AMD Motherboards - My Steam Machine from 2014

The SteamOS beta has had its ups and downs but overall I am very satisfied. I went with the Asrock board because it had solid reviews and the built in Wifi and mITX form factor was ideal.  The newer socket wasn't something I needed with the processor I chose but this gives me the option of upgrading it in the future if I need to, and I was able to hit my $800 budget for the build which was ideal.

I would be happy to answer any questions about my experience with SteamOS, the APU, or the ASrock Board.

Link to PC Parts Picker List: http://pcpartpicker.com/b/wYvKHx" rel="nofollow - http://pcpartpicker.com/b/wYvKHx getting ready top build

I ended up using the stock heat sink instead because of clearance issues but here is a picture of the tiny motherboard and how adorable it looks

Once everything was installed I took a picture of the case open with the GPU (GTX760) visible.  So much space in this suprisingly small cast.  The Asrock board fits perfectly.  I had some issues with the Cooler and had to replace it like I said with the stock cooler but that was the Coolers fault.

Overall my experience with Asrock has been good, drivers are solid, the board has been running for coming up on 2 years now with moderate use and no issues have popped up. Board design was solid, the cooler didn't work with the RAM but that is because of the cooler designer not ASrock. I am super happy with the build, SteamOS has been hit and miss, now that it is officially coming out I have hopes that it will resolve it's buggyness. Mostly surrounding controller input. It really sucks to get 4 friends over and then have to spend the first 20 minutes starting and restarting the game until all the xbox controllers register correctly. Though I guess ultimately it is no worse than blowing into a cartridge. Here it is up and running with SteamOS in my old living room.

Had to pull out the board to swap the cooler so I could fit the RAM in the correct slot.  but I got a nice glamour shot of what could have been.

The APU was a little unnessary with the discrete GPU in the build, I was new to AMD at the time and didn't realize they made a similar CPU SKU that would fit in an ITX form factor. But the little guy has held his own, running things like Shadow of Mordor like a champ. The linux selection of triple A titles is somewhat lacking so I pick up just about everyone that comes out. The feature I most wish SteamOS supported is the HDMI in, it is a Windows only feature and I am really curious how well it would work. I play on a projector so it only has 2 HDMI inputs. If I could pass my BlueRay player through my SteamMachine I would be a happy camper.

Lastly I wanted to talk about the GPU, I went with an ASUS GTX 760, which was a solid choice for both size and heat output. I think anything bigger and my fans would be spinning full bore to keep it cool. I have thought about swapping it out for a newer maxwell simply for the heat and power savings but I have too many problems with my main PC to be spending on this guy for now.