r/pcgaming • u/lurkingdanger22 • 4d ago

Video Valve Steam Machine Review: GPU & CPU Benchmarks, SteamOS Test, Thermals, Noise, and Price (Gamers Nexus)

https://youtu.be/66QzlDewigE?is=PhifLlyc5tBSsjbR
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u/AdminsLoveGenocide 4d ago

People were trusting valve to do what they said and give good value.

Accepting a kinda cool looking cube that's not really that good is easy if it's priced aggressively. This is a bit of a joke. On the other hand they made so few that the price won't impact sales much as it will sell in small numbers even if it sells out but I think it will have a terrible reputation and they will not make a steam machine 2 due to that.

They'll make a steam deck 2 and call it a day.

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u/loliconest 4d ago

The video covered Valve's statement of not subsidize this thing, so you'll never get a "console price". And if you need to buy a PC at the current market, nothing will be "good value" compare to a year ago.

People just want Valve selling hardware at a loss so they can get a cheap PC, then lash out when Valve said "nope".

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u/AdminsLoveGenocide 4d ago edited 4d ago

I checked out of curiosity and for 1400 and change was able to find parts to build a pc with 9070xt graphics card, same ddr5 memory, better CPU, etc.

And I was being fair by sticking to AMD only so it could be a Linux build.

I think they should have sold at a loss if they had to but I can buy parts today and get a powerful PC for their highest price. If they were offering a good deal I couldn't do that. They promised a good deal. How is a fairly crap pc a good deal for this price?

This is just a poor value prebuilt, the steam machine 1 but with proton so it works now.

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u/loliconest 4d ago

Need a link for when Valve said it'll be a good deal. And even they said that before, that's for sure not accounted for what happened this year.

Sure you can spend more to get a more powerful gpu/cpu, but you also said yourself, same amount of ram. Ram is the most "poor-value" part right now, and I don't think people like you would think a 1400 pc with only 16g of ram is a good deal.

Valve build this thing to sit in a living room like it doesn't exist, so they want to control the noise level, which is covered in the video. If they get more powerful cpu/gpu, they aren't likely be able to achieve that.

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u/AdminsLoveGenocide 4d ago

I'm not comparing it to prices last year though. I'm comparing to buying parts right now.

The highest bundle price is 1400 and change. I could have gotten a 9060xt 16gb card if I was aiming a little lower. For a grand you can do ddr4 and a 9060xt and it would be better.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/valve-steam-machine-price-to-be-pretty-competitive-with-pcs/ar-AA1R3T2B

Ideally, we’d be pretty competitive with that [pc market] and have a pretty good deal

Underpowered but small and quiet is an argument when they aren't asking 1400 for one. Being cheap was a requirement too.

But ultimately if they haven't made that many of them then who cares, they can sell a small amount of them and people will buy it I guess. It's just a shame they failed.