Assembling your own Steam Machine with similar parts will cost around 800
Even if you assembled it yourself you would be missing features, such as cec, wake by controller, sleep mid game, etc. LTT will try to build one, it will be interesting to see what they come up with, but I’m 90% it won’t have feature parity.
There’s lots of engineering gone into this machine, they’re way more compact, less power hungry and more quiet than anything you can build yourself.
Buying the same build as a prebuilt brings a premium and costs around 1000
Valve purchases stuff in scale so they can diminish their margin and could potentially sell it cheaper than prebuilts, and possibly cheaper than building it yourself.
Consoles are sold at a loss, and they recover it with games because the platform is closed.
The Steam Machine is not closed, they can’t be sure they’re getting game purchases, because people might be buying this to be their work computer. So they have to price it as a PC, with margin on hardware, not promise of future returns.
Price might fluctuate between now and announcement, RAM prices are going crazy nowadays.
With all of that being said, it seems to me it’s very likely it will be around 800 but less than 1000. For people saying you can build one for that price yourself, sure, go ahead, you’ll have a huge, power hungry loud box, without the same features and you would have saved only a small fraction of the value by having to assemble everything yourself.
They could totally make money selling it at a loss. The reason so many people care is that there’s an opening in the console market for an affordable option
No, they couldn’t, have you read about the PS3? They were a lot cheaper than building a similar system so several companies bought thousands to build clusters, I personally worked at a relatively small university that had a cluster made of dozens of PS3s, since each Playstation costed Sony around $200 my university on its own costed thousands to Sony, and I imagine every other university and some private companies did the same.
Only after they closed their system, which they did because they were losing money to every single enterprise in the world who wanted a cluster and PS3 were the cheapest option.
Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais claimed that the Steam Machine price had not been nailed down internally, but that Valve’s aim was to offer a “good deal” in line with equivalently powered PCs.
“I think that if you build a PC from parts and get to basically the same level of performance, that’s the general price window that we aim to be at,” he said.
They’re going to be price competitive with building from parts, apparently.
The answer I’m replying to suggested you can get a prebuilt with a 9600 for 1000, since they’re replying to my point that a prebuilt with similar spec is 1000.
Oh, weird. I just read the whole chain going up and I don’t see any indication the figures were for prebuilt systems. Maybe someone edited their post or something isn’t federating?
Regardless, Valve is apparently going to be competitive just in hardware costs, which makes sense—they can’t expect to extract extra value from software sales, but they should still be able to have an acceptable profit margin with their scale and lack of layers in their distribution model.
Knowing what parts to buy, I don’t think most average people can cite every piece in a desktop
Selecting parts that are compatible, try plug-and-play an AMD CPU on an Intel MOBO.
Selecting parts that fit the chassis you selected, unless you went with a full ATX that’s a concern.
Now that you bought the components:
Knowing to ground yourself before doing anything, currently I’m getting static shocks daily where I live, if I didn’t know about this I could very easily fry a RAM by picking it up wrong.
Cable management is not easy, most cheaper chassis don’t have enough or dedicated space for it.
Correct amount of thermal paste is something lots of people get wrong.
Some pieces require strength to lock in place, others break if you even look at them sideways.
Now that you’ve assembled everything:
Installing OS
Installing drivers
Installing Steam
Depending on your OS and controller of choice pairing controller and getting it to work could be difficult
I’m not saying that assembling a computer is hard, but is definitely far from plug-and-play, and not something I would recommend for someone without technical knowledge who just wants something to play games.
That’s the wording a lot of other people would use, I’d say. I wouldn’t be able to put together a PC, and most people I know are like that. I have maybe two cousins that can. But we’d probably all agree that plug-and-play means that you buy something and it works just like that. For example, a refrigerator is likely plug and play, because you don’t expect to have to put together the components to make it work. You just plug it in and it works.
Also people who like to DIY seem to forget that a lot of people want a turn-key solution, I even dare to say that most people prefer a ready made solution. Even a lot of people who work in tech when they get home want a just work solution.
Yup, I love DIY, had tons of fun building my wife’s mini-itx gaming rig, my NAS and even my desktop (although it was the boring one of the three since it’s just standard). I love poking on my system, trying out stuff, etc. But I bought a Deck and my only mod was getting EmuDeck in it, it just works for what I want it to, and that’s worth a lot to me, it allows me to pour my time on stuff I want to be building and just game on my gaming boxes.
And a lot of the prebuilts have a ton of cut corners. A well put-together machine that people can trust to play their games at a base performance could be great for those who don’t want or can’t DIY.
Eh, I dont want steam machine becoming a standardized PC.
having CPU and GPU baked into the board and unchangable will just increase e-waste cause it will age out much faster than a PC which you could, 3-4 years down the line, max out the CPU in, throw more ram into, or upgrade teh GPU, to keep it relevant for another 4+ years
It serves its niche purpose, but it should not become standard.
I work in tech. I also have terrible dexterity. While I love my gaming PC, I dread upgrades or things going wrong. I hate applying thermal paste, replacing a motherboard, etc. I’d gladly pay “prebuilt” prices for something from a company I can “trust” (as far as corporations can be trusted).
A thousand dollars seems fantastically reasonable for a well-engineered home-gaming machine that can play current gen PC games at high quality. I spend that much every several years on upgrading or building a new PC.
My complaint is not the price, I think the price is fair. Let’s talk wages.
Consoles are sold at a loss, and they recover it with games because the platform is closed.
Sometimes, but evidently not currently. Sources seem to indicate that only Microsoft seems to say they are selling at a loss, though it seems odd since their bill of materials looks like it should be pretty comparable to PS5…
I’ll agree with the guess of around $800, but like you say, the supply pressure on RAM and storage as well as the tariff situation all over the place, hard to say.
Yeah, but to be fair that was a shitty thing the system did, anyone with experience would know not to do it, but honestly it should have never happened. On the other hand, Linus is a bit daft and lots of stuff blows over his head monumentally, in the same video where he said he would be building a Steam Machine he also couldn’t seem to grasp that this is just a computer and people would see it as a prevuilt. In short I don’t think he will acknowledge lots of the killer features in the Steam Machine just so he can claim his thing does the same. But at least it will be an interesting watch.
It was known beforehand and was fixed already by the time he released his video, he just happened to luck out and encounter it during the short spam it existed.
I disagree that he approached it as a complete idiot, he approached it as someone who knows what they’re doing, when he definitely doesn’t, and that was the issue. Anyone without technical know-how would have panicked at the system asking him to type “I know what I’m doing”, and anyone with enough technical know-how would have paused at that and read the message carefully and moped the fuck out. He had enough knowledge to think he knew what he was doing, but not enough to actually do, and the boldness to think he knew better.
That being said, I agree that there’s plenty of other stuff to bash him for, and that was not a great example, lots of people would have found themselves in that same situation, and I don’t think it’s unfair to say the fuck up there was not entirely on his part.
* Even if you assembled it yourself you would be missing features, such as cec, wake by controller, sleep mid game, etc.
I’ve been actively mass downvoted on Reddit for being excited for these features. People are really fucking stupid sometimes.
I have a significantly more powerful PC (in a tower case) currently hooked up to my tv surviving the same purpose and I will likely be getting the Steam Machine entirely for these features.
“But just use a dongle” they say. And I do. It works about half the time and I have to do this weird dance involving pulling up Kodi
With all of that being said, it seems to me it’s very likely it will be around 800 but less than 1000
maybe more with the way ram prices are skyrocketing… because even though it comes out next year, they are probably being manufactured and stockpiled right now.
Yup, like I said, it depends on how prices will fluctuate, my guess is what the price would be if it was being sold now, if RAM increases they would have to compensate for it.
Facts people forget:
With all of that being said, it seems to me it’s very likely it will be around 800 but less than 1000. For people saying you can build one for that price yourself, sure, go ahead, you’ll have a huge, power hungry loud box, without the same features and you would have saved only a small fraction of the value by having to assemble everything yourself.
They could totally make money selling it at a loss. The reason so many people care is that there’s an opening in the console market for an affordable option
No, they couldn’t, have you read about the PS3? They were a lot cheaper than building a similar system so several companies bought thousands to build clusters, I personally worked at a relatively small university that had a cluster made of dozens of PS3s, since each Playstation costed Sony around $200 my university on its own costed thousands to Sony, and I imagine every other university and some private companies did the same.
You mean the same PS3 that still was profitable?
Only after they closed their system, which they did because they were losing money to every single enterprise in the world who wanted a cluster and PS3 were the cheapest option.
For 1k you can get a 9600 9060XT 16gb system, which is waaaaaay more powerful, so this is quite an exaggeration.
A prebuilt plug-and-play device? Can you share a link to that?
They’re going to be price competitive with building from parts, apparently.
The answer I’m replying to suggested you can get a prebuilt with a 9600 for 1000, since they’re replying to my point that a prebuilt with similar spec is 1000.
Oh, weird. I just read the whole chain going up and I don’t see any indication the figures were for prebuilt systems. Maybe someone edited their post or something isn’t federating?
Regardless, Valve is apparently going to be competitive just in hardware costs, which makes sense—they can’t expect to extract extra value from software sales, but they should still be able to have an acceptable profit margin with their scale and lack of layers in their distribution model.
This is the thing I’m replying to, emphasis on the prebuilt.
But yeah, I don’t think the machine will cost the same as a prebuilt, but that’s the high end of the price range.
Considering that building a pc isn’t more than plugging in all the parts, I’d say “building your own PC” very much is plug-and-play.
Not saying everyone can do it but “prebuilt plug-and-play” isn’t the wording I’d use.
It’s a lot more than that, it’s:
Now that you bought the components:
Now that you’ve assembled everything:
I’m not saying that assembling a computer is hard, but is definitely far from plug-and-play, and not something I would recommend for someone without technical knowledge who just wants something to play games.
That’s the wording a lot of other people would use, I’d say. I wouldn’t be able to put together a PC, and most people I know are like that. I have maybe two cousins that can. But we’d probably all agree that plug-and-play means that you buy something and it works just like that. For example, a refrigerator is likely plug and play, because you don’t expect to have to put together the components to make it work. You just plug it in and it works.
Also people who like to DIY seem to forget that a lot of people want a turn-key solution, I even dare to say that most people prefer a ready made solution. Even a lot of people who work in tech when they get home want a just work solution.
Yup, I love DIY, had tons of fun building my wife’s mini-itx gaming rig, my NAS and even my desktop (although it was the boring one of the three since it’s just standard). I love poking on my system, trying out stuff, etc. But I bought a Deck and my only mod was getting EmuDeck in it, it just works for what I want it to, and that’s worth a lot to me, it allows me to pour my time on stuff I want to be building and just game on my gaming boxes.
And a lot of the prebuilts have a ton of cut corners. A well put-together machine that people can trust to play their games at a base performance could be great for those who don’t want or can’t DIY.
PCs suffer from massive hardware fragmentation. It’s about time someone made a standardized PC.
Eh, I dont want steam machine becoming a standardized PC.
having CPU and GPU baked into the board and unchangable will just increase e-waste cause it will age out much faster than a PC which you could, 3-4 years down the line, max out the CPU in, throw more ram into, or upgrade teh GPU, to keep it relevant for another 4+ years
It serves its niche purpose, but it should not become standard.
A good APU solution like in the consoles would be a nice option though. Especially now with RAM prices through the roof again.
Nail On The Head.
I work in tech. I also have terrible dexterity. While I love my gaming PC, I dread upgrades or things going wrong. I hate applying thermal paste, replacing a motherboard, etc. I’d gladly pay “prebuilt” prices for something from a company I can “trust” (as far as corporations can be trusted).
A thousand dollars seems fantastically reasonable for a well-engineered home-gaming machine that can play current gen PC games at high quality. I spend that much every several years on upgrading or building a new PC.
My complaint is not the price, I think the price is fair. Let’s talk wages.
Absolutely agreed, if every company had wages at the level Valve does it would be very good.
Sometimes, but evidently not currently. Sources seem to indicate that only Microsoft seems to say they are selling at a loss, though it seems odd since their bill of materials looks like it should be pretty comparable to PS5…
I’ll agree with the guess of around $800, but like you say, the supply pressure on RAM and storage as well as the tariff situation all over the place, hard to say.
Time for another video of Linus failing to follow basic instructions and going out of his way to break the OS because Linux gaming bad
Yeah, but to be fair that was a shitty thing the system did, anyone with experience would know not to do it, but honestly it should have never happened. On the other hand, Linus is a bit daft and lots of stuff blows over his head monumentally, in the same video where he said he would be building a Steam Machine he also couldn’t seem to grasp that this is just a computer and people would see it as a prevuilt. In short I don’t think he will acknowledge lots of the killer features in the Steam Machine just so he can claim his thing does the same. But at least it will be an interesting watch.
Yeah, I agree.
I detest Linus, but at least attack him for legitimate shit.
He was approaching linux as a basic idiot, like someone like me, and that is absolutely something a new average linux user would absolutely do.
iirc, that bug was known before hand, and no one bothered to fix it until famous man made video that got famous.
It was known beforehand and was fixed already by the time he released his video, he just happened to luck out and encounter it during the short spam it existed.
I disagree that he approached it as a complete idiot, he approached it as someone who knows what they’re doing, when he definitely doesn’t, and that was the issue. Anyone without technical know-how would have panicked at the system asking him to type “I know what I’m doing”, and anyone with enough technical know-how would have paused at that and read the message carefully and moped the fuck out. He had enough knowledge to think he knew what he was doing, but not enough to actually do, and the boldness to think he knew better.
That being said, I agree that there’s plenty of other stuff to bash him for, and that was not a great example, lots of people would have found themselves in that same situation, and I don’t think it’s unfair to say the fuck up there was not entirely on his part.
Otherwise known as a typical behaviour of majority of users
Good thing his team has a few linux nerds. So unlike that challenge where he was alone, here his team would work on it.
I hate LTT, but they did absolutely nothing wrong or anything a normal user wouldn’t do in that video.
I’ve been actively mass downvoted on Reddit for being excited for these features. People are really fucking stupid sometimes.
I have a significantly more powerful PC (in a tower case) currently hooked up to my tv surviving the same purpose and I will likely be getting the Steam Machine entirely for these features.
“But just use a dongle” they say. And I do. It works about half the time and I have to do this weird dance involving pulling up Kodi
I’d bet it was more about the phrasing and it probably commented in a way that downplayed concerns other people had.
You’d be wrong then.
“Why exactly would anyone want this?”
“CEC, that alone sold it for me”
points -30
Facts
maybe more with the way ram prices are skyrocketing… because even though it comes out next year, they are probably being manufactured and stockpiled right now.
Yup, like I said, it depends on how prices will fluctuate, my guess is what the price would be if it was being sold now, if RAM increases they would have to compensate for it.
Yep, and since it has both system ram AND dedicated gddr graphics ram… its gonna be double dipped in the price gouging by the memory manufacturers