Zotac NEN SN970 Steam Machine Review

Nearly the entire package in one picture.

Valve’s conquest for real estate in your living room has been a lengthy work in progress. While they have learned a wealth from the help of their own community in this ambitious endeavor and conquered many hurdles along the way, it remains unclear how fruitful their efforts will ultimately pan out. This is no doubt a risky venture on Valve’s end. However, Zotac is a likely suspect in Steam Machine potential, as their experience in the “Mini PC” market long predates Valve’s SteamOS. With that in mind, is the combination of Valve’s software expertise and Zotac’s hardware brawn a slam dunk?

With a few caveats, my satisfaction is difficult to exaggerate. Impressively tricked out with a full Nvidia GTX 960 graphics card, an Intel Core i5 Skylake processor, and an easily upgradeable 8 GB of DDR3L RAM, playing games on this little-engine-that-could is a buttery-smooth experience, with most games achieving 60 frames-per-second at 1080P, if not a marginal sacrifice of a few notches of anti-aliasing or ambient occlusion. Games that don’t perform very well on the SN970, namely ARK: Survival Evolved and Dying Light (the culprit being poor OpenGL performance that may improve with patching), are the exception rather than the rule.

This Steam Machine clearly boasts more HDMI ports than you'll ever need.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the quantity of games available on Valve’s SteamOS. The custom, Debian Linux-based operating system lacks many AAA heavy-hitters such as Grand Theft Auto V, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (SteamOS version in development), and Fallout 4. Furthermore, early adopters of Steam Machines can expect this trend to continue for near-future releases. This may prove frustrating, and may compel some to use the SN970 as a compact Windows machine instead. Fortunately, Zotac thoughtfully bundles a memory stick with the Windows drivers in the box to eliminate the headache for those who wish to take this route.

That said, thanks to Valve’s weight in the gaming industry, there’s already a wealth of games available for SteamOS, both AAA and independently developed. These include, but aren’t limited to Saints Row IV, Sid Meier’s Civilization V, Shovel Knight, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, War Thunder, Towerfall: Ascension, Borderlands 2 & The Pre-Sequel, Screencheat, and nearly every single Valve title. Next year you can also expect XCOM 2, Rocket League, Payday 2, Street Fighter V, and many more. Unless you have your heart set on a particular Windows-only title, you will not get bored with SteamOS’ lucrative selection of games.

The aforementioned non-SteamOS games can also be streamed from any Windows/Mac/Linux PC logged into the same Steam account in your house. My experience in doing so with Grand Theft Auto V was acceptable on a wireless connection (specifically with the machine's optional included antenna) sans a few quick spasms in the stream, but relying on playing your games with this method still demands that you grab an Ethernet cable.

One thing that all Steam Machines have in common is the inclusion of Valve’s Steam Controller. Despite being panned by mainstream industry critics like IGN, it is a brilliant peripheral. The traditional layout of two joysticks is replaced with a single joystick, two touchpads with haptic feedback, dual-stage triggers a la the Nintendo GameCube pad, a familiar set of A, B, X, and Y buttons (that I’ll admit could be placed more comfortably than they are), a pair of rear grip paddles and a gyroscope for car racing, or those heated moments in first-person shooters in which deadly accuracy is the difference between you or your opponent’s virtual demise. Overall, the controller’s robust software customization suite attempts to invite a genre-agnostic experience to your living room. It won’t replace your mouse and keyboard, but I am confidently able to wield the Steam Controller as my new primary gamepad. Even if you’re a PC gamer that isn’t in the market for a Steam Machine, Valve’s new-fangled input gadget is still definitely worth the time it takes getting used to.

Before firing up my Steam Machine for the first time, I removed the two extruding thumbscrews from the rear of the device and plugged the Steam Controller’s wireless receiver into its intended, yet optional, internal USB port, and stuck another 8 GB RAM module inside the unoccupied slot (increasing the total to 16 GB). The machine’s first boot isn’t the lengthiest I’ve seen, but could benefit a lot from a solid-state drive (another aftermarket option). Also, the range that the controller dongle offers when plugged in internally is rather disappointing. I was often greeted with annoying on-screen messages regarding connection issues when trying to sit comfortably at a range that I thought was reasonable. This is where the self-explanatory USB range extender comes in. The range extender doesn’t fit inside the chassis, so you need to take up one of the four external USB ports in order to use it, which isn't a big loss. On the other hand, I’d still recommend giving the internal USB port a go, as its practicality will vary by user.

The SN970 can be upgraded in a number of ways without voiding the warranty.

Aside from gaming, you won't be doing much once you've given up wondering how so much computing power fits in the SN970’s small form factor to turn the power on and log in to SteamOS. If it feels familiar, it's probably because it is merely the desktop client’s Big Picture Mode with a few functionality tweaks, such as a modified display compositor. One gripe i have is that not quite every Steam feature has a “Big Picture” interface. Therefore, some familiar Steam URLs will seamlessly transition to its own Big Picture interface, and others will simply open a page in the built-in Chromium based web browser, which I sometimes find annoying. On top of that, if there is a way to click URLs in Steam chat for when my buddy sends me a humorous meme, I still haven't figured it out. There's also a desktop mode outside of SteamOS’ main interface, which is essentially a playground for Linux power users. From this bare Gnome 3 desktop environment, users can enjoy everything great about Linux, such as poking around the terminal, surfing the web with the Iceweasel browser, adding software repositories, and even adding attempting to add non-Steam/Wine/emulator games back to the SteamOS Big Picture interface (which can be tricky).

While I can't speak for the user experience that other Steam Machines bring, I can confidently say that the Zotac NEN SN970 is a highly entertaining and capable little device, even if the price is a pretty steep at $999. Early adopters that don't get too frustrated by its slight shortcomings have a lot to look forward to, including upcoming games and features with the OS itself and Valve's awesome controller.