Before you buy the Steam Link, think about the following things:

- Do I really need the Steam Link?
Unless you're a Nigerian Prince, you probably don't want to give money to other people and instead spend it wisely. If your PC is already set up in the room you want your Steam Link to be, then it would be utter nonsense buying this device rather than just buying a long HDMI Cable to connect it to your TV

- Does my TV have a HDMI port?
The Steam Link can only output over HDMI, so check your TV if it has one or more HDMI ports!

- How far away is my PC and/or Steam Link to my Router?
I'll get to this a little later on when I talk about connecting the Link to your home Network

- Is my PC good enough to process AND stream at the same time?
Having a somewhat beefy PC is essential for the Steam Link to deliver the full 1080p/60FPS experience

- Where do I want my Steam Link to be?
As for the location of your Steam Link, you probably don't want to put it too far away from your TV, since the included HDMI cable is not too long

- Do I have enough sockets left?
This should be self-explaining. If you don't have enough sockets, then you need to get a powerboard

If you answered all those questions and you still want to buy a Steam Link, then go ahead.

The Steam Link comes in at ~50$/54€ at the moment. This does NOT include shipping, which varies from country to country. I am German and I ended up paying ~64€ in the end.
I strongly recommend buying it directly from steam, because then you'll get it brand new and fairly quick, and it is probably the cheapest you'll get. You can pay via everything you can pay games on Steam with, and the order gets treated like a game.
Shipping takes about 4-8 days depending on where you live, I ordered mine on Saturday, the order started getting processed on Monday and I got it on Wednesday. It got shipped with GSL[gls-group.eu] and they provided tracking your order via order number. There shouldn't be any problems.

After you've gone through the pain of waiting for what seems to be forever for your Steam Link, you'll be
greeted with something like this:

In it you'll find the following things:
1x Steam Link
1x Quick Start Guide not very helpful
1x Safety Information
1x HDMI cable
1x A/C cable
4x A/C adapter for different regions
1x Ethernet/LAN cable

So, you managed to unbox your Steam Link, huh? Pretty Good, you're one step closer to playing PC games on your TV.

What you first need to do is wiring up your Link. By that I mean connecting the Steam Link to a power source and to your TV by HDMI. After you plug in the power cord, your Link should automatically boot up. Once you've changed your input source (if it didn't switch already) you need to do some settings, but they are self explanatory.

Next, you'll get to the Network settings, and you got plenty of ways to do that.

This is probably the hardest part of this guide, since having a strong and stable network connection is key to use the Steam Link properly.

NOTE: YOUR INTERNET SPEED DOES NOT MATTER FOR STEAM LINK TO WORK! IT'S YOUR HOME NETWORK THAT HAS TO BE WORKING WELL!

You can differentiate between TWO general types of connection:
- wireless (WiFi)
- ethernet / wired (LAN)

Setting up the Steam Link via WiFi

The Good:
Steam Link supports Wifi Connection.

The Bad:
There is a reason the official Steam Link sale site claims that a wired connection is strongly recommended. It's because wireless doesn't usually work at all! This, of course, depends on the distance that your PC and your Steam Link have from your router, but in general, they are too far away.

The Ugly:
If your PC and your Link happen to be fairly close to the router, it probably still wouldn't work well. This is because your house sadly isn't an empty hall. Walls and household items DO interfere with your Wifi signal. On top of that, if you wanted to get the best out of Wifi, you'd have to disconnect your smartphone because that one draws a lot of signal, too.

What you can do:
Changing your "wavelength" from 2,4Ghz to a 5Ghz connection in your router settings. Normally, everything happens at 2,4Ghz and 5Ghz should be interference-clean from other electronics (though walls and microwaves still interfere)

Having a wired connection is indeed WAY superior to WiFi

I highly recommend using Steam Link over LAN Connection!
To do this, you need two Ethernet cables. I have a 15m-cable running from my PC to the router and a 10m cable from the router to the Link. It works perfect! There is little to no lag both in the stream and inputwise.

There is another wired way I didn't mention yet: Powerline.
You see, powerline does work, and it recognizes your running PC, but the quality of Powerline really depends on how your house is wired (someone once said "it depends on how drunk the builder of the house was") and on which Powerline adapter you use. I had a devolo 200Mbit/s adapter and it didn't work well. I heard that having a 500Mbit/s or 1200Mbit/s adapter would help, but this is expensive as hell and buying link cables is way cheaper. Also, most Powerline starter kits only give you two adapters, and you need three.

There is ostensibly the option to directly wire your Steam Link and your PC together, but I haven't tested it nor do I have proof that it works for all systems, but some users seem to have it connected sucessfully.

Now that you connected everything, you need to start the stream. For that you'll need to have your PC running steam so that your Steam Link recognizes it. Once you chose your PC in the list of available devices on your Steam Link, it outputs a 4-digit code that you need to enter in a window on your PC, which should already wait for you by the time you got to it.

And let me tell you: having your PC in the basement and your Steam Link in the living room is a good workout when you first use Steam Link.

Big picture mode should now automatically start. now you can start browsing steam on your Steam Link. If there are any problems with the stream, you can make several changes in quality, which I won't name now because that would be too much.

There is one thing that I had to struggle with: If you happen to have no sound in-game, you need to change your default sound device to your TV on your PC. After a restart of your Link it should world fine.

That's it, you did it! Great! Now have fun with your new Steam Link system!