Steamroller: First SteamOS prebuilt gaming PC now available for pre-order

MetaPCs is now accepting preorders for its latest gaming desktop, the Steamroller, priced at $1,299. While the use of desktop PC hardware draws some comparisons to Steam Machines, what sets it apart isn't the specs, since prebuilt PCs are nothing new. The highlight here is the operating system: the Steamroller comes with SteamOS pre-installed, making it one of the first modern prebuilt gaming PCs to come with Valve's gaming OS out of the box.

At the heart of the machine is an AMD Ryzen 5 9600X and Radeon RX 7600. The 9600X is a 6-core Zen 5 CPU that runs at 3.9 GHz to 5.4 GHz, while the GPU has 2,048 shader units and 8 GB GDDR6 VRAM with a 128-bit interface (18 Gbps, 288 GB/s). For comparison, the Steam Machine features a semi-custom 6-core Zen 4 CPU (up to 4.8 GHz) and a semi-custom AMD RDNA 3 GPU with 28 compute units and 8 GB of GDDR6 VRAM, providing performance roughly equivalent to a laptop Radeon RX 7600M. Hence, Steamroller is nominally stronger on both counts, which is hardly unsurprising in light of its intended role as a desktop PC.

Other specs include 16GB of DDR5-5600 RAM, a 1TB NVMe SSD, a B850M WiFi motherboard, a 240mm AIO cooler, and a 650W 80+ Gold power supply. These are all packed into a Jonsbo D32 black case, making it a standard desktop PC rather than a console-style system that is Valve's Steam Machine, which is smaller and intended more as a living-room PC together with the controller. Hence, a direct comparison between the two devices is somewhat unfair in light of the fact that they appeal to different audiences.

Shipping is expected to begin on July 3, with Steamroller only available to customers in the US and Canada. Lastly, MetaPCs offers a lifetime support warranty for all its products, which covers free labor and diagnostics. However, this does not include the actual replacement parts for a fixed period, which are covered under the optional "Extended Hardware Warranties" (two or three years for $180 or $240, respectively).