How To Turn Your Old Windows, Mac, Or Linux Laptop Into A PC Gaming Powerhouse

I’m willing to bet you have a dilapidated HP, Gateway, or Dell laptop gathering dust in a closet somewhere. Or perhaps like me you have a MacBook Air that you tote around to conventions or use at home for work, writing, and browsing the web. Maybe an Ubuntu or Linux Mint box is more your speed. What if you could resurrect those aging notebooks and put them to use playing the newest PC games? Or inject your Mac and Linux machines with the ability to play all those Windows PC games they only dream of? You can do precisely that with a new feature from Valve’s Steam software and these instructions.

The majority of you are probably familiar with Steam, Valve’s popular digital distribution platform for PC games.

At its core, Steam’s in-home streaming feature allows you to stream every PC game in your Steam library (and some from other services like Origin) over your home network, to most lower-end machines running Windows, OS X, or even Linux — even if they aren’t remotely designed for gaming. This means you can enjoy Tomb Raider or Tropico 5 at maximum settings from the comfort of your couch. Or bed. Or kitchen!

Now Even A MacBook Air Can Play Your Entire PC Steam Library

The Ingredients

1: You Still Need A Decent Gaming PC

This is different than cloud gaming like OnLive or Nvidia Grid, which stream in games from the internet to your device. In this scenario, you still need a decent gaming PC doing the heavy lifting, but the results are going to be noticeably better. In my specific situation, I have a gaming rig which I built sitting in my home office, always on and loaded up with my entire Steam game library. With Steam in-home streaming activated, I can log into Steam on my MacBook Air or old Linux laptop, and start playing any of my games as if I’m sitting in front of my rig. Honestly, the “input lag” (the delay that exists between you pressing an action on your controller and it being represented in-game) is almost imperceptible. I even survived a round of Street Fighter X Tekken.

For best results graphically, I would recommend an Nvidia GTX 750 Ti orAMD Radeon 265 or better in your main PC. The only hard and fast requirement from Valve is that your main computer be running a quad-core CPU minimum (much like streaming gameplay to Twitch, streaming in-home games is fairly CPU intensive). Obviously the better the graphics card installed on your main rig, the better your visuals will be all around. If you need help building or buying such a system, reach out to me on Twitter and I can make recommendations based on your needs and budget.

2: A Good Home Network

You’ll need a reliable 5GHz router like the Linksys EA6500

For best results, you’ll want your main PC to have a wired connection from your router. If that’s somehow not possible in your environment, you’ll want to set up a 5GHz wireless connection because 5GHz is designed for HD and multimedia streaming. I recommend the Amped Wireless ACA1, which has a wide range, uses a USB 3.0 connection, and integrates the newer Wireless 802.11ac specification. Failing that, you should be good to go with any 5GHz wireless dongle. But stick to the hard-wired ethernet connection here for the best and most hassle-free setup.

Now for the client side of the network equation, the computer you’re streaming to. Newer notebooks like the MacBook Air accept 5GHz wireless connections which is ideal for streaming in clear visuals and low input lag. But you can absolutely do this with a standard 2.4GHz wireless connection, provided it uses the Wireless 802.11g specification. A good rule of thumb is that the more graphically intensive and “twitch-based” (requiring fast reactions like shooters and fighting titles) a game is, the stronger wireless connection you’ll need.

The core of your home network is of course your router, and I can make a solid recommendation based on my own experience: The Linksys EA6500. It’s been my go-to router for testing devices like Nvidia’s Shield, Steam’s in-home streaming, and just generally meeting the demands of someone who always has multiple tablets, PCs, and consoles on the network for testing.

Don’t want to go with that recommendation? No problem! Just ensure that, for optimum results, you have a Wireless 802.11n or 802.11ac router capable of broadcasting a 5GHz wireless signal. Even if your computers in the home don’t require it right now, most devices are now shipping with 5GHz wireless support, so consider it future-proofing your home network. (And again, that old 2.4GHz 802.11g router is probably ok, just downgrade your expectations of quality a bit.)

3: Your Xbox 360 Controller (Or Any PC Compatible GamePad)

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 controller, arguably one of the best controllers ever designed

It seems like anyone who plays games semi-regularly has an old wired Xbox 360 controller lying around. The awesome news here is that it’ll even work on your Mac, something I can personally vouch for. All you’ll need is this free 3rd party OS X driver. For Windows and Linux users, the Xbox 360 controller is plug-and-play, no hassle required.

If you have a wireless Xbox 360 controller, this official $20 Wireless Gaming Receiver should do the trick. And of course any PC compatible gamepad by a company like Logitech or others should work perfectly — I just prefer the comfort of the Xbox 360 controller for extended gaming sessions.