Am I the only one who thinks the steam machine’s price is very reasonable relative to the current PC component prices?
I thought it was expensive, but always thought the expense was the right choice compared to a razor-blade model that would have created an evil incentive to close their platform.
Now that we’re looking forward to years of bearing the full effects of Trump’s tariffs and unregulated AI hyperscalers cornering the semiconductor industry, however, it’s starting to look downright cheap.
I think it’s pretty reasonable. I just wish they’d gone a little more aggressive for their performance goals.
Everything else, from the clean design, open specs, etc. is great.
I just wish they’d gone a little more aggressive for their performance goals.
Same. They have their CPU and GPU power limited to keep the temps (subsequent fan noise) down. If they put in a more powerful PSU in and let the fans ramp up it’d do significantly better in benchmarks
I have a worse desktop (overclocked R5 2600 and RX 7600) and it generally performs fine. Some CPU-heavy settings have to be turned down in some games, but it manages medium-high at native 1080p for everything I’ve tried. White room benchmarks aren’t everything.
No you’re not.
Turns out… it is actually pretty hard to build an SFF PC with comparable gaming power, for comparable or cheaper… if you’re not a giganto megacorp that can muscle in for priority on components.
Not even they can even get bulk discounts now, not really… thats why all the console makers had to jump up their prices too.
It’s all relative.
For me, the price of a base steam machine is $1,509 CAD plus tax.
Even then, they’re constantly changing their wording (“delivers 4k60fps” to “up to 4k60fps”), and real world testing it doesn’t make sense for me to consider this.
The Switch 2 is more than half the price ($629 CAD without the bundle) and has subjectively better price to performance plus it can be docked: it’s basically a steam deck and steam machine in one console.
New electric car rival offers 2000KWh engine and tight styling. Comes with no batteries or wheels.
Would an article ever run like this? This is a combo deal on a motherboard & gfx card. Not sure how it became a ‘Steam Machine rival’.
I assume because it’s advertised that way.
“Barebone” market does exist, and since market couldn’t exist without money… I guess there are “money-bringing entities” (aka customers) already for that sort of stuff. …but electric cars without batteries and wheels market? not quite sure about that.
Not sure how it became a ‘Steam Machine rival’.
Is a Steam Machine rival in the sense that Valve has to bent and pray to ram cartel to have a batch of machines to sell; AOOSTAR don’t. Of course, AOOSTAR doesn’t have the reaching power of Valve; but this may help Valve to understand there are options to what the ram cartel forces them into.
Yep yep yep.
Tons of manufacturers are offering barebones builds of many models of miniPCs and similar, because… the environment is just that insane.
They can do all the work of designing their cases and boards and SOCs or cpu/apu/npu integrated mobos and such…
But RAM? SSDs? Sometimes GPUs?
They can sell more if they do 90% of the work, and the … basically enthusiast by definition consumer base does the other 10% of ‘final assembly’.
If a barebones model doesn’t appeal to somebody… okey dokey then, good luck finding a better deal without any work on your end, convenience maxxing consumer.
Do people not like, get, that most PC components are ultimately made by … cartels? Do people not get that?
They’re literally cartels, they just make and sell computer components, not cocaine.
TL;DR: AOOSTAR’s GODY mini PC offers a Ryzen 9 7940HX and RX 7600 XT GPU for $849, undercutting Valve’s Steam Machine price, but it lacks RAM and storage, requiring users to add DDR5 memory and an SSD amid high DRAM prices. It runs Windows 11 and is larger than the Steam Machine.
Also no storage. So it’s probably around the same price-to-benefit ratio of a steam machine: lacks the smaller footprint, tighter integration (including steam controller dock built in), no CEC (if you care about that); gains better upgradability, better gpu and cpu. Probably noisier as well, considering the higher tdp.
EDIT: Forgot to mention that 16 cores is pointless upgrade for pure gaming.
Instead of buying this, I’d just build a pc myself. This is the thing these steam machine killers are not getting: the gabe cube is not made for people who can build a pc on their own, it’s made for the ones who want to have a pc-console that just works, no faffing about, no tinkering, no opening up and figuring out if the ram is seated properly or not. It’s for those that want plug, sit and play.
So +4-600 dollars usd
How many of these Steam Machine Killers are going to contribute to Proton? That alone is why Steam gets my money over them. These other players are in it for the cash, riding on the work that is done by others. At least Valve is putting their money where their mouth is.
Uh huh. I am a steam machine rival too. Just give me ram, storage, cpu, gpu and a motherboard and I’ll run games for ya no problem at all. That’ll be nine ninety-nine.
Okay. But what about the level of bloatware?
Yes, it has windows
Ah so I need two mortgages
