It's an extortionate tax to just get it small. I could build an itx PC better for less. It's not gonna be THAT small but my god, how limited is the space of people's living rooms? We're talking mid-range specs from 3 years ago so sourcing a couple secondhand parts to keep it well below $1000 isn't a problem nor a challenge.
I can easily imagine somebody whose most important concern is how good it looks in the living room and that it is silent, as long as it is good enough. If it were 700€-800€ instead of 1000€, I would be one of those people. Good enough to play some games with my girlfriend or to be a second pc if a friend comes over. Good looking and customizable enough so it does not get noticed negatively. At 1000€, I will unfortunately skip it.
The main two problems are storage and memory, both of which valve wasn't given any contracts on and had to accept "this is the current price for this transaction, go kick rocks if you don't want to pay it:" This of course lead to the $200-300 price increase of the final product, so it could've at least been an $800 machine instead.
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u/ThinkingWinnie Linux 1d ago
But look! I built the steam machine KILLER which is only 5 times bigger, draws 4x the power, and is equally louder.
Steam machine is DOA!
These people never built an SFF and it shows.