Remember Steam machines? Well, they might be due for a comeback, thanks to Thunderobot’s latest announcement. The company has unveiled a Mini PC which packs some serious power while also featuring a familiar design. In fact, the design of this new PC resembles those early Steam machine releases from AlienWare.
The PC has a very small footprint, despite featuring an Intel Core Raptor Lake 13th generation and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060. The PC is even smaller than an Xbox Series S, by about 60%. Curiously, the overall design and shape of the Mini PC does is almost a carbon copy of AlienWare’s Steam machines. Even the logo seems to follow the iconic Alien head of the American company.
Just to be clear, the ThundeRobot Mix mini PC will not run SteamOS natively, so it is not a perfect substitute for a Steam machine. But, the OS can indeed be easily installed via a simple download. So, turning a simple mini PC into a quite capable Steam machine can be quite easy, along with running emulators much like you would on a Steam deck.
So, despite not being a top of the line computer, this might definitely be the perfect choice if one does not have a lot of space. Also, a solid choice if one would like to bring around a computer everywhere they go. The tentative release price seems to be around 6,000 yuan (£638), but it is not clear - at this point - if the machine will be available outside of China.
While the Chinese company might not be as well known as others, ThundeRobot has been working for several years. They have been really dedicated to PC gaming, producing monitors, hardware and peripherals.
Could this announcement be the start of a slow comeback of smaller mini PCs that can be used as a more powerful substitute of a Steam deck? We are definitely interested to see more examples of this curious species.