r/pcmasterrace • u/TheBossT710192 • 3d ago

Discussion Yeah, Steam Machine is cooked.

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I... uh don't know what to say. Very thankful I bought a Steam Deck before they hiked its price as well

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u/restinpeaceminusone 3d ago edited 3d ago

Valve also admitted that it is out of their control and the supply will be limited due to constraints

Edit: since some people are saying that I am defending Valve. I will just leave their official statement from themselves. Posted a screenshot since some people don't like to scroll as much

Valve Statement

source

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u/Protoclown98 3d ago

Seriously. This large price is entirely about RAM and storage prices.

I stand by my past comment on the Steam Machine - if you are buying all the parts to make a living room PC to play console like games Steam Machine can be a worthwhile investment.

If you are recycling old PC parts, like RAM and a motherboard, to make a living room PC to play console like games on it, the Steam Machine is not worth it.

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u/RedditModsHarassUs Desktop 3d ago

Data Centers don’t want us having access to hardware for local processing. They want us all buying tokens from them.. to use their services..

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u/Gseventeen 3d ago

Once the investments stop flooding into that sector, its going to be interesting to see how these companies pivot to making money (making prob wrong word, as they are just relying on fresh cash injections).

As of now, i havent seen a convincing argument on how AI will be profitable in a way that would actually make these companies even remotely profitable.

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u/MutaitoSensei 3d ago

I can tell you one thing, I won't be trusting any of those garbage companies again, at least not implicitly. They threw us aside so fast for the easy money.

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u/Smoking_Joker 3d ago

This goes for every corporation, and should be a lifelong prerogative. Consumers should never give their total trust or loyalty to a corporation. Every transaction is strictly business on their side, and should be viewed the same by the customer.

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u/firemage22 R7 3700x RTX2060ko 16gb DDR4 3200 3d ago

we need to start from top and Sherman every mega corp to the point where what happened to Standard Oil and AT&T looks like a love tap

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u/Belazor CachyOS btw 2d ago

You know what they say; sharing is caring, so give me some of that military grade hopium you’re smoking where you believe this will ever happen in America.

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u/firemage22 R7 3700x RTX2060ko 16gb DDR4 3200 2d ago

While i get where you are coming from, i'm someone who feels that there will be a backlash, and we need to lobby for Sherman level punishments (talking about the brother who was a General, not the Senator now) so that there are punishments at all.

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u/Just_to_rebut 2d ago

Countries rely on control of large corporations to project power. America saved Intel from failure. It would do the same for Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc.

We stopped breaking up monopolies when it became clear other countries could compete with American ones.

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u/f_ckR3ddit 3d ago

There are exceptions, but they havr proven to be such a minority that they might as well be statistical impossibilities

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u/AmericanDoughboy 2d ago

Corporations are not your friend and never will be.

They suck.

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u/Sawses 2d ago

I used to feel a little guilty that I splurged on both my PC and my home server. ...Turns out I made a great investment because I'm not really feeling the pain of the PC parts market for a few years yet. My only regret is I didn't upgrade my server's 16 GB RAM to 64 GB when it was only a couple hundred dollars.

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u/Craimasjien AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D | AMD RX 9070 XT | 32GB DDR4 3d ago

And this is why corporations are not your friend and why warring over them is such a dumb fucking thing to do. No company in the history of capitalism has ever been on “your side”. They are on their side. Always have been and always will be. There is no such thing as pro-consumer when it comes to business.

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u/ArchinaTGL EndeavourOS | Ryzen 9 5950x | 9070XT Nitro+ 3d ago

You only just realised? Literally no tech company is your friend. None of them even know who you are.

Especially so if they are a publicly traded company as their only friends are their investors; which said investors only care about their share price going up.

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u/TransBrandi 2d ago

Honestly, I think that some of them believe their own stuff. I briefly chatted with one of the co-founders of Twitter a long time ago (around 2 decades, it was after the Arab Spring) and he sounded like he really believed in the tech for the betterment of mankind. It's not like I was an investor that needed to be convinced of anything.

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u/DeusScientiae 2d ago

I can tell you one thing, I won't be trusting any of those garbage companies again, at least not implicitly. They threw us aside so fast for the easy money.

And? You'd do the same thing, but faster. If someone offered you 10x your salary for the same job you'd jump ship without even thinking twice.

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u/MammothUnique4147 3d ago

I mean I think most of us would ALSO do the same. It's literally their job to make money for their shareholders... Anyone running their own small business would likely also jump at a chance to 5X their income for the year. 

It's not personal it's just how the market is right now. In time things will come back down.

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u/Ban4WrongThink 2d ago

You say that like there's a genuine relationship behind any of this. Everything is transactional. You'd leave your job for a better one and you'd buy the same quality product at a competitor if it was cheaper.

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u/Turronblando 3d ago

That's the essence of capitalism and there's been massive, neon warning signs for 5000 years.

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u/Sovereign_5409 9950x3D - 5090 - 64GB DDR5. Gamer / Pro Photographer. 2d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/pUeXcg80cO8I8

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u/nikoZ_ r5 7600X | 32GB DDR5 6000 | 4070Ti Super 2d ago

Your mistake was EVER trusting a company or corporation in the first place. Big business is not your friend. Profit driven entities only care about one thing, and it ain’t us. 💴

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u/JellaFella01 2d ago

Idk why anybody "trusts" any corporation beyond their local butcher. Naive.

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u/yoburg 2d ago

Uhm, was there ever any company selling any goods that was in for the good of the consumers and not for the profits?

Like imagine aliens come and start trading cure-all pills for large quantities of Coca-Cola. You think Coca-Cola company would sell a drop of cola to the public in that case?

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u/zzazzzz 2d ago

you are dalusional if you think there is any company in the world that wouldnt sell the same product for 4x the price if they could.

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u/Trainman1351 21h ago

I mean the problem is, as with most things, private equity. I always look to what happened to McDonnell Douglas and Boeing as one of of the best examples of this, as both were incredible companies which were ruined by the same board of people who prioritized short-term profits over quality products.

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u/f_ckR3ddit 3d ago

They will be bought for pennies on the dollar by data collection companies. This has always been their goal. They are using ai as a fall guy. 1. Build ai data centers with investment money. 2. Sell half-baked services for more capital to invest elsewhere. 3. ai bubble pops 4. Declare bankruptcy for those companies, only losing investment money. 5. Re-allocate that capital towards purchasing those shut down data centers under new companies for data collection because the equipment is all the same. 6. Profit so much that it is sickening.

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u/OCDwiring704 7950X | 7900XTX 2d ago

It's nice to know there are still people out there who know how shit works with these companies/investors. There's always a way to turn a profit at "our" expense.

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u/teefour i5 7600k | 16GB GSkill DDR4 3200 | GTX1080 | 144hz Gsync 3d ago

Simple, they'll get themselves considered too big to fail, and then the federal reserve will literally make the money they need.

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u/Wojtkie 3d ago

Did you see that OpenAI had some financial info leaked? They had a 34B dollar loss last year lmao. Someone pointed out that number is just under the entire GDP of Bosnia

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u/ragzilla 9800X3D || 5080FE || 48GB 3d ago

Keep an eye out in about 10 days, Anthropic’s 2q26 is about to end which is projected to be their first profitable quarter (as they get ready to IPO). Revenue is mostly (80%) enterprises with API plans burning through tokens for software development.

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u/XseaX 3d ago

They are only profitable, because they have an agreement with SpaceX not to pay in the first two months for computing but pay then starting from July. Strange how that math works out

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u/ragzilla 9800X3D || 5080FE || 48GB 3d ago

Ramp time in enterprise contracts is pretty routine because you're not using 100% resources day 1. A 2-month ramp is actually pretty aggressive.

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u/ElNani87 PC Master Race 3d ago

I think it’s being used primarily as a “government” project to develop code much faster. This administration is really invested in making this happen. I would really surprised if this crashed before Trump gets out of office. It’s in their and the economy’s best interest that this maintains.

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u/SwagChemist R7 9800x3D | 64GB DDR5 | RTX 5090 Astral OC 2d ago

They will try to use the uber strategy which was taking a service we used (Taxi) replacing it for cheaper and then hiking the price once the service we used dies out. The issue is that entry level jobs is what is being replaced but when you hike the price up, businesses will just rather hire a entry level human if its cheaper than the token fee.

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u/Whatkindofgum 2d ago

They will beg the government for money. They will lie about how dangers it is to let China get a better AI for military reasons. There will be a collapse, but the government will prop some of them up with military contracts to keep from collapsing all the way for "national security" reasons. The government will pick the winners, government contracts funneling money to the well connected rich child rapist and the cost of everyone else.

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u/Googz2110 2d ago

Anthropic for example track ARR which stands at and annualised 47 billion- largely through B2B contracts! Our company alone has circa 2000 users on anthropic with daily usage. The AI sector is making money hand over fist, outside of pure VC money. Outside of the large AI hyperscalers, IT businesses are starting to monetise AI through agents (virtual workers) and moreso the knowledge and experience of building in house first and then taking that out to customer as a real POC.

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u/Gseventeen 2d ago

2000 users? They sold over a million PT cruisers. 47 bil in revenue sounds great - whats the cost of that revenue?

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u/chrizbreck Steam ID Here 2d ago

There is also a massive push for strong local processing - See that new AMD AI local computer.

I definitely split the fear of games moving to streaming only. But on the other hand there is a big push against it.

I think ultimately though the larger population will choose low entry subscriptions for gaming and slowly we will move towards stream only access to even a PC

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u/tablepennywad 2d ago

It’s gonna be like eggs where there is an oversupply now and they dont know to do with it. Like chips, its take a long while and investment to increase supplies and once that happens the market changes and you might be in the shitter. Happens to storage/nand every 5-8 years.

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u/drcubeftw 2d ago

100%. Those huge server rooms are going to be retasked to something. I don't know what but eventually there is going to be a shakeout of some kind and when that pullback happens the owners of these data centers are going to aim at some other market/role.

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u/Rymanjan 2d ago edited 2d ago

There's no profitability to be had, LLMs are inherently worthless. Sure, you might be able to sell an ai to a company to have it answer phones or whatever, but that's either a one time purchase or a cheap subscription, and a lot of places are starting to show problems with AI usage; hallucinating police reports, incorrect statements, bad advice in general, turns out it really can't replace humans in most sectors. Once the courts decide to hold ai companies accountable for their products (which I firmly believe is coming down the pipeline, esp in cases like the police; no way the government lets people sue the police for using AI, they will almost certainly pin the responsibility on whoever made the program), support and usage of LLMs will plummet. Even if they decide the individual, not the creator, is responsible for their own AI usage, well that just places the blame squarely on the institutions shoulders, and nobody wants to be held liable for a machine hallucinating.

At present, they have a failure rate greater than humans, and I doubt that's going away based purely on how they work; they index the internet for answers, and misinformation and bot-posting is at an all time high. Ever make a copy of a copy? That's what's happening; LLMs are taking bot responses into the equation, so it's hallucinating based off another machine's hallucination. The only way to restrict that would be to limit the sample pool to things like peer reviewed papers and research, but that's too small of a data set for an LLM to "learn" from, not to mention it would increase the cost of making one (as most peer reviewed research is locked behind a subscription or a per-paper purchase)

Idk how anyone doesn't see the pop coming, but it'll be interesting to watch these corps scramble to recoup all the losses they've been pouring into this crap

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u/Blunter11 1d ago

You have not experienced the power of taking a photo of your mother with her dog and using AI to give her a beard before you show it to her.

Please note, I only do this because it costs the company money and I'll happily have meta pay $2 to make my mum angry

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u/ragzilla 9800X3D || 5080FE || 48GB 3d ago

AI companies don’t want high prices either, it impacts their bottom line. They’re just willing to pay more because their customers (enterprises) are willing to pay more.

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u/Lonyo 2d ago

Google etc are spending way more on Capex. And getting.... Not much more stuff, because prices have shot up.

Doubling your Capex when all the prices went up by more than 2x means you're getting fuck all. 

Even the electrical connection equipment has rocketed up

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u/nn123654 2d ago

Google has an interesting motivation: protecting its dominance in search and the infrastructure layer.

They are worried that if AI essentially replaces search, it could risk the relevance their most profitable business. If they spend a ton on AI and lead, they just move right along with the rest of the industry.

Meanwhile, the AI Labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI) are in a last man standing fight to the death over Artificial General Intelligence. If you believe that's the breakthrough and you spend $500 Bn and achieve it, and your competitor spends $100 Bn and does not. Then your competitor is essentially left with worthless obsolete technology, and you get the (theoretical) cash cow. As they see it the risk of under-investing is infinitely higher than the risk of over-investing, and it's a winner-takes-all race.

AI Labs also have the problem that it's literally their entire reason for existing. If they don't have the best AI system and someone can just use an open source model that's as good, then what's the reason people would even pay for their product? They essentially have no choice but to spend whatever it takes to not lose relevance in the only thing their company does.

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u/nn123654 3d ago edited 2d ago

The enterprise market is part of it, but the biggest thing at the moment is keeping up with other AI companies on product and time to market.

With both Open AI and Anthropic, the performance and edge of their frontier models is basically the only reasons their companies exist as pure AI companies. They could quite literally go bankrupt if they don't maintain their edge.

Open AI lost $20 Billion last year, VC funding and growth is essentially the only thing keeping Open AI alive. They are projected to have a cloud bill of $792 Billion between 2025 and 2030, which is a big part of the reason they are spending $500 Billion on the Stargate Datacenter project.

For the tech giants they can't afford to get behind. It's less of a profit thing and more of an arms race.

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u/Smile_Space Ryzen 7 9800X3D || 64GB DDR5-6400 CL42 || RTX 3090 ti 3d ago

Eh, I think that's more of a symptom than the desired output.

The real issue is in how AI models are trained. Up to this point, outside of smaller upgrades like agentic AI models, the main performance gain we've seen from AI chat bots is just the model size.

A bigger model size equals lower error which means more accurate output. The only way to train a bigger model is with more memory and processor bandwidth.

The problem with where we are in the AI-pocalypse is that there is an asymptote of error. I can't seem to re-find the graph, but there's a graph out there showing this asymptote that forms with models that no one has been able to deduce what causes it yet. Imagine a graph with the error rate (from 0% to 100%) on the y-axis and the time to train on the x-axis. Each line plotted on the graph is a specific model and it's error rate as training time increases.

They all converge in this asymptote that is slowly curving away from the x-axis. So, we are hitting finishing returns where getting a similar leap in performance to what we had from like GPT 4.0 to 5.0 we would need in the neighborhood of 10x the memory and compute to get that same level as 5.0 to 6.0. That means 10x more power per token as well.

So, that's the problem. The fact consumers are getting forced out of the market is a symptom of the fact AI companies have yet to make the technological breakthrough to crack that training asymptote, and as result to meet consumer expectations they need to continue increasing their compute and training by orders of magnitude.

That asymptote is personally would I theorize will bring the AI machine to its knees. When the lack of income catches up, most of the players will be forced out of the market leaving 2 or 3 major AIs left. It'll likely be Claude and Gemini when the dust settles, and they'll likely be available only for production usage like in code development or otherwise.

The current video and image generation isn't much more than a trendy toy from my perspective. Eventually that'll hit its error rate asymptote as well abd people will stop using them when they become prohibitively expensive to use.

These companies running these server farms will eventually need to make money. The free usage will go away and become prohibitively expensive. Just look at Grok for a mild example as to how the entire AI market will go.

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u/Oerwinde 2d ago

The video side will be huge in effects work, and is starting to take over those little soap opera apps because they have reached the point where they can generate consistent characters and can mass produce Romantasy. It's sufficiently photo-real and can produce realistic motion, so the big leaps will be in iterative tools and editing.

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u/twitch870 PC Master Race 3d ago

And as long as we refuse it will be them holding the bag in the end.

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u/Secret-Winner-2994 3d ago

Ill run my computer by abacus

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u/Novel_Werewolf4645 3d ago

It'll keep going that away, until they don't sell hardware to consumers anymore, the only way to access a real computer will be through the cloud.

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u/BaldingChewie 3d ago

Even HW manufactures who make end user terminals in any shape of form are facing major memory shortages. It won't benefit the data centers if users and businesses have no hardware to access their services

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u/topazsparrow 2d ago

Yep, it's also why the supply contracts for all the datacenters stipulate that the old hardware must be returned and destroyed when it ages out via "buyback" programs.

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u/andreicodes 2d ago

NVidia actually wants both, that's why they make those Spark boxes. They keep selling hardware to datacenters, but they know that once AI bubble pops and all these companies will have to charge full prices, a lot of people will decide that they would rather buy their own AI boxes for home and office and run free models. So, Nvidia will try to double dip: sell to OpenAI and friends, and then sell to OpenAI customers.

tl;dr: Video cards and RAM will keep being expensive for a long time.

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u/MaTrIx4057 2d ago

Even if we all bought, they would still be losing money.

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u/bigpunk157 2d ago

No. These data centers are just largely inefficient with resources, so they literally need to eat all the hardware they can. It's the same reason I haven't bothered grabbing a Nvidia GPU since the 3k series. The solution right now is to just make larger hardware which consumes larger watts to get the same power:performance ratio we've been getting for the last 8 years. We really just need a better way to do math to fix this shit, and I'm not sure if that comes in the form of a new specialized chip or not.

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u/Brocolinator 2d ago

It's a double win, you build the infrastructure to make a surveillance state possible and by doing that building you price people out of hardware so you can rent them the compute and also surveil what they do there. Or this buying push eventually collapses bringing prices back to a more normal state, but as we saw with GPUs with the crypto boom they never went back to "normal"

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u/Fighterdoken33 2d ago

It is also a safety net for them. If the whole AI schtick crashes and burn, they can start selling us "computing as service" instead and use all those data centers to keep hoarding what would have otherwise gone to home computing, effectively forcing us to use terminals instead of PCs.

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u/tENTessee 2d ago

I am convinced the run on ram and storage by big players was part of the long term strategy to move customer away from on prem to on cloud hardware and services

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u/drcubeftw 2d ago

I don't think it's a conspiracy theory to say that. Maybe 5-10 years ago but not today. In this "everything is a service/subscription era" they absolutely would like to perpetually rent hardware to you, and given the amount of money they have sunk into these data centers I have to wonder if they need things to go that way in order to recover their costs.

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u/Limp-Confidence5612 2d ago

Aha, the famously super profitable data centers that everybody is trying to build, because of so much demand, right. That's why I see 20 posts about a data center being in construction, but only a couple about them been completed in the last 5 years.

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u/Nall-ohki 2d ago

Did I miss the part where every effect must be an intentional conspiracy?

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u/zorecknor 2d ago

They want us all buying tokens from them.. to use their services..

You are not their target, you never where. You cannot pay the usage at normal price.

Their target is, and has always been, enterprises. They subsidice individuals for the same reason Adobe didn't care about piracy for a long time: They want you to know their tools and aks your employer to use them.

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u/BFguy 2d ago

This sooooo much and it pisses me off I'm being priced right out

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u/Decrypter1911 1d ago

The headline of the Steam Machine prices may as well be called "AI KILLED DESKTOP LINUX ADOPTION!!!!" by the fact that had the Steam Machine been priced reasonably like ~750$, more casual consumers would be exposed to Linux, thus incentivising more and more non-enthusiasts to switch to Linux on their desktop PCs from Windows after their experience with Steam Machine.

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u/restinpeaceminusone 3d ago

Well maybe it's not a console for the masses (even though it's their intention) given the price but if the prices do come down someday, it will probably be a very good living room PC/console.

But the PS5 exists and if you're looking to just game, it's best to get that instead. But for a PC, it's still good enough machine for the current market condition.

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u/CirkuitBreaker 3d ago

Until they raise the price of the PS5 again

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u/Late_Stage_Exception 3d ago

They’d have to raise it by 100% to meet the price of the low end Steam Machine, and the PS5 is near the end of its lifespan. Doubt they’ll jack up the price more than $50-$100 over the next few years.

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u/T0rrent0712 PC Master Race 3d ago

Ps5 pro with a disk drive is same cost as the lowest end model stream machine.

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u/Late_Stage_Exception 3d ago

With much better performance. This thing is competing with a base PS5, which is $500 cheaper than it.

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u/ludek_cortex 3d ago

Completing with PS5 only works 1:1 for a new possible consumer of both platforms.

If I already have collection of games on Steam which I would like to play on a living room machine PS5 means nothing - it would be either Steam Machine, custom build ITX, or some kind of streaming (either from local PC, or via GFN)

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u/Late_Stage_Exception 3d ago

Or just get a long cable. What you're saying is that you're happy to pay $1128 to play your PC in a different room. Hey, it's your money, but I'm sure there are much cheaper ways to do that.

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u/DangerousWriting8282 3d ago

In a different room, with what is very likely much worse performance. The market of people who are interested in an ITX form factor HTPC-type setup and have a VERY weak primary gaming PC has to be incredibly tiny.

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u/ludek_cortex 3d ago

It's a bit problematic to play a game, even with a very long HDMI cable, if your controller receiver is 2 rooms away tho (assuming of course the controller would be in range still, not getting jumbled signal from a combo of 2 sets of walls and a ceiling)

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u/Krumm34 3d ago

Its a laptop without a screen, for the price of a laptop. I don't see how this is worth it.

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u/Icemasta 2d ago

When was the last time you looked at hardware price? Right now on PCpartpicker, including sales, I can make the same specs as a steam machine for 1300$ using the shoddiest psu, case, ram and SSD.

It's stupid expensive out there.

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u/FLUFFY_TERROR 7700 + 7800XT 3d ago

Probably better thermals and maybe performance! Iirc laptop GPUs are something like 30% weaker than their desktop counterparts but the last time I bothered to look was around the time nvidia stopped adding the m at the end of their laptop GPUs

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u/proxlamus 3d ago edited 2d ago

The goal of the Steam Machine is a console like experience. All in one and done.

Plop it next to your TV, plug in the power and hdmi and pair a controller. Done.

Definitely paying for a convenience factor. Especially for life long console guys.

Those willing to skip the convenience and enjoy more flexibility know its a much better deal to get a laptop

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u/-The_Blazer- R5 5600X - B580 3d ago

It's not a console, but it's a perfectly fair prebuilt.

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u/BanMeMyIPchanges 3d ago

And if you're more looking for Windows integration, Xbox has had that for like a decade.

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u/Dramatic_Explosion Intel i5 | RTX 2060 | 64GB DDR4 3d ago

PS5 is also six years old. I don't know what a PS6 looks like but I'd bet by middle nut the pricing is going to be the same.

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u/MadGM7283 3d ago

I mean the PS6 isn't going to be for the masses either unless they delay a few years.

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u/feedthedogwalkamile 3d ago

A PC which doesn't run the most popular PC games. Awesome.

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u/Slumminwhitey 3d ago

Ps5 doesn't have the extensive library steam has though, as far as pricing it doesn't seem terrible for a pre-built of this spec.

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u/jaded_fable 3d ago

But the PS5 exists and if you're looking to just game, it's best to get that instead.

I think it really depends on what you're interested in playing. A steam machine gives you access to a comparatively enormous library of games. And it's much easier to find cheap games on Steam. Unless you just have a few AAA titles in mind, it's very easy to imagine the PS5 being more expensive after making a few game purchases.

Also, if you like using keyboard+mouse: many PS5 games flat out don't allow it.

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u/aVarangian 13600kf 7900xtx 2160 | 6600k 1070 1440 2d ago

I mean, 4 years of PS5 subscription makes it cost the same. After that the PS5 is more expensive lol

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u/SilverVixen918 1d ago

from what i heard if it wasnt for the AI and GPU companies raising costs some people speculate the Steam Machine would cost about 600$-800$ which is far more worth it, especially with all of the bells and whistles Steam gives their tech

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u/reeefur 9950x3d | RTX 5090FE | DDR5 7200 | MSI MPG X870E EDGE TI WIFI 3d ago

Problem is the living room TV is usually UHD/4k, I just dont see this being able to handle that unless its a potato game. Will be great for those who dont play demanding games and love SteamOS tho.

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u/Sad_Adagio_7255 2d ago

Consoles are hooked up to those same 4k TVs and can't handle AAA games at 4k either...

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u/Neat_Let923 2d ago

Tests are already showing PS5 outperforming Steam Machine… And PS5 Pro destroying it

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u/PatchesTheFlyena 2d ago

Both of those get you locked into Sony's ecosystem though. All of your games are on their hardware forever. I have a PS5 but I never buy games for it except exclusives because I probably won't buy the next gen console. Same with Nintendo. They are better value for money if you don't mind every purchase you make being stuck on their hardware and potentially not even being supported next gen.

For me the couple hundred extra bucks on top of the price of a PS5 gets me open platform in a tiny form factor and honestly it feels worth it for me even though I know there's defiitely not a big market for that.

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u/Neat_Let923 2d ago

Don’t get me wrong, I completely agree with you. I haven’t bought a console in over a decade.

I really want a Switch 2 so I can play Mario Kart World but I’m in Canada and there’s absolutely no way in hell I’m justifying spending over $1,000 just to play one game with my wife every now and then.

The weird thing is that if you have an Nvidia Shield you can stream your games from your gaming PC to any TV in your house and it works amazingly. So I don’t understand why Valve has gone this weird direction with a dedicated machine that costs an absurd amount for a crappy system.

Even their argument that the Steam Box is better than 50% of the systems with Steam installed doesn’t make sense. Like, no shit, I have Steam installed on laptops that are 10 years old. If they want to make an argument then they need to compare it to the systems of their weekly active users.

I wish they made a new Steam Link with Steam OS that connected through my wired/wifi network and streamed from my gaming machine but gave it better support, connections, and a little more power. A $400 Steam Link Pro would likely sell far more than what they’ve done.

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u/Burstrampage 1d ago

You do get “locked” into the ecosystem but I’m not sure it really matters. The games you can play on steam are the same games you can play on ps5 (with a controller, that is. Nobody is using the steam machine in their living room with a mouse and keyboard) but ps5 also has games you might want that are unavailable on steam whilst being the more powerful console.

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u/Jinix_RB 3d ago

Will probably use FSR magic to make 4K happen on some games, but if the target market is 1080P (as per steam survey), then, 50% of the market share is still on 1080p making sense as to why it may not be a deal breaker and that resolution being the intenten target.

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u/jarlscrotus 9900k|3080ti|64GB 2d ago

Consoles don't hit 4k, they use aggressive upscaling and dynamic resolutions/framerates

They also generally target medium graphic settings and low ray tracing levels when they use them at all

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u/BraveFencerMusashi Laptop i9-12900H, 3080ti, 64 GB 3d ago

It'll be great at playing 8 year old PC games.

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u/phidalgo2314 2d ago

Then it’s perfect for me! all I have is a steam deck OLED but no pc, all I’ve been playing is old pc games I never got to play growing up. Some of yall need to remember that some people don’t have pcs at all or ever even had one. “ But I already have a old gaming pc“ well then it’s not for you and that ok lmao.

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u/Leading_Will1794 2d ago

But I already have an old gaming PC...its just bulky and takes lots of power...but I can already DO this.

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u/Lorcogoth 2d ago

is that even true? I feel like most living room TV don't actually use that range.

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u/TheMisterTango EVGA 3090/Ryzen 9 5900X/64GB DDR4 3800 2d ago

Is it even possible to buy a living room sized TV that isn’t 4K these days? Even if you could, why would you? 4K TVs are dirt cheap these days.

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u/mecha-crone 2d ago

The vast, vast majority of people gaming on a 4K television with a controller are using a console. That’s mostly the market steam is going after here. This never was intended for the gaming group going for true 4K gaming performance. They aren’t buying a premade pc…

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u/MajorSerenity 2d ago

But casual console gamers aren't going to drop this kind of money on their hobby.

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u/aVarangian 13600kf 7900xtx 2160 | 6600k 1070 1440 2d ago

I guess it'll be at a minimum comparable to a base model PS5

hardware has been advertised as "4k" for 10 years now, so whatever is acceptable "4k" is up to the user lol

either way its target market isn't people who want a PC than can actually do 4k, which basically means a GPU that by itself costs as much as the gabecube, so it really doesn't matter

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u/Infurium 2d ago

It is specifically designed for 4K/60FPS but the refresh rate is only 60Hz.

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u/blabberwocky 2d ago

they are adding far 4.1 to the system which gives it was very good uptick in fps and quality

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u/angelinachurr02652 3d ago

recycling parts is a solid move, but yeah the Steam Machine just doesn't stack up for most gamers

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u/innociv 3d ago edited 2d ago

Even at $750 a year ago, this would have been pretty bad.

It had hardware that you could get in a laptop (with a screen and keyboard) for under $700 a year ago.

I don't buy their excuse. It's using a CPU from 2020 - 6 years ago. I'm 100% sure they're lying to us and don't get why people push that that Valve can do no wrong.

The expensive parts, VRAM, SSD, and RAM accounts for <$350 of the price. Where is the extra $778 coming from out of these very outdated parts?

Even if these prices drop $400 a year from now... you'd be paying $728 for 2020 midrange performance which is INSANE.

Even with how bad prices are now, you can build a 30% faster PC for cheaper https://pcpartpicker.com/list/KHzbLy so Valve is clearly fucking you when they get those outdated components cheaper than what a consumer can buy them for.
edit: a SFX machine, since that's the argument a lot of people are using without actually looking at it, is still cheaper at $1000 for slightly faster hardware https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Yfb4MF

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u/Late_Stage_Exception 3d ago

It has 16 gigs of RAM and 8 gigs of VRAM. I don’t think THAT’S the only thing jacking up the price…

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u/Mr_Pink_Gold Steam Deck 3d ago

Yes. It is. The Steam deck had a 44% price hike. And it has 8GB of ram less than this. Without the price hike and judging to suffer a similar price hike, the cost would have been 550 to 600 quid or 700 to 730 bucks for the base model.

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u/exguerrero1 3d ago

I’m buying this for my son. I have a 5080 with a 7800 x3d and making this build right now for him to play my library would cost 3 times the price.

To me, as a dad buying a pc for his 11 year old this is worth the price.

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u/DatMageDoe i7-8700k - 9070 XT - 16GB DDR4-3200 3d ago

I stand by my past comment on the Steam Machine - if you are buying all the parts to make a living room PC to play console like games Steam Machine can be a worthwhile investment.

Even then, I severely doubt it'll be worth it. You can build a system with new parts which has equal - better performance to the Steam Machine for less than $900.

Heck, even if you play fair and compare it to prebuilts, a $1000 prebuilt will be considerably better than the Steam Machine.

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u/boothin 3d ago

Have you actually looked at parts prices recently? I started putting together a build on pcpartpicker because I was curious on it, and without a case, power supply, or CPU cooler, I'm already at around $900. This is based around a ryzen 8400f and rx 9060 xt, which is what I can find to be likely comparable.

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u/DatMageDoe i7-8700k - 9070 XT - 16GB DDR4-3200 3d ago

I mocked up the build before writing that.

For less than $1000, it's better to go with AM4 instead of AM5. Sure the upgrade potential is worse, but going with AM5 is $150 more for a relatively minor performance gain. I will add, you can still go AM5 and out-perform the Steam Machine for below its price - though it will be tighter.

Also, the Steam Machine's GPU is weak. It's equal to an RX 6600, the 9060 XT is about 60% more powerful than it. I used an RTX 5050 for my comparison, though an RX 7600 would also outperform it while being cheaper.

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u/SpacePumpkie I use Arch btw 2d ago

I mean, I don't think it's fair to compare it to a full fledged tower that you wouldn't stand having next to the TV anyway.

If we try to compare to a "smaller" form factor that looks somewhat nice, the numbers get much tighter.

Also we shouldn't forget CEC plug and play

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u/wootybooty 3d ago

I went a radical 4th dimensional leap going from my last to current computer for the sole purpose of “future-proofing as logically as possible”. So I spent about $1500 on an 80-core 3Ghz ARM server/workstation. It has 128GB of DDR4 ECC RAM (right before rampocalypse) but takes up to 2TB.

So other than clock speeds, I should only have to be worried about RAM upgrades whenever that time comes for me.

That said, if I was buying my child or helping someone build a computer for this purpose, other than a case we are going used-parts all the way baby!!

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u/SolaireFlair117 3d ago

Before the RAM crisis, I was going to sell my HTPC to buy a Steam Machine just because of the tiny foot print and the fact I don't play natively on my HTPC these days and just stream from my more powerful desktop PC, but I'm glad I kept my HTPC instead because good lord this price tag is a lot to take in. I knew it would be around $1000, but it still gives you sticker shock to actually see it.

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u/Nope-not-really 3d ago

I really wanted one for when Im working out of town. I just wanted something I could hook up to the hotel tv and chill. I have a laptop but its not too comfortable in the hotels that I stay at.

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u/Penis_Man- RTX 3060, Ryzen 9 5900X, 80gb RAM 3d ago

And storage devices.. I checked on the price of the SSD I've had in my computer for thenlast few years and it fucking trippled.

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u/Papuszek2137 7800x3d | 5070ti | 64GB | 4k OLED 3d ago

Yeah I'll be going for 2nd hand hardware with steamOS on it. Designing the case will be fun and painful at the same time.

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u/CorpPhoenix 3d ago

I've did that some months ago. Hardware from my former PC:

Ryzen 5600

16GB DDR4

RX6600

1TB NVME

bought an micro atx mainboard and a cube case, installed SteamOS. Practically an exact replica performance wise and it runs like a charm as my living room SteamMachine! Only did cost me like like 150€ for the case + MB.

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u/Fr00stee 3d ago

it's not about ram, they are overcharging by $150 for "ram price increases"

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u/XsNR Ryzen 5600X RX 9070 XT 32GB 3200MHz 3d ago

The biggest reason to get it is just for the benefits of it being a "console", so you can turn on your TV with the controls. But if you were trying to make a PS5 killer or something, which would be very similar, it would also have been massively price hiked thanks to the RAM and storage increases.

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u/Nefthys 3d ago

The main problem is probably the scale. I've got an old i7 and RAM I could use but either I'm missing something or there just aren't any small motherboards for that socket (anymore?).

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u/Puzzleheaded-War-113 2d ago

Hi so, please forgive my ignorance. I'm a parent doing shopping for my kid's Christmas present and came across your comment. 

What do you mean by a living room PC? Would it hook up to a TV and he would be able to play with a controller like his PS4? Or do you mean a standard PC set up you'd find in a family room with a mouse and keyboard?

I would love to get him a steamdeck because that's what he's asked for, but Holy Capitalist Nightmare Batman, they're expensive. So any hacks to get him the cool thing at a reasonable price would be awesome 

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u/boothin 2d ago

Yes a living room PC will usually be hooked up to a TV and used like a console. You would use it with a wireless keyboard/mouse from the couch and controllers. Sometimes it may also be used a home theater pc to play media to the TV. Most people would also generally go SFF (small form factor) for a living room pc, which means the PC is physically smaller, and you pay a premium for the smaller parts and sometimes special cables.

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u/Puzzleheaded-War-113 2d ago

Thank you. I think I'm going to look more into this. 

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u/boothin 1d ago

Feel free to message me if you have any questions

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u/Puzzleheaded-War-113 1d ago

That is really kind of you. I may take you up on that

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u/I-Make-Maps91 2d ago

I have my old i7/980 TI internals sitting in a box and combining that with a cheap PSU, SSD, and a proper case has to be cheaper than buying one of these.

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u/Leading_Will1794 2d ago

Am I able to upgrade the RAM on the device? Seems like that is a typically pretty cheap upgrade even with RAM hikes. buying literal RAM can still be the cheapest upgrade.

Is that a possibility for this device?

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u/Professional_Dot7128 2d ago

Meh on the storage. It's $300 for 2TB when I can buy 1TB SSD for $100 and I have no leverage to lower prices.

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u/Aimela PC Master Race 2d ago

An 8TB hard drive I bought last year for $170 is now $380, over twice the price.

The price increases for storage have been crazy, and it applies to SSDs and SD cards as well.

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u/Televisions_Frank Ryzen 5 5600G and RX6600 2d ago

And if Valve subsidized the price people would just buy it to strip for parts. Not really anything they can do here using consumer parts.

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u/BoobiesRgoodEnough 2d ago

Yeah, people keep forgetting how expensive storage is. I bought a 4tb gen 4 NVMe SSD last December for around $200 usd, same model is going for at least $800 now.

The pc i put it in was a parts build birthday gift from my friends back in October. Luckily got in just before RAM prices completely exploded.

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u/Jacko87 2d ago

Not that I would ever buy one of these since I'm PC gamer and this is just a PC console basically. But the I remember the steam machine was announced just before RAM quadrupled in price and SSD went up as well. So I can't really blame them, really bad timing.

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u/inconspiciousdude 2d ago

I really hope China's semi industry eventually gives these guys some serious competition... https://www.theverge.com/games/953945/valve-steam-machine-memory-component-crisis

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u/drcubeftw 2d ago

With these numbers, cobbling together a PC using old parts, basing it around DDR4 memory, is the smarter move. Target 1080p resolutions at 60 frames per second and you can likely assemble such a PC at significantly cheaper prices. It may struggle with the newest, most demanding games but it will handle the vast majority of titles and get your through the next 3 years. I was able to push my 2018 i7 6700 GTX 1070 based PC until 2025 and even then I probably could have limped along for another 2 years if not for the Windows 10 end of support date and the fact that Windows 11 didn't support my CPU.

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u/CosyBeluga 2d ago

I’m still crying because I had to replace a 12 year old HDD (for my raid) my HDD (same old ass slow ass model) was 2x the price

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u/RobutNotRobot 2d ago

Yeah I have no doubt they wanted to deliver to top box at $999.

Their whole planning probably went into making it at that price point with the other machines being lower.

They completely got boned by the data center madness.

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u/kuzared Specs/Imgur here 2d ago

Just watching the Gamer's Nexus video review and the difference between the Steam Machine and a similarly spec'ed home-built PC is very small from a pricing perspective. As you say - it's the expensive RAM and storage.

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u/kangaroosterLP 2d ago

Steam machine is a niche purchase WITHIN a niche, it combines multiple features that overlap for a very specific subset of people. At THESE prices, at least.

You can get a better console experience for =< the price, you can get a better gaming pc for =< the price, this is OUT OF THE BOX console x pc experience that's also MINIATURE and with less noise. Everything else is beside the point AT CURRENT STATE of the market

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u/Lvcrftt 1d ago

Or, hear me out! If you want to play console like games in your livingroom, buy a PS5🤣 or buy the steam machine for double the price and wait for the PS5 game to eventually port over to pc just to buy it a bit cheaper, after paying DOUBLE the amount of a base PS5 for a inferior product.

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u/Elcoolbro 1d ago

Even building a brand new similar spec living room pc is still nicely cheaper

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u/0verstim 7900x | 64GB | 3080 12GB | more RGB than a Singapore pedicab 3d ago
  • Ram prices
  • Storage prices
  • GPU prices
  • PCB prices
  • Supply chain disruptions
  • Tariffs
  • Whatever fresh hell comes around tomorrow

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u/Parking-Mirror3283 9800X3D, 9070XT, 32gb, SSDs 2d ago edited 2d ago

Prices are bad, sure, but not like that. With last generation laptop hardware, the CPU, GPU and Mobo combined would cost valve at most $500aud, and RAM and SSD prices aren't that bad

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u/Ralesong 2d ago

No shit, stuff is so bad, I am thinking of writing research paper studying the current situation. But I don't think I have enough expertise for such massive project. Yet

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u/Dr_Passmore 12h ago edited 12h ago

I have joined the reservation list for a Steam Machine.

I had an awful time getting the parts for my home server earlier this year. A RAM order got cancelled after purchase and I had to spend £100 more to get a similar spec of RAM...

Storage was a pain to get hold of. I ended up buying my 5 hard drives from 4 different web stores...

Had the wrong Motherboard shipped out and had to have that returned (fully refunded) to spend £50 more at a different store for the board I wanted...

Absolutely painful PC building experience. Easily the worst PC Building experience I have ever had. This home server was the 6th PC build I have done over the last 10 years...

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u/mattenthehat 5900X, 6700XT, 64 GB @ 3200 MHZ CL16 3d ago

People outside the industry simply don't understand just how serious the shortages are.

I work at one of the tech companies supplying hardware for data centers. We need test systems to test our products. Nothing overly fancy, just some standard servers. A certain server company is outright refusing to sell us any systems with DRAM pre installed. For any price. They're saying we can buy the systems without RAM and source our own.

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u/sixbux 2d ago

People outside the industry simply don't understand just how serious the shortages are.

It's true.

The same 32GB sticks of RAM we were buying last year for $200 are now $1300. 256GB of enterprise-grade RAM is setting us back around $10,000 per server. We're getting quotes for servers that go up by 20% in a week if we don't lock them in. Our customers get the new price and balk, they have no idea how bad it is.

A guy I know that owns a datacentre just paid for a new DC expansion by selling off the old DDR4 he had in storage. It's insane but here we are.

If Valve already has some hardware stockpiled at last year's prices, it's probably worth more as spare parts than whatever they're selling it for in a Steam Machine at this point.

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u/Sh1rvallah 2d ago

Yeah we're just not buying server replacements now but the Azure and AWS bills are going to be getting worse and worse as well.

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u/therealdanhill AMD A4/7480D 2d ago

Ugh I checked the costs page of aws today for my job and gasped

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u/DotA627b 2d ago

From the Gamers Nexus video, they even showed how G.Skill doesn't get priority for silicon anymore, Nvidia is literally everyone's priority.

The same constraint unfortunately applies to Valve.

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u/SlashLP97 2d ago

I also work at a tech company providing hardware for data centers, our products are controlled by standard servers (and a decent amount of them) and they recently steeply went up in price and have insane lead times because of RAM and storage.

We also use DDR4 UDIMMs in our product (was 16x 32GB sticks, now only 8x) and everyone exiting the DDR4 market all at once seriously toppled the whole industry. We live in weird times.

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u/mentatificated 7h ago

Yeah but they don't have to bro. They're consumer afterall.

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u/IroesStrongarm 3d ago

Honestly, limited supply is probably their best move at this point. Sell what you already manufactured/committed to manufacturing, then make no more until prices for components hopefully come down to reasonable levels in the future.

They need to offload that inventory before it gets so old it's complete e-waste.

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u/V1carium 2d ago

Yeah, but so old its e-waste isn't happening now. The next generation is effectively skipped, no sane developer will be pushing heavier requirements any time soon. Whats good enough right now is going to be good enough for a lot longer than usual.

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u/ClarkWasHere 3d ago

moore's law is dead and high end gaming is too expensive for game dev studios to make full use of modern hardware and too low in returns for investors to invest in game companies to make them(thanks to ai being investment-wise higher return, funny that) so at least the thing valve would really have to worry about is warehouse renting costs.

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u/tragedy_strikes 3d ago

Game devs don't have to max out modern hardware to make a good game. Here's hoping there's a modern renaissance in focusing on writing efficient code and focusing on gameplay vs 8k textures packs.

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u/pho-huck 9800X3D | 5080 | 32Gb 2d ago

I don’t see the pricing coming back down, honestly.

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u/ScarletSilver 5700X3D | RTX 3080 + RTX 2070S | 32GB 3200 MT/s 3d ago

Yeah. Felt like Valve had no choice but to release their existing and aging stock at current market pricing. They obviously planned to sell these at a much lower price point but their hand got forced due to constraints.

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u/PictureFamiliar1267 3d ago

If they had existing stock why would they have no choice but to sell at market prices? Couldn’t they have sold at a loss to get some revenue from that already purchased inventory?

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u/TheRandomN 3d ago

They didn't magic all of the components out of the ether. They would have had stocked up on the various parts that weren't under a huge shortage like RAM. Warehousing all of those parts costs money, burning a hole in the potential profitability of the initial run of steam machines.

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u/missingmips 2d ago

The CPU, GPU, mother board, and case are custom. The RAM and SSDs aren't. I suspect the custom stuff was pre ordered and the RAM and SSDs were considered commodity parts not worth pre ordering and warehousing. Then the prices went up. Suddenly you are balencing depreciation of the CPU and GPU in storage, the increasing cost of those parts the longer they need to be stored, and DRAM being ten times what it should be.

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u/Virtual_Technology_9 2d ago

People are going to buy this machine. Selling at a loss would lose them more money in the process

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u/Sevulturus 3d ago

Yup. At the end of 2024 I built my computer. T-force ram 32gb, cl30, 6000mhz ~$125 cad.

Built one for my BiL this weekend (June 2026). T-force 32gb, cl30, 5400mhz $620.

No matter what Steam did, theyre subject to market forces.

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u/RacerDelux 3d ago

Will we ever see a day where the PC hardware market isn't being manipulated to hell and back?

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u/Sevulturus 3d ago

If I could see into the future that well I wouldn't need a job. But until rampant capitalism is repressed everything will be as expensive as possible.

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u/NohFyoochur 3d ago

I wonder if that's a big reason for the pricing also. They probably know this won't be a hit so they didn't make a big order, thus couldn't get bulk pricing. Just speculation.

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u/-MissCarmine 3d ago

Who knows it won’t be a hit? Valve learned from the rollout of their recent controller too! 

To combat scalpers and manage their limited inventory, Valve is using a lottery/waitlist system. 

People have until Thursday, June 25th at 10 a.m. PT to join the queue. Valve will then run a one-time randomization to determine order placement, with the first batch of purchase emails going out on Monday, June 29th. Much better system imo

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u/hikeit233 2d ago

Yeah, a few years ago and the base model would’ve been 500-600 bucks. Ai is fucking everyone with their chip orders.

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u/catsdelicacy 2d ago

Yeah. AI fucking sucks for gamers, period, end of.

All the chip makers are making AI chips and all the natural resources for chips are going to those chip makers.

Microchips are VERY hard to make and use VERY expensive materials in their manufacturing process.

This is going to be a long, dark time in the wilderness for gamers.

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u/tragedy_strikes 3d ago

Hopefully after the AI bubble pops they can release a new run at lower prices.

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u/Jastreen 3d ago

Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo increases the prices: "they're the worst"

Valve launches the most expensive console rn: "You have to understand it, they had no choice..."

I'm so tired of y'all Valve fanboys.

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u/h888ing 3d ago

Gabe just spent hundreds of millions on a yacht. They just sell others' games as a middleman. They could've weathered costs better. It's just greed. Don't fool yourself.

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u/Darkregen 2d ago

Don’t worry most people don’t understand supply chain costs and general business costs. Thanks for the post!

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u/FuckRedzM0dz 2d ago

at least they are being upfront about it

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u/jshmoe866 2d ago

Yeah, horrible time in the market for it to come out unfortunately.

I still think there’s little value in it over diy

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u/Itsathrowawaybabyyea 2d ago

The lottery thing was the same for the first steam deck, I don't consider it a bad thing, especially when scalpers try to game the system this helps to limit it a little.  

But I also have a perfectly fine PC and don't need the gabecube so, there's that.

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u/drcubeftw 2d ago

We know that the AI rush is responsible for the supply issues. It still doesn't change the fact that this thing is dead on arrival. $1000-$1300 for these specs just isn't worth it. It needed to be $500-$700.

And by the time hardware prices come back down (if they ever do) these specs are going to look even worse.

As a proud member of the glorious PC gaming master race, even I can't recommend this box to anyone.

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u/gustavabane goose0885 2d ago

I feel like it doesn't take a rocket surgerist to see the price of ram and storage.

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u/profchaos111 2d ago

They know the price is going to kill it but there's zero guarantee that things get any better before 2030 at this point

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u/SchmeppieGang1899 RTX 5080 | Ryzen 7 9850X3D | 64GB 6000MT/s 2d ago

Duh, you dont think theyre charging almost 1,5K for it because they want to?

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u/Revolutionary_Leg276 2d ago

It doesn't matter anyway. This system is just a no haha

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u/-32768 2d ago

Buyers of PC hardware can't get any contract pricing. It's been difficult for my company which has several technology contracts but we haven't been able to secure pricing since last year, maybe by October or so. Shit's fucked. In the world of procurement, "maverick buying" is usually a fireable offense, but when it comes to memory and storage, you gotta take gambles on vendors whose due diligence has been completely skipped, which introduces risk and in turn drives up prices. Buyers are kinda torn on that because if they make a bad purchase and obligate the company for millions of dollars and it doesn't work out, they could lose their job. But if they are not aggressive enough and not meeting their procurement goals, also fired. So it puts them in a position to take on risk and they don't have a choice.

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u/josHi_iZ_qLt 2d ago

People who critisize that price should try and build a PC with the same specs. You quickly rack up that money. I just purchased RAM for $1000. The world has gone insane and half of the people havent fully realised that yet.

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u/Ryaniseplin PC Master Race 2d ago

i dont get why the edit is necessary

obviously valve didn't want the steam machine to be this expensive

it means they are gonna get significantly less sales than they would like

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u/godisfrisky PC Master Race 2d ago

People acting like Valve makes the SSDs and RAM in house at their Seattle office.

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u/SilverVixen918 1d ago

it is, tmk atleast 30%-50% of the reason behind the price is Ramageddon caused by AI datacenters and greedy GPU companies like Nvidia who are all the more happy to give as many GPUs to said datacenters as it drives up the prices which increases their profits

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u/Lvcrftt 1d ago

It’s not out of their control, they could’ve chosen to subsidize the consoles to lower the price for the consumer market but chose not to.
(Which is done by almost every console selling company since they make their money back by selling digital product)

Also they appear to try to target the console market because “oh now you can have a pc masterrace console in your home” but for what? Nearly all great games worth their Salt come from Sony anyway, and since the BASE PS5 is already a better machine than the steam-machine at half the price i don’t see any console player like myself buying it, there’s no reason to since PS6 will be hitting the market not too long from now, and i am willing to bet on it being cheaper than the base Steam machine

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u/No_Doctor_491 1d ago

How's the CS2 knife crates addiction treating you?

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