Have you looked at what sort of FPS it gets on the games you want to play? Overall it's performance is... Quite poor even on the lowest settings for lots of games
One of the better tech investments I’ve made is in a 20 metre Thunderbolt cable from Corning. It’s surprisingly useful- if you have a monitor that takes TB input then your computer can be stored in a small closet next to your router/switch, where you can’t hear it. Alternatively if you just need a quick 10Gb Ethernet link between two computers with USB4 or TB3/4 that it would be complicated to have next to each other, you can use it for that as well.
I really hope Corning eventually make a TB5 cable.
I have a 20m fibre optic cable, these things are great. Thinner than a standard cable. They are unidirectional, but mine has a dedicated copper line for CEC. 4k 120hz is no problem.
I also have a Pulse Eight CEC adapter in the chain, but I had to swap its included HDMI cable for full bandwidth.
Since I've switched to Linux I haven't had a chance to set up the software side for CEC though, does anyone happen to have recommendations?
I bought the same adapter and use it with Bazzite, which has a `toggle-cec-sleep` you can run that just set it up. Now when I press a button on my keyboard, the PC starts up and the TV turns on. It's magical.
Speaking of Steam and controllers - is anyone else annoyed by piss poor compatibility of PC games with Steam onscreen keyboard. I can count on one hand games with seamless integration, where it popups after moving to input field.
The manual Steam/XBox + "X" shortcut always shows the keyboard, but games like to ignore submitted value. My favorite example is Dark Souls character creation screen, it is the only place in the entire game you can and need to enter text, and it is faster to walk the 50ft and back, than to get it working.
Isn't that a consequence of it being a fairly open platform and no certification gatekeeper before a developer can release/update their game? The platform isn't specifically steam or where mouse/keyboard is unavailable or inconvenient, it's generally what they think most of their target market will be using which is likely a generic windows desktop. I don't think developers or valve themselves would want to set up certification and enforcement to say "you must have X in your game otherwise you can't release on steam", especially for the wide range of categories of criteria you could possibly think of, and someone out there will want a way to do text input on their steering wheel for a driving simulator. PC gaming casts such a wide net it's likely an impossible task.
That hasn't been my experience on SteamOS and Bazzite. Generally the keyboard pops and you can enter text, occasionally you do need to do it manually but even then text still works. On my GPD Win Mini I actually have the opposite problem. It brings up the on screen keyboard when I want to use the built in one.
Yet HDMI is more widespread and both cables and equipment tends to be cheaper, which is surprising considering a USB-C to HDMI dongle needs actual hardware, while its basically just passthrough for an USB-C to DP.
It's also quite nice that HDMI keeps basically all the logic and signaling the same as VGA (blank periods, EDID etc.), so actually making use of the signal is much easier.
Does anyone have a proper (and not overly expensive) solution for also moving input devices somewhere else? My main device is not in the same room as my TV.
I think the options are dependent on your setup. For example if you have a smart TV running Android, you could run https://www.virtualhere.com/usb_client_software on it to connect a dongle or controller attached to the TV through to your main device.
I do this with my Nvidia Shield and Xbox One Controller.
I did a USB extension and fiber optic DisplayPort to game on my old rooftop deck. It was very nice.
The first cable I bought was 150ft! Too long! Really hard to coil.
I've been on sunshine/moonlight mostly these days (updating to Apollo/artemis is in progress), but I do sometimes wire my desktop to my patio with this cable & wireless input devices these days. That spot is pretty sun exposed so it needs a real sweet spot, where-as the streaming just works anywhere & is easy, but sometimes it's nice enjoying the flawless low latency.
Can't people see any usecase for the steam machine?
I understand, you are not in the market for it.
I am, I have a good usecase which possibly will make the cost drop below a ps5 over the years (if you include games cost)