MetaPCs launches first SteamOS 3 prebuilt gaming PC with Ryzen 5 9600X, RX 7600 and 16GB of RAM

MetaPCs is launching a new prebuilt gaming PC with SteamOS installed, making it one of, if not the first, pre-built manufacturers to ship a product with the same operating system powering the Steam Deck and Steam Machine. Dubbed the "Steamroller", the SteamOS-powered pre-built starts at $1,299 and comes in a Micro-ATX form factor.

The Steamroller is geared towards Steam Machine buyers as an alternative solution featuring fully upgradable parts. The system features standard PC components including a Ryzen 5 9600X, RX 7600, 16GB of DDR5-5600 memory, B650M/B850M motherboard with onboard WiFi, 240mm AIO liquid cooler, 1TB NVMe SSD and 650W PSU. MetaPCs is also providing the system with an optional warranty costing $180 for two years or $240 for three years.

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Pricing of MetaPC's Steam Machine competitor is in the same price range as the Steam Machine (the 2TB variant costs $1,349 at the time of writing), but comes with noticeably faster hardware. The Ryzen 9600X in the Steamroller features six standard Zen 4 cores with a clock speed of up to 5.4 GHz and a 65W TDP. By contrast, the Steam Machine's Zen 4 CPU comes with a mixture of Zen 4 and Zen 4C cores, a turbo boost frequency of up to 4.8GHz and a 30W TDP. GPU performance is more similar between the two systems; regardless, the RX 7600 in the Steamroller is beefier than the Steam Deck's GPU with more compute units, higher clock speed, and much higher TDP. The RX 7600 features 32 CUs, a 2.65 GHz boost clock, and a 165W TDP. The custom GPU in the Steam Machine features 28 CUs, 2.45GHz sustained clock speed, and 110W TDP.

MetaPC's new pre-built machine is the culmination of years of development from Valve on the software side to get SteamOS 3 ready for the Steam Machine and desktop gaming PCs. Previously, if you wanted to install SteamOS 3 - the version of SteamOS that shipped with the Steam Deck - on anything other than the Deck, you would have to modify the OS to do so.

Valve's decision to make SteamOS free for other hardware manufacturers to use, such as MetaPC and their new Steamroller pre-built, will only make competition fiercer against the Steam Machine. As a reminder, the Steam Machine features custom AMD silicon for the CPU and GPU that cannot be upgraded; the only aspects of the machine that can be upgraded are the RAM and SSD.