Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

Just let hardware prices adjust themselves, don't have to buy every new product.

Deciding on purchases now while prices are sky high leaves you out of pocket 6 months to a year down the line when they inevitably adjust.

Honestly might just try putting Steam OS on something cheap, one of the goals was getting off of Windows.

Prices don't come down anymore. Welcome to the new world.

Buy it now or pay double next year. (or buy it, use it, resell it for profit, too)

I guess it's nice for office work but it only has a AMD Radeon™ 760M which is a onboard GPU, I assume the steam machine has a better GPU which is part of the reason why it's so much more pricy?

Imho there will be a price correction although I doubt it goes back to pre AI hype, covid and bitcoin mining levels, even adjusted for inflation.
I worry the price drop isn't going to be as steep either once AI bubble popped simply cause I believe there are many who stall purchases due to current pricing so demand piles up.

I wouldn't know, I haven't bought all new hardware since 2015.

Built my last PC 2015, all new hardware.

Replaced graphics card alone in 2019-2020, bought current gen.

Replaced graphics card again 2025, bought last gen.

Replaced everything else with used parts, last gen and used, in 2025.

Total cost was 1.2k-ish, and $500 of that was the current gen graphics card in 2020, which I never bought again.

“Comparable” system has a video card weaker than one released 12 years ago

Youre gonna be getting 20 fps on ultra low settings for any post-covid game. Itll be useful for games released before 2020.

Steam machine uses a 780M "equivalent"

It costs more, because steam doesn't have a handjob agreement to buy 50 million sticks of ram per year

and Steam decided NOT to sell their new console as a loss leader, which is the only way you can sell a console.

Even better minipc only $539
https://www.amazon.com/Getorli-Desktop-Computer-Graphics-Support/dp/B0GSFHTRM1?sr=8-3&th=1

He is having an impressive start this world cup.

Already the top scorer of the entire world cup story, and by the end, he added one extra over the top.

Minisforum integrated GPU doesnt have standalone memory. Pretty sure the steam machine gpu is standalone, assumption based on the fact every spec list Ive seen has stated it has 8 GB dedicated memory.

Yeah, the GPU in the Steam machine is a mobile GPU with dedicated gpu memory. A thing you cannot buy off the shelf, it's a custom design.

They 100% contracted another company like Asus to do the design, same as everyone else.

Yeah, its custom made for the steam machine
But its not integrated with the CPU like those dogshit (for gaming) minipcs Eiryl keeps linking.

Guys pls dont take Eiryls advice on this.

*** it, or do, not my money being burned

You get what you pay for, the mini pcs aren't some amazing deal that makes the Steam Machine look bad by comparison. They are a cheaper and notably worse option that's perfectly fine for old games or light workloads.

You can do a custom build with comparable specs to a SM for the same price, and have more options. It's not really value for the cost, but the target audience is probably couch gamers who do not want to mess with any of that. Of course, that introduces the problem: casual couch gamers don't want to fight with the intricacies of Linux to run their games.

It'll sell out, but I'm not really impressed with it. Granted, I'm also not the target audience.

You can do way better with a full pc spec:cost

The only point was, they're overcharging, not that you should play GTA6 on a minipc.

And it shouldn't sell, at all, but retards gonna retard and it will 100% sell out instantly. Literally zero dillusion about it.

I'm also pretty sure you can find a significantly better laptop and just display port it to your TV for a better price, too

I don't really think they're overcharging. It's a similar markup to any other prebuilt and you get a nice form factor and extra engineering out of it. If you wanted a small form factor PC around that price range, it's a fine purchase. But, that's a very very narrow thing to want and most of the people buying it are just doing it because it's currently trending rather than because it's the best option for them.

The social contract states, we undercharge for the console, you buy the games. We both win.

That's been the business model since inception all the way back to arcades and coleco.

...which everyone else broke too. Sony Nintendo and Xbox

What intricacies are there with Steam running in big-picture mode and a controller to use it.

Sounds like fear mongering to me.

99% of the people buying the Steam machine have no idea it runs on Linux.

I fell behind the knowledge curve in PC building long ago, and I really really dislike tweaking settings in every single game to get it to run well. I've had a handful of games that run like ***on console, but for the most part it is never a problem.

PC is to gaming as gearswap is to FFXI. Superior performance but requires additional time/knowledge investment. At the end of the day I'd rather spend that time playing the game than getting a few more fps.

That Gamers Nexus vid was really good btw, seen a couple of his before.

Big takeaways for me was that his tests said it really was as quiet as they claimed, and that building something comparable by yourself would only save a small amount of money.

Sadly, this. Consumers are not going to be able to compete with business in the battle for compute. Pour one out for DIY. RIP

I was gonna post this, but it would be from a twitter link, and people get really really offended at those.

You're saving $71 USD to:
1-not spend 2-3 hours putting everything together
2-spend an hour troubleshooting why your mobo wont post, wind up having to RMA your memory, which takes months to get back so you have to buy two more sticks so you can use the hardware in the meantime
3-install and configure OS

#2 was a little personal, but for your average joe, I can imagine that $71 is absolutely worth spending.


This applied when your Nintendo, your Xbox, your Playstation was used for one thing and one thing only: playing games
That is no longer the case

Whether these devices are worth using to watch movies or browse the net or any other use beyond playing games is a separate discussion.

95% of the people buying any PC don't care what the OS is. I would hope that most at least know what it is but I have my doubts.

And now for the good news.

every 3 - 4 months I have day surgery to replace a stent in my ureter and laser ablate my bladder tumor. On the 15th we did this again.

EXCEPT there was no tumor in my bladder!!!!

There are still two more that I won't find out about until about a month from now.

I'm calling cap only because most so people know the difference between mac and windows. That may be the extent of their knowledge though. They might know Linux by name, possibly by association of something as simple as "oh thats the penguin one", but if you start saying Mint, CentOS, Rocky, etc, you're gonna lose them.

90% is exactly what's left when you disregard 10% of people.

Hey hey, I saw you pulling out a calculator to check if Im wrong.

Dont bother. I already asked AI.

It said I was right

Probably says that to everyone.

That is why we love it.

The random bugs and compatibility issues that occur because wine and proton are imperfect emulations. It is getting a lot better, but I don't think it's really at the point of a console ease of use yet. Granted, experience is biased based on seeing the issues people have had with it relating to FFXI and newer games may have less of them.

Proton also can't do any anti-cheat stuff at all. Only applies to a few games, I think.

Don't discount all the windows based 3p tools either. Not just bots but lots of fan stuff, for example for Souls games randomizers. I'm sure you can get a lot of that to work, but with more hassle.

The question is will the number of games that utilize intrusive anti-cheat grow in the future.
FPS is probably the most popular genre of PC gaming and cheating is rampant in FPS games without kernel lvl anti-cheat. There definitely is demand for effective anti-cheat, the question is how accepted will kernel access anti cheats become by the player base.

Valorant has one and I read big franchises like CoD and Battlefield have implemented them too on their latest titles. Sure, steam machine is marketed as a "couch console" but also as a PC and I doubt this will win over masses of PC gamers if it can't play some of the most popular franchises.

Have been using Steam on Linux since its release, and steam play/Proton since it came out.

Can count issues with Windows games not just working by clicking Play directly in the steam client on one hand with fingers left over. Yes, some bundled with third party software gsmes don't work. The steam client doesn't even let you install those as they're incompatible.

The steam library games work very well out of the box, never had to modify or fiddle or adjust anything. Also never tried to run XI on it cause I don't expect that to work well at all, due to all the third party dlls and hooks and all that jazz.

Should try it out yourself if you don't want to take my word for it. Steam Linux client works great on any Linux, doesn't need to be their supported version.