Valve’s upcoming Steam Machine is an adorable mini gaming PC with reasonable specs. Alongside being a capable machine—albeit with the same minor fallbacks as the Steam Deck—the device supports replaceable faceplates that users will be able to buy and attach.
While not being officially released by Valve, one of the most exciting screens shown for the PC was an e-ink display that showed the console’s CPU and GPU temperatures as well as fan speed on the front of the device. Ever since the device’s reveal, fans have been begging Valve to make an official version… and they won’t.
However, peripheral company Jsaux has announced that they will take up the mantle and create front panel screens for the upcoming Valve Steam Machine. Known for creating docking stations, carrying cases and more, the company is working on three display options for Valve’s new mini gaming PC.
In a post on Twitter, the company proposed three options for their Steam Machine displays. An E-Ink display that is extremely low power and looks awesome, albeit with a slow refresh rate; a LCD screen which will be bright and colourful but use more power; and a Dot-Matrix display that will offer a sleek retro look.
For my money, a backlit E-Ink display would look effortlessly cool on the new Valve machine, as we’ve already seen in the device’s official reveal. Although, it would be nice if Valve actually opted to make its own accessories after showing just how cool they can look.
Unfortunately, Jsaux isn’t releasing all three of its proposed displays, just the one that gets the most traction on social media. (If the LCD display wins, I will be pretty upset.) Nevertheless, the buzz for the E-Ink Steam Machine display is clearly high enough for peripheral companies to take notice, and if Jsaux doesn’t someone else will.
It’s also just nice for a console, or a console-like machine, to actually support some form of unique accessories. Sure, I don’t know a single person who ever replaced their Xbox 360 faceplate, but it was cool that you could!
