Valve’s old ZOTAC Steam Machine tested nearly ten years later
ETA Prime tests ZOTAC Steam Machine from 2015 with Bazzite and new Steam Controller
ETA Prime has tested one of Valve’s original Steam Machines almost ten years after launch. The system is ZOTAC’s NEN Steam Machine, officially listed as the ZBOX-SN970-P. It was part of the first Steam Machine lineup and shipped with Valve’s original Steam Controller. Much like we expect the 2026 Steam Machine to ship, except with the new contoller.
The ZOTAC NEN was based on an Intel Core i5-6400T processor with 4 cores and 4 threads. The CPU has a 2.2 GHz base clock and boost clock up to 2.8 GHz. ZOTAC paired it with a GeForce GTX 960 GPU , 8GB of DDR3 memory with support for up to 16GB and a 1TB 2.5-inch SATA hard drive. The system also includes four HDMI 2.0 outputs with support for up to 4K at 60Hz, though NVIDIA Surround multi-display mode was not supported by the original SteamOS.
Source: ZOTAC
The biggest bottleneck would probably be the 3GB VRAM on the GPU, and system memory. However ETA Prime’s unit had been upgraded with 16GB of memory and a 250GB Samsung 860 EVO SATA SSD. The system also had the original Steam Controller wireless dongle installed internally through a USB adapter in the M.2 slot. The system supports M.2 SATA storage, but not newer NVMe drives.
Source: ZOTAC
The original SteamOS recovery image did not work correctly in his test. The current SteamOS branch was also not used, as Valve’s newer SteamOS setup is built around AMD hardware. ETA Prime installed Bazzite instead and used Steam Big Picture mode to recreate a console-style Steam interface. The new Steam Controller also worked through its wireless puck.
Source: ZOTAC
Performance was in line with the age of the hardware. Older and lighter games ran better, including Skyrim, Dirt 3, Hollow Knight: Silksong and Hades 2. More demanding titles exposed the limits of the Core i5-6400T and 3GB GTX 960. Red Dead Redemption required 900p low settings with dynamic resolution scaling, while The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 were limited by both CPU and GPU performance.
Source: ZOTAC
Current SteamOS development is focused on newer AMD-based hardware, including Valve’s current devices. The test still shows that an average gaming PC from 2015 can run some games in 2026. This is helped by long-term Linux support and Valve’s continued work on Proton.
| Specifications | |
|---|---|
| VideoCardz.com | ZOTAC NEN Steam Machine |
| CPU | Intel Core i5-6400T, 4 cores, 2.2 GHz base, up to 2.8 GHz |
| Memory | 8GB DDR3, up to 16GB |
| GPU | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 |
| Display outputs | 4× HDMI 2.0 |
| Display support | Up to 4K at 60Hz |
| Storage | 1TB 2.5-inch SATA hard drive |
| Expansion | 1× M.2 SATA SSD slot |
| Card reader | SD/SDHC/SDXC UHS-II |
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