The GabeCube [24 hours review]

[u/gr3n0lph]

My GabeCube Journey – 24 Hour Review

Hello guys! So I decided I will document my Steam Machine… *cough cough*… **GabeCube** journey. This is my 24 hour post, but I will make this a series and post again after 1 week, 1 month and 1 year. Will need calendar reminders because I know I will forget.

I have been playing games for over 30 years now, so I have seen some shit. I'm a gaming enthusiast, which means I love everything gaming, from unique hardware to retro machines. I play big AAA games and weird, lesser-known indie games. Basically gaming is my main hobby and I love it.

Let’s start with The Wait

Now back to the story. Sometime in June I clicked a link to reserve the GabeCube. I know the price seemed ridiculous at first, but with time I could really understand why it was 1035 Euro. I mean, if we think about it… RAMpocalypse happened and everything got more expensive.

Plus I'm 36, I have a great job and I didn't even need to save up to buy this. Sounds like I'm being a privileged kid, but in truth I come from a very poor household and got to where I am by hard work. Anyways, I digress. So yes, I click reserve and then wait for my email from Gabe to tell me the good news……

**3 months later…..**

*Congratulations citizen! You have been chosen!*

Oh my gosh. Well that took… some time. I almost forgot about my order… lie, I checked my email every day. And I'm still sad my GabeGlasses won't be delivered till like 2077 (Cyberpunk pun).

So I click pay, they take my money…. and I wait for my 512GB GabeCube. And to my great surprise GLS delivered it within 3 days… compared to the 1 week I had to wait for my GabePad.

Delivery day

So I'm at work and my wife writes me that a box got delivered, it's huge and it's in the living room. She asks me: "Is that your cube thingy?" I say: "Yes dear, Lord Gaben has chosen me."

So I keep working, checking my watch every 10 minutes and cursing Chronos for his mockery of my urgency to get home. Then it's 17:30 and I'm rushing home on a train. In my excitement I miss my stop (was watching the Apple HomePod announcement – what a piece of junk) and basically add about 40 minutes to my journey home. It's always when you're rushing to get home that you never get there on time, right?

Unboxing & setup

So I get home and there she is. No, not the wife(whom I love more than life), the cube, brothers. I'm talking about the perfect cardboard box that contained my GabeCube.

I prop my phone up and live stream with my brother to show him the unboxing of this gorgeous device. He built his PC last year and still couldn't believe I splurged on a GabeCube.

Power goes in, HDMI goes in, the wire from the puck goes in, and that's it (Ethernet will be added later this week once I get a splitter). I power it on and it is ALIVE!

Mind you, I have a Steam Deck, so I'm no stranger to how easy Valve made it for us to set up this box. It was a matter of:

- Picking my language
- Setting up WiFi
- Waiting for a quick update + restart
- Signing in

Paused the call with my brother, used the GabeGuard to sign in and boom. The familiar interface of GabeOS (same as SteamOS).

Performance

So I install Sonic Racing CrossWorlds, ETS2… and Hades 2. Didn't have to wait long since my connection is pretty good.

Sonic Racing CrossWorlds: To my surprise the machine was set to 1080p as max game resolution. So yes, I got perfect performance on High with 60 FPS. Then I exit the game, change the max game resolution to 4K and launch it again. Visually way sharper, but the frame rate is now 35–45 FPS. Not perfect but playable.

Hades2 Perfect 60 FPS at 4K. To be honest I didn't expect anything less here.

ETS2: I preferred it at 1080p on max rather than 4K with various visual compromises.

In all my 4 hours of testing I did not notice any noise coming from the machine. Whisper quiet.

Btw, wake from sleep with the GabePad also works really well.

Final thoughts (for now)

All in all it was a nice first experience. I would say that out of the box, the box does what it should: play games without asking you to fiddle with settings. But as the PC gamer that I am, I had to change a few things here and there.

To be honest I think I will barely play any demanding AAA games on this, since I have a GeForce Now subscription and that works like a charm in my area. For me the GabeCube will mostly be for Sega games (Yakuza and Persona) and all my indies.

So let me know how your experience was and what you liked or hated once you unpacked your box. Also, if you have any questions or want me to test anything, let me know!

[u/the_brytt]

Many of us find the sweet spot to be 1440p - similar performance to the 1080p, similar visuals to the 4K when you’re a couple meters back from the screen. Give it a go, as it looks like you’ve only tried those 2 extremes so far.

And agreed, it’s a delightful piece of kit!

[u/Keishiebaby → u/the_brytt]

Since I put my settings to 1440p I can play all the games I love. Squashing hordes of xeonos on Space Marine 2 is a real way to stress test it! Looks beautiful for the emperor!

[u/RealityIsRipping → u/the_brytt]

1080p makes sense on a 4k screen because it’s just turning 4 pixels into 1.

I feel like 1440p would look odd on a 4k screen

This is coming from someone who has never owned a 4k screen, just thinking about it.

[u/the_brytt → u/RealityIsRipping]

Yeah the theory’s solid but in reality modern 4K screens are very good at interpolating. At 1440p it’s literally double the pixels (3.7M) vs 1080p, although still essentially half that of 4K (8.1M). The gain from twice many pixels in the render is far larger than any small loss from interpolation algorithms. It’s a great sweet spot.