r/Steam_Link • u/ahorsenamedjeff • Jul 31 '26
Support Tearing my hair out
I have an OG steam link plugged into my TV and have been playing games on it with some trouble here and there. I'm streaming off my Fedora PC over powerline. I've had some freezes pop up regularly in The Witcher 3 that don't occur when I'm playing directly on my PC - specifically in menus. Additionally, controlling the PC when something goes wrong almost always requires me to go to the desktop itself, like when a game loads up "behind" Steam Big Picture.
I tried running Sunshine/Moonlight, but the visual quality is horrendous, and the controller input is crazy scuffed. Am I doing something wrong?? Is there no good solution? I'm using a 2026 Steam Controller.
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u/Cifuentes8 Aug 01 '26
Steam link at this point is really outdated. I switched over to a used $200 M1 Mac Mini and installed Steam on it. I stream the game using the Steam program (not the Steam link app) and my game runs amazingly smooth. I would highly recommend to switch over.
I have 2gb fiber internet with both devices connected via ethernet yet the actual Steam Link box stuttered no matter what settings i used and did not compare to the native Steam streaming.
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u/ahorsenamedjeff Jul 31 '26
I actually don't get much stutter. The frame rate runs pretty consistently.
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u/hnry_ Aug 01 '26
As others mentioned the powerline might be the bottleneck. I changed back to wi-fi for this reason. But is it possible that your pc locks the screen due to inactivity? This caused massive stutter for me as well.
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u/ahorsenamedjeff Aug 01 '26
The throughput isn't the issue. The video feed is just fine on the native SteamLink software. Screen also does not lock.
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u/Ok_Adhesiveness_9323 Aug 02 '26
Get a decent acess point and use it as a wifi ethernet bridge that should fix all your problems woth sunshine and moonlight
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u/ahorsenamedjeff Aug 02 '26
Fixed the Witcher crashes by capping frames to 60 and running proton experimental. All is well with the default Link firmware now.
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u/Packetdancer Link hardware Jul 31 '26
First, if you use the Steam Link app on your phone or tablet and stream from your host, do you see the same stutter? If not, I suspect it's interference on the Powerlink connection.
But beyond that, getting the logs would probably be useful. On the Fedora box, you'll want
~/.steam/steam/logs/streaming_log.txt(which should continue a decent amount of info from the OG Link as well), and on the OG Link, you can plug in a USB drive and go to Settings->System and pick "Save Debug Logs" to copy the logfiles onto the USB.