Advice for building Steam Tower/Media Center

[DodgerH2O]

Looking for a budget box for the living room (hooked to TV), primarily for DVD/streaming purposes but would like to have the capability to run local multiplayer steam games, mostly low-spec retroclones and the like. Flexible on size but compact to medium preferred. Let's say up to $500 USD but if it could be dropped to $250 or so I'd be a very happy person, not sure if that's reasonable though. Don't need peripherals, either. I have controllers and mouse/keyboard available.

Also I'm comfortable assembling a box but have previously had larger cases so more space to work with, are there challenges to be aware of for compact system assembly?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[snowblizz]

Also I'm comfortable assembling a box but have previously had larger cases so more space to work with, are there challenges to be aware of for compact system assembly?

Probably heat circulation. In such a tight space you really need to make sure you clamp away everything so fans can move the air effectively. I would likely suggest something pre-fab as they can engineer it better that way.


There are some budget options. A new gen Raspberry Pi should be quite workable as a mediaplayer, though essentially Linux based am unsure on Steam. It's tiny, volume of 2 packs of cards on top of eachother, packs 4 USB, ethernet and has wifi. The whole kit is probably around $100-150 or something. The device itsle is around half that but case and a powersource will kost you a bit more unless you have a 3D printer and somethign suitable already. You can get some sort of Win10 on the Pi but not sure if it's gonna do much for you.

Another compact system I've seen is a PiPo, it's a mediacenter device with touchscreen, runs on Win10 and/or Android. It's feels abit sluggish to me (mostly the touchscreen) but we've run it as a hookup for teleconferencing and it worked fine. Not sure what ones costs though.


I've also tried a Win10 Asus computer stick (like an oversized large USB dongle) which seemed reasonable enough. It's meant to hook up into the tv's HDMI port and work as a medicentre.

There are other simialr things ofc, these are just devices I have held in my hands and tried out here at the office.

A friend of mine also used a Pi at home as a mediaplayer/set-top box. And played retrogames on it. There's a whole Raspberry OS dedicated to the idea.