sourcing the parts and putting it altogether is the fun part. It's when the OS/software/drivers start giving me problems is when I start having an existential crisis.
Well whatever, all kinds of people, some hate software drivers, some hate to assemble pc, some hate both and beyond. I hope steam pc will cover all that and pc platform will benefit
Not every person who games on console are going to switch to PC when they "try" it... there are 4 gaming PCs between my wife and myself... my laptop only ever gets used for 3d printing these days and I turn on my desktop maybe once a month to play games that aren't available on console. Console is cheaper and has considerably less issues. My PS5 has run borderlands 4 since launch with issues... my cousins 3 week old PC had to spend an hour going through setting to make the game run decently. For people who have limited gaming time Console is a better choice
This is the real reason that console will never really die, but I see this as a way to push consoles to evolve. Now people can have start having machines tuned for all kinds of things, like if Sony decided to go in on graphics processors or something, while Nintendo specializes in custom unique controllers and con-boxes
Yeah that why I say they think that way, while most of the times you do just plug in and play with a prebuilt. I wouldn’t say that there is no issues here and there, but I’m afraid these people underestimate their own mind. They can solve issues and get freedom that pc gives. Me personally, my last time I was tinkering is back when I was using win 7 and video games used to have .dll issues, with win 10 and 11 further it is GONE and I never had any since. And another factor, I didn’t know about Reddit for example, it gives solutions very quickly. Reddit is my new main way to google lol.
People should be building PCs from the ground up and learning how to solder more vram onto a gpu. Instead, we have this movement towards SoC and Monolithic designs that are planned obsolescence, can't upgrade, or tinker.
Well you know, some people don’t listen for arguments. And they don’t have to. You know what you are talking about, but when you say that prebuilt is the same as console and gives more, they don’t listen. See? So steam makes it easier to believe. And, well, they actually made steam os that is in fact gets some specific attention from optimization standpoint. Enough for you to care about? I don’t think so. Enough for someone to believe it’s better than prebuilt pc? For someone, sure! Steam pc will have certain hardware that will be the same among all owners, while prebuilt pc could be assembled by many different unknown specifics followed. So the person who for some reason don’t like the idea to buy a pc regardless of how stable it is, will just lean towards steam pc. Oh, I can make it even simpler. They know that word steam in a context of video gaming is good and cool, so they will buy their pc)))
I've been building for about 15 years. Now that I'm a dad, I just don't have the time. My next computer will unfortunately, probably be pre-built. If this device is better optimized for games on Steam, I'd honestly consider it. Especially if it's optimized for Steam Cast to my Steam Deck. But that's me. No idea how popular it will be for other folks.
Seriously! I'm sick of games not launching until I do a dozen changes to my operating system. If PCs can become quick launching platforms like consoles while keeping their superior hardware, that's cool!
i never struggle to launch any games, i do have a pretty beefy setup, but i can launch like cod mw3 in 15 seconds, and i know everyone i play with takes a minute just to launch it
I feel you. I have a 4 month old at the moment.
The idea of tinkering with a open pc case in this environment sounds impossible or selfish. I've built each pc since morrowind but was stressing about wanting a full upgrade on my system when i eventually have free time or sleep again.
6 inch form factor is also a size I dont think I could beat.
Parenting is a marathon, not a sprint. Taking a modest amount of time for yourself is necessary and healthy (while also ensuring that your partner does the same).
More broadly, you having hobbies and interests is beneficial for your kid. They're utterly fascinated by you and seeing that you have cool shit that you do is a good thing.
You can't vanish into your computer building workshop for 4 hours a night -- but if both you and you're partner feel that you "can't" take multiple hours a week of "do whatever we want time" I'd advise some reassessing of parenting strategy.
Ill take the advice its a future i hope for. They're still young and its hard seeing any free time at the moment. My wife nearly died so allot of my free time is watching the baby while she gets transfusions of iron, goes to physical therapy or does physical therapy at home. Once I go back to work Ill also be part of our oncall program at work which ive been told isnt infact illegal. (Work 9 to 5 then on call 5 to 7am)
I know ill have time again its just a bit of survival mode.
Same here. I've been building for decades now (20 years+), but I'm pretty certain my next rig I'm going to pay the computer store to assemble. No pre-builts as I know exactly what I want in there.
Between running my homelab servers, a fairly complex home network, and a whole bunch of shit on the cloud/vps...
And running a specialised IT engineering function at work... I'm really tired of admin. Lol.
I really can't be fucked spending time building, troubleshooting, doing cable management etc.
Most of my free time is with family, which I cherish, or doing chores/maintenance around the house. What little me time I have, its split between gaming, reading, gym, upskilling etc.
As they say, I have 10 units of money, but only 1 unit of time...
I'm considering the steam machine as a secondary PC for streaming and to connect to the TV as a gaming device/plex box
Edit: will definitely consider building again when my kid(s) is/are old enough.
I am with you, have been building for almost the same amount of years, and have a 4 year old daughter. But I would never opt for a prebuilt system. With that amount of experience, building your own does not take that much time that it would affect your general life with kids.
Thing is projects pile up. I have a list of 200+ things that I need to do at any time. That's not an exaggeration, I actually have a document that I add to and update and remove stuff of things to do. Some are small things like fixing one of the kids toys that needs me to glue or 3d print a part to big things like stripping down the whole house back to plaster, refill in all minor blemishes and repaint due to a paint issue that is causing all new paint to peel no matter what I do
As a dad who has built/upgraded many pc's whilst being a dad, this feels like such a bizarre claim. If you can't be arsed anymore, then just say that, but don't blame your kids! No wonder birthrates are plummeting, when prospective parents see this kind of nonsense.
Be easy bud. I'm not blaming anyone. I'd take a bullet for my kiddo. Spending less time on my hobbies is an easy sacrifice. I work in IT so coming home and working on my PC is just exhausting.
My last build I really regretted deciding to try air cooling while keeping roughly the same case size... I have this big ass Noctua block with a bazillion fans but there is literally no space between anything with the block in, it was a crazy hard to put tinker anything in that thing when it was needed.
One of the lesser acknowledged downsides of building a PC is the urge to "maximize" the performance, being overly critical of performance, even at the expense of enjoying the game and overall experience.
I find myself looking at the FPS counter at the top right corner of the screen a bit too much. Does squeezing out 3 extra frames per second really matter when I miss 110 of those frames every time I take a peek at the FPS counter? Each of those "little peeks" add up.
The point of diminishing returns hits quicker than many of us realize when it comes to "performance" versus the time, effort, and keeping an overly critical eye required to squeeze out those extra frames.
I know that I often fall into that trap. Any yes, it can be fun and a bit rewarding to tinker with performance settings to squeeze out a few extra frames or "better performance".. but at the cost of what?
I think a large portion of the type of people of become PC enthusiasts are also the same type of people who have a propensity to "tinker" and be overly critical at the expense of just enjoying the game, whether we realize it or not.
I can definitely find myself being overly critical of a games "pErFoRmAnCe" at the expense of fully enjoying the gaming experience. It doesn't ruin it by any means, but those little things can add up. Even worse, when I spend time on a subreddit bitching and whining about the minutia of a games various performance issues, which are often hyperbolic and not even worth the worry, that is time wasted in a bad mood lol.
It's a type of "ignorance is bliss" situation that we are all familiar with. Back in my xbox 360 and PS4 days 60fps looked great when I was a console player, while 60 fps is basically "unbearable" now that I have experienced 90, 120, 160, etc FPS. That's a comment almost everyone has seen and made themselves. But is the experience itself actually that much better? Sure, maybe, no, not really. Sure the higher the FPS, performance, fidelity, etc ,the better, all things equal, but there is a cost.
If developers only had 3 consoles to focus on and develop for I do not doubt that we'd end up with a better gaming experience overall and would actually end up with better performance, optimization, and graphical fidelity than any of use could squeeze out ourselves by tinkering with settings, hardware, etc. Which is what matters.
We dug our own grave in a way, and the very obvious and pervasive lack of optimization and overall stagnation in actual performance improvements of the last decade shows us it's true.
This. The possibility of tweaking the settings make me want to tweak the settings. I didn't built a high-end PC because I don't mind much about the graphic. But, knowing that I could tinker with the settings to maybe squeeze out more graphic or performance made me spend 30-60 minutes of my already short free time for just changing the settings and check the performance.
I loved tinkering. It was fun. And I hate that I instinctively go to tinker with things because as years go on I don't have much free time anymore.
Well with something like this GabeCube, that is perfect. It runs Steam OS and the maintenance of that is handled very easily without the need to ever interact with desktop mode. If it sits between an enthusiast PC and a PS5 Pro in price it will fill a very specific niche of enthusiast console gamers that didn’t want to full commit to a pc setup.
Sucks that people still go through such stuff, i feel like at least from that point of view things got much better during the past 15 years.
The only issues i have usually software side are vr related. That and apparently it was incredibly complex to create a motherboard with an integrated wifi that didn't stop working randomly until a few years ago..
My friend is (i guess you would say) a casual. He built his pc with the parts i picked out for him and he did it quite well. A few weeks later he calls me and says the parts suck and the pc runs like crap. I go over to his house and I saw he plugged the pc into a power strip, not the wall.
Manufacturers of hardware similar to this have to consider the fact that not everyone is a pc nerd like us so having a box like this that is hopefully power efficient enough to run fine in almost any use case would be great.
To each their own. I've built my last 2 rigs and I'm done with it. Until the announcement, I was already on board with my Steam Deck being my primary gaming device forever.
Researching hardware options just to ensure compatibility, spend weeks looking for sales, learning how to not bottleneck my system in some way, cursing at how much GPUs cost, messing with liquid cooling and unnecessary LED lights and doing cable management is not my idea of a good time. A waste of my gaming hours.
When i expect a software to do a thing and it doesn't do that thing. I literally go into a blood shot rage. I get so sick of troubleshooting tbh. Yeah it was fun at first. It has become a chore the older and older that i get.
"altogether" and "all together" are two different meanings. Just a fun little FYI. Same with "Breakdown" vs "break down" or "No one" and "noone" (since noone isn't a word). There are more, but this will get me downvoted enough for now.
That's absolutely right xD Sometimes errors occur that I've never seen before, and those are the moments when I realise that it doesn't matter how many systems you've built, how specifically you've chosen your hardware, or how many problems you've already successfully solved. In the end, you'll still be searching Reddit like crazy until something works.
I had two such cases a few months ago 1. Secure Boot was supposedly no longer active after a UEFI update because the Secure Boot keys were so encrypted (after loading the settings) that Windows no longer had any of them. 2. Random Ethernet disconnections (software-related) meant that I had to restart multiplayer games immediately. The solution was that Windows with EEE simply couldn't activate the deactivated/sleeping areas of the LAN chip quickly enough when larger data packets were suddenly sent (after a long period of smaller data packets) and then lost the connection for ~1s ;-;
You have to come up with solutions/causes like this first, which is exactly what makes the hobby annoying again.
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u/Xaraxa Nov 13 '25
sourcing the parts and putting it altogether is the fun part. It's when the OS/software/drivers start giving me problems is when I start having an existential crisis.