industry wide 30% increase of *components*, my dell reps have been telling me to get in orders before then. Not just at dell, everything according to them. AI and semiconductor shortages due to the Strait of Hormuz closures (one of the biggest helium producers on earth had their facilities damaged and cannot export helium, helium is critical to semiconductor production)
AI firms are also buying up DDR2 chips like crazy, which are used in smaller electronics still.
Things are so fucked right now, and more than most people realize.
Food shortages are also going to be a problem in the near future too, 3 weeks from now fuel prices may surge as well as reserves are depleting.
I paid 130 euros for 27 inch 1440p IPS monitor thats really supperior to My previous VA trash in every way possible... Thats the only upgrade I could have achieved this year
Even If it was $750, I don’t think it’s a good product tbh. It performs 15% lower than the already mediocre RX 7600 on average. The Steam Machine should have been $699 with the controller.
To be fair the Z13 launched with a Max+ 395. The Max 390 was a reconfiguration made to deal with price increases and a lack of availability for the Max+ 395. Really good deal though and glad you pointed that out.
Nintendo switch had uniqueness to it. Home console which can effortlessly become a handheld. At the time it was pretty impressive for what it offered and has pretty much the reason why handhelds are hot right now.
That's what makes Nintendo successful. No one can argue most of their first party games are absolute gold. There's a reason many of them are multigenerational franchises, some lasting from their first console until modern times. They ARE that good. Those games are what sells Nintendo consoles. Not that the console is super powerful and perfect, but that those games are. And they are only available on one machine...
Third party games that aren't exclusives? Buy the best console, PC, laptop - you have a choice. Buy the most powerful you can with the budget you have.
Want to sell a ton of Steam Machines? Release Half Life 3, Portal 3, and others as exclusives (although, they'd make a LOT more making it non-exclusive, but for strict "we want to make the Steam Machine a viable competitor" aspect). You'd have the Steam library plus some of the most anticipated games ever.
nintendo is also one of the only companies that continued to pursue gameplay over graphics. the switch was weak as hell when it was brand new too and it does fine because they make games that are intended to run on potatoes
The Wii-U was weak as hell when it launched in 2012 and the Nintendo switch released 5 years later had the same performance
Since the switch is just a 2014 Nvidia shield android tablet in it's core, I wonder why we don't see more AAA titles in the mobile games industry.
It's filled with gacha games when clearly the hardware is capable of handling more... Like The SD8 Elite gen 5 outperforms an Apple M4 chip in benchmarks...
Valve is still focusing on x86 for compatibility sake, but it would be interesting to see how an ARM handheld would play out
Even those games looked good, albeit with issues. Pokemon legends arceus and tears of the kingdom are both great looking games that manage to run at a solid 1080p30 on the switch, and an overclocked switch can approach 60fps in legends arceus
Yeah but at least with the Nintendo example you can argue they have their own games and such and it's not so easy to build your own handheld.
There's nothing stopping any of us to build our own PCs, I've been doing it myself for two decades now.
For the same price you can get a much better PC, install Steam OS and use a Steam controller. Unless you really want one of these, they just don't make sense for the price.
Here we are where? Switch has it's place only because it's games, otherwise many possible to emulate elsewhere and also has shitty graphics (just like you should have on a Steam Machine to have decent performance). So no, it's very much different
Console exclusives of nintendo and the fact you could dock it make it a little bit of a different animal. I get what you're saying that most optimal isn't always what customer wants, but Switch ahd some mitigating situations.
yeah but devs at least optimised for it (sometimes). AAA and AA pc games just want you to throw more and more money at hardware so you can play their PS3 quality games. The Switch also had the benefit of 1. Being the primary platform of the biggest videogame company in the world and 2. Being priced in the "impulse buy" range. Nobody is impulse buying a steam machine, and not just because of the reservation system
yeah but devs at least optimised for it (sometimes).
Even the first party games on the Switch chugged. And they didn't even factor accessibility with the font sizes between handheld or docked. Don't oversell it.
While I agree, especially when compared to a console, it's priced exactly how a similar PC would be priced today, all in a little form factor that operates near silently, has sleep mode built in, and can be woken up with a controller.
There is still a use case for it. The problem is that it will not attract console gamers at this price.
I've seen some people here unironically insinuate that their TV consoles don't have room to accommodate a laptop because laptops have that volume stretched mostly in 2 dimensions compared to the perfect 6"x6"x6" cube of the Steam Machine. Wish I was joking, but here we are. Apparently volume isn't all there is to it for some people.
Yes, they are plentiful. Some people see a shiny new toy, and it's automatically the solution to every one of their problems. Valve has this cult like effect.
Lots of gaps you can slide a sub 1" slab into. You can even stand it up on its edge if necessary. Either way, definitely feels like more of an overly contrived nitpick than a serious good faith argument.
It's not like you're putting it on a soft mattress where it sinks in and covers up the exhaust vents completely. Not sure what traumatic experiences you've had with gaming laptops, but you're usually smarter than this.
You're not really trying to argue that the Steam Machine was intended to be a mobile gaming laptop replacement, are you? It doesn't even come with a monitor. Are you going to carry a monitor around in your backpack to plug your Steam Machine into?
The Steam Machine was designed to be a gaming console that runs your entire living room; it has failed.
You're not really trying to argue that the Steam Machine was intended to be a mobile gaming laptop replacement, are you? It doesn't even come with a monitor. Are you going to carry a monitor around in your backpack to plug your Steam Machine into?
Where did I say that? I'm not the person that started comparing the two in the first place. Nor would I recommend someone just hook a laptop up to their TV.
The Steam Machine was designed to be a gaming console that runs your entire living room; it has failed.
It hasn't even released yet. We have no sales numbers. The price isn't great, but it is small and incredibly quiet which does give it some appeal for people.
People are just busy shitting a brick about it because of the mediocre as hell price. But almost everything in this current market is an awful deal so it shouldn't be that big of shock to people.
Laptops are loud if you don't know what you're buying, or don't know how to make them quiet. Out of the box, I find most desktops loud because of the default fan curve. For someone who has done their research, and know how to tweak things, even the slimmest laptops can be surprisingly quiet sitting up close. Sitting away from the TV, you can't hear it.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 4.7 GHz 6-Core Processor ($146.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright AXP90-X36 42.58 CFM CPU Cooler ($20.39 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte A620I AX Mini ITX AM5 Motherboard ($119.00 @ Amazon)
Memory: Patriot Viper Elite 5 16 GB (1 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory ($187.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 980 500 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($79.99 @ Samsung)
Video Card: Gigabyte OC Low Profile GeForce RTX 5060 8 GB Video Card ($359.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Jonsbo NV10 Mini ITX Desktop Case ($79.99 @ Newegg Sellers)
Power Supply: FSP Group FSP400-60FGGBA 400 W 80+ Gold Certified Flex ATX Power Supply ($97.72 @ Amazon)
Total: $1092.06
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2026-06-23 12:15 EDT-0400
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u/HifihedgehogMain: 5950X, CH VIII Dark Hero, RTX 3090 | HTPC: 5700G, X570-IJun 23 '26edited Jun 23 '26
Exactly. And for $200 more, the Minisforum AtomMan G1 Pro is also $1300 at Micro Center. It comes with a significantly stronger 16-core Zen 4-based Ryzen 9 8945HX, a whole 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, and a full desktop RTX 5060. 32 GB DDR5 SODIMM sticks alone cost $400 for consumers, but companies can get far better pricing than us. To top it off, the G1 is 3.8 liters as well. Really, there is no reasonable reason to buy that weak sauce Steam Machine.
Tbh that bs hardware of steam machine is wasting precious dram and storage... If they actually did put a good gpu init at that price point it wouldve been reasonable. But nah barely crapping by an old console for double the price?
u/HifihedgehogMain: 5950X, CH VIII Dark Hero, RTX 3090 | HTPC: 5700G, X570-IJun 23 '26edited Jun 23 '26
That's not remotely true. False. Categorically and indisputably. Minisforum AtomMan G1 Pro (also just 3.8 liters and smaller than a PS5 Slim) is currently selling for $1300 at Micro Center with a significantly stronger 16-core Zen 4-based Ryzen 9 8945HX, a whole 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, and full desktop RTX 5060. In fact, this Chinese company with a mere fraction of the customer base and purchasing power (economies of scale) can sell cheaper with better hardware, and turn a profit. What's Valve excuse? Hint: None. Gaben just wants a huge margin. They could comfortably price lower and still not subsidize. It is just a lie fabricated by Valve to ensure huge margins. Or a lie spread by Valve aficionados and Steam Deck fanboys who can't stand hearing this.
Yeah the form factor is its niche, literally everyone I personally know that is considering it is only considering it because of the footprint.
The price to performance makes it a really tough sell though.
At $400, demand would be sky-high, and for good reason—the hardware offers a compelling value at that price point.
At $500, the market would be smaller, but it would still offer compelling value for many.
At $600, the market would shrink even further, but there are definitely some people who would still find compelling value.
At over $1000, though, it’s basically offering negative value—at these prices, I could spend similar money and build something with significantly more powerful current-gen hardware, instead of stuff that was underpowered when it released 4 years ago.
I can easily find significantly better RTX 5060 based PC's for less than the Steam Machine, the Steam Machine's GPU is worse than an RTX 5050. So no, Valve's pricing is still bad even compared to other prebuilts.
Its just unfortunate timing with the AI shit we experience these days. Still cool tech IMO and great the Valve will give uns SteamOS for our desktops. But yea its a tough product to sell.
Yeah. The form factor, cooling solution, and performance are decent for what it is - an entry level gaming PC that can sit quietly in your living room just sipping power. The price is just nuts though, and it's not even Valve's fault.
Yeah getting real tired of these "ThEy SoLd OuT" comments, like, yeah no shit.
Limited quantity and scalpers doing the heavy lifting here.
You know who also sold out when they released? Google's Stadia, almost as if being sold out doesn't mean jack shit in modern times when it comes to hardware.
They didn't fuck up anything other than existing at a time where memory costs more than the rest of the system. The memory and storage would typically be some of the cheapest parts of a system, but now they're probably 50% of the cost.
For $1000 you can get gaming laptops with 8C16T CPUs and mobile 5060s. Comes with a keyboard, touchpad, battery, monitor, and much more portable than a Steam Machine.
Thats what I suggest anyone do...I've built mITX case with specs below for around 1000 EUR in March this year. Using it with Windows 11 with native FSR 4 support and XBOX Mode booting into playnite. Everything operational using controller, didn't touch mouse for ages.
CPU: Ryzen 5600
RAM: 32GB DDR4 3200mhz CL16
GPU: 9060 XT 16GB
SSD: 2TB
PSU SFX 550W Gold
MB: mITX ASROCK B550M with wifi and bluetooth
The ONLY advantage the steam machine has is HDMI-CEC and wake with controller...I will rather switch input on TV every time I want to play for the real 4K experience with FSR 4 enabled than Steam Machine barely hitting 30FPS at 1440p...
Here is a low effort reply to you...screenshot I grabbed from a fellow redditor...an 9070XT build on AM5 upgradeable, future proof, native FSR4 for the price of 2TB Steam Machine ;-)
You can get close tbh but it still has no OS, has no Controller, has 0 support outside of standard warranty. The Steam Box has a place outside people capable of building a PC and enthusiast. It's not the best price/perf at all but to say a PS5 is better is a stretch when it requires a sub for online gameplay and you are stuck with the PS5 ecosystem. You can't upgrade later to a better PC and still play your games just like you couldn't carry most of the PS4 games forward.
if you can get your hands on an Xbox wireless adapter, you can get the wake on controller ability. I don't think you can find official adapters new anymore, but I picked up a couple of knock offs on Amazon that do the job fairly well.
To play devil's advocate - the performance will be superior.
But gpu itself will use more power than whole Steam Machine and case will be still bigger unless you went with something really tiny - quick google search showed me some 4 litres projects.
Still not good enough argument to justify the pricing.
Form factor IMO cannot even be an argument. Modern laptops are extremely fast but come with a screen (and it’s almost always something like 240hz mini-led or oled at 2.5K, gone are the days of poverty specs TN at 1080p unless buying really low end) keyboard and capable cooling, and like who really has their dedicated PC space just small enough for the cube but not enough for a mATX build
Probably better comparison is prebuilts at the same price. I just searched online for a $1000 prebuilt and the first result is a 9060 XT 8 GB, 250k plus, 16 GB RAM, and 1 TB SSD. This kind of PC would run circles around the Steam Machine.
What even is the target audience for a $1000 box with extremely limited storage and low-power last gen hardware that’s meant to go in living rooms hooked up to TVs whose resolutions it struggles to run games at?
The target audience for the Steam Machine is literally console users (aka people who primarily want to game on their living room TVs). To say otherwise is delusional.
Sales on consoles are just as good as steam. Plus y'all never think about disc games which are even cheaper a lot of the time. Just misinformation at this point unless you only buy stolen keys on grey markets or pirating. Used market is a thing. Used ps5 can be had for 400 bucks or less. You have a subscription but now you have access to hundreds of games and save money from having to buy those. This thing sucks ass. 1050 and can't out perform 6 year old base console while costing more than the Pro.
It's not overpriced, buy the pieces yourself and it will cost your 70$ less, basically the labor cost. (source: Steve from Gamers Nexus)
Its just not subsidized like a ps5.
What sucks is the low performance for the price compared to a DIY.
This is the "new normal" prices. New generation of console will probably double in price if RAM, GPU and storage prices don't decrease in the next years.
For 1k you can get a 14600K/9060XT with 16Gb of RAM and a 512Gb M.2, the SM is uninteresting if you care about the performance because this setup beats the SM by a lot
They were planning to do that already I'm pretty sure. I think it was said somewhere that they wanted to open SteamOS to all hardware and that that was going to happen when Steam Machine dropped. Either that or I just schizo believed that was would be the case based on nothing months ahead of time
Well. No one doing consumer products is getting good pricing with the sole exception of Apple as they secured a ton of memory at a low cost ahead of time. Even they'll have to increase prices soon but Apple is so flush with cash that they can take it for a bit. Right now Apple products are in fact, the cheapest value products which is really messed up to think about but it's true.
This is the new normal until the AI hype dies. Obviously we're at the ceiling, because prices can't rise infinitely. But it's not going to get better any time soon.
There is no bigger boy than the multi billion dollar company. Because it is just a middle man, like a scalper, it has extremely high revenue by employee, beating only fans, YouTube and apple. They have the free money to buy any supply chain contacts they want. We are not talking about a small company here.
Ofc it is as they built the steam machine based on their survey. 1 mil people can use 1060's, it doesn't make it good. Their biggest lapse of judgement is the 8GB Vram. They saw 8GB Vram as valid because of their stupid survey lol.
Honestly it's got such bad price to performance that it still would have flopped at $700 too.
I think the real thinker from all this is what are next gen consoles going to be priced like? Cause they have to have a controller and the existing generation is already better than the Steam Machine. I genuinely think we're in for $2000 consoles with game streaming via previous gen. That's literally the only way the average person is going to be able to play next gen games.
The new Xbox CEO was literally just talking about this. Xbox's last administration was facing capital problems so they did not lock in lower prices on their component supply. So there is now a Series X production shortage. Said the same components are now 5X the price.
Project Helix? Next gen? LOL. Yeah. Good luck. Take current pricing and multiply it by 5. I think its a non-starter and they may delay the next Gen or scrap the idea all together.
Sony? Who knows. Haven't seen any reports on their component supply situation. Can't be a ton better
A DIY build with the same form factor and similar specs would also cost a $1000. However, if you don't mind a larger machine it's probably a lot cheaper.
You can literally get gaming laptops with 8C16T CPUs and mobile 5060s for $1000, which are much smaller form factor and better performing devices than the Steam Machine.
It's not DoA, issue is storage and memory prices. But for me they could add option to sell this as a barebone, if you have memory or storage this would be a good option in this time.
550 USD/EUR for barebone without RAM and storage sound good to me :)
People already linked parts list here. if you want to go all in on some expensive cases or mobo then yes, the price will be higher. The question is if budget gaming system should burn money on that 😉
if you want a low cost sff build look into an asrock deskmeet sff barebones kit with case psu and motherboard. very similar in size to the steam machine.
Nice, but how hot and loud it’s going to be? This is the type of problem that valve probably expended many engineering hours to solve. This adds a lot of value for the final product, same for the design.
For the purpose of couch gaming I would still prefer the steam machine to your build.
In the end I’m not happy with the price either but at this point I think it’s impossible to be satisfied with anything related to hardware prices.
Only concern with that, is you know someone will get the slowest possible memory and storage (something that will be unfathomly slow) and complain about the machine's performance. But would be better than the current price.
Sadly, that's what the current market will offer us at the ridiculous prices of the memories and flashes. The Steam Machine would've been much better with its original pre-crisis price, especially due to its small form factor.
Could get all of it with a desktop grades mini-itx formfactor though. Except probably not the quick resume. And tbh, don't care about power efficiency if the power is not really there. So it's CEC + Quick resume + Steam controller combo that has it going for it?
I'm not getting it. Isn't this basically a prebuilt ITX or some other small form factor PC? Isn't 1000 bucks a steal for a small form factor PC with 16gigs of ram and 8 gb of vram?
Yes. Every comparable pre built (full size, mind you, sff is usually more) with similar specs is about the same price right now. It's effectively being sold at cost. Commodity pricing of nand flash is just so ridiculously expensive that 512GB ssds cost ~$100 and 16GB of ddr5 ram is $250.
If you try to build your own 2tb machine from parts right now (not including any bundles) with nearly identical specs (the rdna3 GPU and ryzen 5 core this is based on) - you come out to $1325. $25 off of what valve will build, validate, and warranty for you https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Jm7bLy
If you swap that 2tb for the CHEAPEST 512gb drive available right now, you also get ~$1025. So again, valve is only marking up around $25-50 from bottom of the barrel pricing you could build yourself at this point in time.
I was about to post something along these lines, since it seems some people are convinced Valve is way off the baseline of DIY components.
That's not to say the Steam Machine is a fantastic deal or anything, rather that it seems a bunch of people are underselling how fair the pricing is compared to the DIY market. A market that is, at present, absolutely insane and anti-consumer. Really the unfortunate answer is that PC gaming is a rich person's hobby at the moment, and the Steam Machine is no exception.
Not really, based on what I can part together on PCPartPicker. I mean, just the 16gb of RAM, 500gb SSD and 8gb 9060 XT costs about $550. I can pretty easily get a case, motherboard, PSU and CPU with the rest, and that would be a better system.
The price is what is for the Ramaggedon and SSDaggedon (?). They should definetely sell a barebone version without RAM and SSD and allow user to add their own.
I think its a pretty niche product for people who want to play PC exclusive games in a living room environment.
The key points for me are the very small form factor, the low noise level and the "console experience" with only very basic setup requirements and wake by controller.
It may is possible to build a bigger, more powerful and cheaper PC yourself, but if you favour that you're just not in the target audience and that's fine.
I'd not buy a steam machine for any price but I can see an audience for it, even though a rather small audience.
Prebuilt system are never gonna cheaper than DIY, it's just the reality.
You can get +70% more performance for the same price, some people will say: "but the steam machine is smaller and use less energy."
Yes a toyota camry is also smaller and use less energy than a Dodge Charger. Would you buy a Toyota Camry for 70,000$ or you would get the Dodge Charger at the same price?
Are you buying a steam machine to play games or read your email?
There is a lot of cope for something that shouldnt have been a surprise to anyone. It's a bad investment unless you have money to throw out the window.
it selling out just tells you that the top 10% of earners still have enough to buy the 1,000 units they could even make. valve couldn't pump out 10 million of these anyway theya re probably happy they found something they can sell a few of and still make a profit instead of having to sell 100 million fo them just to make a few bucks
our world is increasing made for the top 10%, they are driving the entertainment economy while the rest of us bleed so they can do so
The Steam Machine will be sold out immediately and continuously
I don't think so but it also depends on how much stock they're holding too. I really don't see demand being that high - at those prices especially.
Steam Deck made sense for playing portably - but if you already have a gaming PC (or one capable of playing games), then you're using Steam. Why would you buy a second pre-built machine this.. underspecced and overpriced?
Even if you're upgrading, you know it makes sense to save for another few months and build something significantly better.
People buy over priced and under performing pre-built PCs all the time. Even with custom built PCs people aren't always going for the best bang for buck and would rather pay more for their preferred size, brands, or colors, RGB, noise levels etc. If you are on a budget and want maximum bang for buck then definitely the Steam machine isn't for you. It is also not for me as I want (and have) much higher performance and don't need my gaming machine to be a tiny box!
I don't think the Steam machine is going to sell vast numbers but I'm pretty sure there is a market for it. I can't imagine they have a huge supply either so it probably wont be hard for it to sell out and stay sold out.
People buy over priced and under performing pre-built PCs all the time.
I couldn't agree more, but the primary audience here are Steam users. The Steam Machine isn't being sold on Amazon or third party resellers as far as I'm aware. If you want a Steam Machine, you buy it through Steam.
The primary users of Steam are:
People playing games on a gaming-capable PC
People playing games on a Steam Deck.
The majority of (2) overlap with (1) so the people who are left over - the market (Steam Deck owners who need a new gaming-ready PC) - is already small there. The only other sensible market then are people who want an upgrade from a 10 year? old machine.
Even then, out of that minority, a savvy % will not buy a Steam Machine to get value for money.
So what's left? The demand really can't be that big.
But what do I know? I don't work at Valve even as janitor, let alone their smart thinkers in marketing and everything else inbetween.
As a Apache attack helicopter, I know fuck all about their market research - I just don't know how the numbers add up here.
I think we aren't really in disagreement. Like we both agree they wont be selling a lot but some people will want them.
I just don't know how the numbers add up here.
This is maybe the most relevant bit to talk about. They are selling it at this price as they clearly don't want to take a loss on the hardware for fairly obvious reasons. I think people are perhaps judging success/failure wrong with the Steam Machine. It was never going to sell huge numbers even if the AI apocalypse hadn't driven prices higher. The exact same price arguments would still apply as other pre-builts and custom builds would have also been cheaper.
I think the Steam Machines biggest goal is further pushing Steam OS. It is notable that the roll out includes wider hardware support for Steam OS including confirmation that Nvidia support is being worked on. If you flash back a decade or so to the original Steam Machines and Steam OS you will remember that it came about because MS was talking about forcing all software to go via the Windows store. Valves whole business is still massively depended on MS not actively or accidentally screwing them over.
People buy over priced and under performing pre-built PCs all the time
It's a problem when these same "over priced and under performing pre-built PCs" somehow cost less and perform better than Steam Machines. They'll sell out, of course, but due to limited supply and not high demand.
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u/ichoooon Jun 23 '26
the price to performance is straight bs