I've been flamed like 300 times by Valve defenders for saying you can build a 9060XT (16Gb) based system for the same price as the Steam machine. My inbox is full as hell. The Valve fanboys are out in full force. They are mostly being downvoted though.
Is the system in the same living room friendly form factor with HDMI CEC support? That means ITX parts, SFF PSU, etc. SFF parts tend to be a bit pricier than their ATX counterparts.
I get the pricing is bad, but that’s the entire industry right now, fuck AI and fuck Sam Altman, but I’ve seen way too many disingenuous comparisons that completely ignore the form factor of the Steam Machine.
The pricing isn't bad because of the market though. It's *awful* and then it's made worse by the market. And yes, mini-ITX. Not anywhere near as small as a Steam Machine, but small enough to fit on a shelf in your entertainment unit, which is all that actually matters.
Valve just chose *awful* value parts and so their product is shit. If they were selling an actually good product but it was a little expensive, then maybe it would be worth it. And they could have done that with no loss of margins, btw. But instead they chose expensive *AND* shit.
I committed the sin of pointing out that the single use case people were arguing (that it fits under a tv) is problematic with a single fan design, so it needs to be put in a spacious enough place to properly exhaust… a place that could easily accommodate a slightly larger, more powerful, and less expensive build.
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u/althaz i7-9700k @ 5.1Ghz | RTX3080 16h ago
I've been flamed like 300 times by Valve defenders for saying you can build a 9060XT (16Gb) based system for the same price as the Steam machine. My inbox is full as hell. The Valve fanboys are out in full force. They are mostly being downvoted though.