Steam Machine Mods Add 9070 XT, Custom Water Cooling, and Built-In Recharge Puck
Reviews for Valve’s sold-out Steam Machine might be a mixed bag, but some buyers enjoy it enough to mod it into something bigger and better. A handful of the resulting PCs are downright cool: One modder, for instance, got it working with a 9070 XT eGPU, and another fashioned a water-cooling block to make it almost silent.
VideoCardz reported on the 9070 XT integration, showing how the modder (u/Large_Customer_3840 on Reddit) leveraged an internal M.2 slot on the Steam Machine’s motherboard to connect the external GPU via an M.2-to-OCuLink adapter, which in turn was connected to an external GPU dock. The dock then houses the 9070 XT, which is connected to its own power supply.
This is not a streamlined system, especially since the Steam Machine has only one M.2 slot. This meant the modder had to boot from a USB-C-connected external SSD just to get the system running. But when it was, it worked flawlessly. There was no need for manual GPU configuration; the 9070 XT was immediately recognized by the mainboard and began working. Display output, no problem.
Gaming performance was massively improved, too, as you might expect. The 9070 XT is many orders of magnitude more capable than the APU in the Steam Machine, which delivers roughly RX 7600 mobile-like performance. This meant that an early gaming test of Crimson Desert easily hit 100 frames per second.
Elsewhere, modders built a custom waterblock for the mainboard, dropping the CPU and GPU temperatures by as much as 30 degrees when at full load.
They manufactured the waterblock themselves—no off-the-shelf part was going to work—using their own CNC machine. It has a copper base plate and an acrylic top, allowing you to see the coolant as it flows around the internal fins. They had to modify the enclosure a little too, cutting out holes for the tubing and sticking the radiator on the rear. There’s also an external pump which isn’t exactly the sleekest design in the world.
But it works! Temperatures down, gaming performance is up; it’s all gravy. Now they’re going to try cooling the VRMs next.
Another modder recently added a recharge puck to the front panel of their Steam Machine, making it easier to charge the controller. Now that’s a neat mod. No cutouts there.
