Early 2022 I sold my monster gaming desktop and moved exclusively over to a 14” M1 Pro based Macbook Pro. It’s been a great experience, and having the flexibility to work from a virtual desktop on it has been stellar.
Missing gaming a bit I grabbed an Xbox Series S a month or so after making the switchover. Armed with 15+ months of Gamepass Ultimate, I played through Halo Infinite, had a blast with the Master Chief collection, dabbled in Jedi: Fallen Order, Hitman 3, and The Witcher 3 once the next gen update dropped. And all in, it’s been fun! The Xbox Series S is a very capable machine for very little money, providing a fluid and beautiful gaming experience on our large living room TV. It does all this while staying relatively cool and quiet, and sipping very little power. Props to Microsoft for this generation of devices, I’m floored.
I do however have a giant catalog of PC games, and cloud gaming isn’t going exactly as I had wanted it to. Geforce Now, although affordable, does still require queueing during peak times for an instance even with a paid subscription. Stadia is dead, and they didn’t even bother updating the controllers to allow BLE connections, so there’s the giant issue of the eWaste created from that. (Though they do work wired, which I guess is a plus?) Xbox cloud gaming is reasonable from specific devices, but when going through a browser I was getting disruptive input lag, regardless of Edge or Chrome. I really do want cloud gaming to be the future, but it just feels like it’s stumbling.
Top that all off with just being really busy. 2022 was a whirlwind. Full relocation, wedding, in law visits, parties, dinners, an international vacation, other hobbies… You name it, I was probably doing stuff other than playing games. That’s fine though - If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that hobbies will always wait for you. Photography will be there when I want to practice. Gaming will be there when I want to play. Magic will be there when I want to sling some cards. Letting go of the thought that you need to practice your hobbies is very freeing.
I’ve been wondering though if having a more flexible option to play games would see me participating in that hobby a bit more. I’ve also been missing PC gaming a bit too - There’s some platform “exclusives” that release on PC alongside Playstation, such as Stray that I’d love to play, but without either a capable gaming PC or a Playstation there’s no cat game in my future. So I ended up ordering a 256GB Steam Deck as they’re now in general availability. It should be here Monday. I’m looking forward to new games like Stray, games I haven’t finished like Metal Gear Solid V, and emulating older games from my younger years like the Megaman Battle Network and Pokemon series of games. I don’t think there’s any guarantee I’ll really lean into this, but I figure if I don’t end up using it as much as I expect, I can likely flip it for a reasonable amount.
If I do find I’m having a lot of fun gaming on PC again, I’ve also been looking at how I can manage a gaming computer without going full depth into a multi-thousand dollar rig. I don’t think I’m looking for something that can push the full 5120x1440 for all titles at max settings and 60fps. I’ve gone down a bit of a rabbit hole with mini PCs as an option - Little boxes filled with laptop components with cooling capabilities that let them stretch for full performance vs their thinner laptop counterparts. I know for sure since this little box will be pretty exclusively used for playing games I can keep it relatively lean - Starting out with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD seems to be a great starting point, 16GB RAM is still the sweet spot for games and 512GB of storage means I can rotate through a few games at the same time without running out of space. I’ve got a couple models outlined that I think would be ideal starting points.
The three competitors - Only two can feature light up skulls.
Intel NUC 11 Enthusiast “Phantom Canyon”
Specs
Intel Core i7 1165g7
16GB DDR4 RAM
512GB SSD + 32GB Optane drive
Nvidia RTX 2060 Max-P 6GB
$1199 as configured above from Canada Computers at time of writing
Pros
Incredibly small - 1.3L chassis
Nvidia GPU for optimized drivers/performance
Shipping from Canada
Cons
Older hardware at this point, though still reasonably performant for size
Currently on sale, regular price $1799, unsure continued sale pricing
Intel NUC 12 Enthusiast “Serpent Canyon”
Specs
Intel Core i7-12700H
Intel ARC A770M 16GB
Various Pricing
Pros
Newest, possibly most performant option
Best DX12 performance of the bunch
Cons
Larger 2.5L case
Newer Intel based GPU emulates DX9 via a software translation layer, which tanks performance currently for older games
No notable Canadian suppliers
No real solid pricing info, but likely in the vicinity of $2000CAD barebones
Barebones only from what I can find
Minisforum Neptune HX90G
Specs
AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX
16GB DDR4 RAM
512GB SSD
AMD RX6600M 8GB
$909USD as configured from MinisForum as of writing
Pros
Likely the most balanced option between performance and stability
AMD based, so very likely to be a better box if SteamOS becomes viable
Apparently incredibly quiet under load
Cheapest option of the bunch at regular price
Cons
Unsure on quality of support expected
Intermittent availability issues
International shipping
Largest chassis size at 2.9L
Not as nice looking as the Intel NUCs
It’s really a tough choice across the range. I have a feeling if I do end up with anything it will be the MinisForum HX90G as a great middle ground safe pick. I guess my only other question at that point would be is the Xbox even necessary, or could I offload it and rely on Steamlink/Xbox Cloud Gaming on the Chromecast in the living room for games? Would this allow 60fps streaming for harder to manage titles on the Steam Deck? I suppose for the time being I’ll shelve this idea and see how I make out with the Steam Deck. Happy to get these thoughts out though, really helps me think through the whole process.