson Desert runs at 100fps+ on High settings, but doesn’t specify a resolution. Regardless, the horsepower from an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT absolutely dwarfs the custom RDNA 3 GPU inside the system, even with such low PCIe bandwidth in play.
As much as I admire Large_Customer_3840’s curiosity and tenacity, this isn’t a mod I’ll be rushing to try out anytime soon. An Ian Malcolm quote springs to mind: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
Adding all this external hardware to the Steam Machine robs the device of its petite form factor, one of its core appeals, and I’d much rather house all these components in a larger DIY chassis. Taking a simpler route, were I in need of more horsepower on Valve’s device, I’d explore the likes of Nvidia GeForce Now instead.
For more Steam Machine chatter, check out this Steam Controller faceplate mod for the system.
