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I respect what Valve is doing here and I loved the Steam Deck but a prebuilt desktop PC with 16 GB system memory and 512 GB storage for $1,000+ is insulting. Th
by branon 3mo ago
I respect what Valve is doing here and I loved the Steam Deck but a prebuilt desktop PC with 16 GB system memory and 512 GB storage for $1,000+ is insulting. Those are specs that belong on a laptop or a lowend console offering like the Series S.
I think this product is going to be hamstrung by its attempts to present as a midpoint between a PC and a console. The way this is being achieved seems to be by selling a device with the specifications of a console but the price tag of a PC.
Valve already did the "this is a lowend device and that's okay" thing with the Steam Deck, and got away scot-free because nobody expected a handheld and people didn't have a ton of preconceived notions. The Deck was also a better value since it was (prior to the price hike) priced reasonably for its specifications.
The desktop PC and/or living room console modalities are both significantly more stratified. People have solidly defined expectations about price-to-performance-to-usability ratios in both of these sectors, and I worry this doesn't go far enough in any particular direction to meet the demands of either market.
Leaves me wondering who exactly this is for.
- ajs1998 3mo agoIt's been a while since I built a PC but that price seems very fair
- aeturnum 3mo agoThis device does sit between mac-mini-esq lower power devices and compact enthusiast builds and, like the Steam Deck, it's an attempt to build a new segment. That said, if you think paying $1000 for this kind of hardware is some kind of exception, I think you should go take a look at what you can get on the prebuilt gaming PC market. You get a little less because the Steam Machine has a small footprint, but if you're looking for a nice little machine you don't overpay by much.
- user43928 3mo agoNo it does not. The Late 2024 M4 Mac mini benchmarks x1.6 faster in ST and 2x in MT. The Mac mini costs $600.
- aeturnum 3mo agoThe mac mini is a wonder but it's not a great gaming machine[1]. You can see that these stats are about 1/2 of what the Steam Machine does, so I think the comparison is pretty apt. [1] https://www.xda-developers.com/mac-mini-m4-gaming-hands-on/ https://www.xda-developers.com/mac-mini-m4-gaming-hands-on/
- fragmede 3mo agowhat makes a great gaming machine? It plays Dwarf Fortress amazingly. And nethack. I'm running factorio on my Mac. The older Mac mini's run windows. Game of Thrones a ton of money at proton so anything that runs Linus and X86 has a shit ton of games yeah even if it doesn't have your pet game.
- aeturnum 3mo ago> what makes a great gaming machine? A piece of hardware that runs a basket of popular higher-end games at close to 60fps is generally what people look for. If you know you wanna run DF you can use much cheaper hardware, but if you wanna run "games" you wanna check that your target pc performs good enough on a selection of games.
- mywittyname 3mo agoWhat makes a gaming machine... Good - at parity with a PS5 Pro or XBSX in the latest AAA titles. Great - better than PS5 Pro or XBSX in the latest AAA titles.
- user43928 3mo agoYes, for gaming specifically, the Mac mini is often limited to 2D games. However, at the price of $1130 for Steam Machine + controller, you might as well buy the Mac mini and a PS5 on top for $1250. It just seems like a poor deal. The best argument I have heard is that people already have large Steam libraries, but then again, those people typically already own a gaming PC.
- 3mo ago
- WithinReason 3mo agoHere, try your hand at assembling one much cheaper at the same performance: https://pcpartpicker.com/ https://pcpartpicker.com/
- bgirard 3mo agoI don't recognized the CPU/GPU and PC building isn't my field so I could way off. But here's my honest attempt at it without paying a premium for the form factor which isn't an important feature for me: PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/3WkCdq https://pcpartpicker.com/list/3WkCdq Price: $1021
- Peaches4Rent 3mo agoYeah. That's great,but I think it gets a bit expensive if you try to go small form factor and silent. You need more premium parts for that. So if you want something small, it's a bit more expensive
- cubefox 3mo agoThe RTX 5060 will be significantly faster than the Steam Machine on games with hardware ray tracing effects, which tend to be the more demanding games.
- vel0city 3mo agoAt 51L in volume this thing is absolutely massive compared to the Steam Machine.
- InitialLastName 3mo agoI just did one [0], mostly with regards only to specs and price (rather than quality). It comes out to $150 more, roughly 4X the volume, and about 3 hours more of my time in effort, all to get something that won't be as well-supported by games. What am I missing? [0] https://pcpartpicker.com/list/KY3VW9 https://pcpartpicker.com/list/KY3VW9
- ThatPlayer 3mo ago
- elAhmo 3mo agoMy 15 year old Mac Mini has the same amount of RAM as this machine in 2026. I bought it used around 7-8 years ago for 200 EUR.
- deburo 3mo agoThe disk and memory prices are very high right now. Perhaps they could do a disk-less, memory-less variant.
- bitmasher9 3mo agoI was a bit confused by the term “disk” until I realized you’re talking about NVMe. A relic from “Hard Disk Drive”, which was about two persistent storage technologies ago.
- dcchambers 3mo ago[dead]
- Peaches4Rent 3mo agoNope. Just built a pc this Jan. Ram and GPU prices are insane. This is what you get for the price. Maybe a 100-50 max difference. I've been looking at building a TV box for a while and this was the number it was hitting
- ZekeSulastin 3mo agoYou did look at the Steam Machine's specs/benchmarks, right? I'm fairly certain that the build you just made well exceeds what Valve put out.
- sib301 3mo agoIncorrect go spec something on new egg and you’ll get a very similar number.
- notnmeyer 3mo ago[dead]
- robotnikman 3mo agoI blame Sam Altman and all the other AI bros for this and everything else in consumer tech increasing in price
- itomato 3mo agoFor people who are already throwing money at Valve on a monthly subscription and might otherwise have bought something from Sony or Microsoft, or more likely, will also buy something from Sony or Microsoft. The consumerist mindset accepts this device.
- marc_g 3mo agoThere's no monthly sub for Steam.
- itomato 3mo agoAll games are free then?
- petu 3mo agoHow's that relevant? There's no Steam subscription of any kind to access your library. Whether you're spending $0 on average year, or $300 -- you get to access your Steam library the same.
- Tangurena2 3mo agoVery few games are free. Otherwise they range from $0.99 to $90-ish. Sometimes I get a bunch from Humble Bundle deals. Sometimes I buy something that looks interesting but never play it.
- zamalek 3mo agoPeople who are willing to spend $71 on not having to build it themselves. That's the premium according to GNs best-effort like-for-like build.
- cyberrock 3mo agoTo me it's not even the comparison with builds that's damning; it's the comparison with handhelds and other mini PCs. Most people excited by this probably have a Steam Deck or another handheld, so they have to be into playing a very specific slice of games that can run slightly better than the handheld. For example, Forza 6 on high 1080p is 60 for SM vs 40 for high end handhelds and 30 for SD. Even at the original price, is it really worth $750? Not to mention that many handhelds and mini PCs also have USB4 ports that one could attach a retired GPU to get 60fps+ @ very high 2k, but the Steam Machine has no such port and only one NVMe slot. So this is for people who are allergic to the existing solutions (plugging in your handheld, using Moonlight) or just like the brand, but I know it's going to still sell out. I just don't want to hear about extensibility, eco-friendliness, or cost effectiveness from a certain segment of gamers after this.
- TomK32 3mo agoWho knows, maybe once the AI bubble has burst they will surprise us with a replacement mainboard for this second gen. If they want to keep it in sale as long as the Steamdeck it would make sense to offer gamers a simple way to upgrade their existing machine when Steam's ecosystem is already open to all sides. Maybe they'll even outsource that mainboard upgrade to ASUS, MSI or others. Once we see a teardown we can make a better prediction.
- fxwin 3mo ago> Those are specs that belong on a laptop or a lowend console offering like the Series S. Unfortunately, valve (and we consumers) have to recalibrate our understanding of which prices qualify as "insulting".
- jeppester 3mo agoI don't disagree that this device is very likely too expensive to sell well. But! The price is not insulting. You can built a slightly faster PC for a little less, but that PC would be ~10 times larger, it would be louder, it would lack features like HDMI-CEC and good wifi/bluetooth. It really wouldn't compare for living room usage. In order to get anywhere near the size of the Steam Machine, you'd have to exceed its costs.
- remix2000 3mo agoIsn't CEC available for all in-tree GPU drivers using DP-to-HDMI passthrough? (although I do imagine Nvidia would still be preferred for a custom build, perhaps with a USB CEC injector)
- muyuu 3mo agoIf you look at how extremely overpriced console hardware typically gets away with being, this is not a bad deal if the system is durable, relatively quiet and there are good games well optimised for it. The deal is sweetened by the fact that you will be eventually be able to upgrade the RAM and storage easily and for cheap if/when prices eventually come down from the current AI insanity levels.
- ectospheno 3mo agoI have no interest in maintaining a gaming PC but want to play indie games that don’t launch on console. I also have money. I’ve been considering it.