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Facts people forget:

Assembling your own Steam Machine with similar parts will cost around 800
Even if you assembled it yourself you would be missing features, such as cec, wake by controller, sleep mid game, etc. LTT will try to build one, it will be interesting to see what they come up with, but I’m 90% it won’t have feature parity.
There’s lots of engineering gone into this machine, they’re way more compact, less power hungry and more quiet than anything you can build yourself.
Buying the same build as a prebuilt brings a premium and costs around 1000
Valve purchases stuff in scale so they can diminish their margin and could potentially sell it cheaper than prebuilts, and possibly cheaper than building it yourself.
Consoles are sold at a loss, and they recover it with games because the platform is closed.
The Steam Machine is not closed, they can’t be sure they’re getting game purchases, because people might be buying this to be their work computer. So they have to price it as a PC, with margin on hardware, not promise of future returns.
Price might fluctuate between now and announcement, RAM prices are going crazy nowadays.

With all of that being said, it seems to me it’s very likely it will be around 800 but less than 1000. For people saying you can build one for that price yourself, sure, go ahead, you’ll have a huge, power hungry loud box, without the same features and you would have saved only a small fraction of the value by having to assemble everything yourself.

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coriza@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Also people who like to DIY seem to forget that a lot of people want a turn-key solution, I even dare to say that most people prefer a ready made solution. Even a lot of people who work in tech when they get home want a just work solution.

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- ours@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  And a lot of the prebuilts have a ton of cut corners. A well put-together machine that people can trust to play their games at a base performance could be great for those who don’t want or can’t DIY.
  
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  - SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    PCs suffer from massive hardware fragmentation. It’s about time someone made a standardized PC.
    
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    A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Eh, I dont want steam machine becoming a standardized PC.
    
    having CPU and GPU baked into the board and unchangable will just increase e-waste cause it will age out much faster than a PC which you could, 3-4 years down the line, max out the CPU in, throw more ram into, or upgrade teh GPU, to keep it relevant for another 4+ years
    
    It serves its niche purpose, but it should not become standard.
    
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- notgivingmynametoamachine@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Nail On The Head.
  
  I work in tech. I also have terrible dexterity. While I love my gaming PC, I dread upgrades or things going wrong. I hate applying thermal paste, replacing a motherboard, etc. I’d gladly pay “prebuilt” prices for something from a company I can “trust” (as far as corporations can be trusted).
  
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- Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Yup, I love DIY, had tons of fun building my wife’s mini-itx gaming rig, my NAS and even my desktop (although it was the boring one of the three since it’s just standard). I love poking on my system, trying out stuff, etc. But I bought a Deck and my only mod was getting EmuDeck in it, it just works for what I want it to, and that’s worth a lot to me, it allows me to pour my time on stuff I want to be building and just game on my gaming boxes.
  
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- ameancow@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  A thousand dollars seems fantastically reasonable for a well-engineered home-gaming machine. I spend that much every several years on upgrading or building a new PC.
  
  My complaint is not the price, I think the price is fair. Let’s talk wages.
  
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  - Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    
    Let’s talk wages.
    
    Absolutely agreed, if every company had wages at the level Valve does it would be very good.
    
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stevedice@sh.itjust.works ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Assembling your own Steam Machine with similar parts will cost around 800

No, it won’t. $800 will get you a machine that’s around 50% faster. Controller included.

Even if you assembled it yourself you would be missing features, such as cec, wake by controller, sleep mid game, etc. LTT will try to build one, it will be interesting to see what they come up with, but I’m 90% it won’t have feature parity.

Fair enough.

There’s lots of engineering gone into this machine, they’re way more compact, less power hungry and more quiet than anything you can build yourself.

It’s literally a laptop CPU with a laptop GPU.

Buying the same build as a prebuilt brings a premium and costs around 1000

Also not true. A 1k prebuilt is around 70% faster. Controller not included, though.

Valve purchases stuff in scale so they can diminish their margin and could potentially sell it cheaper than prebuilts, and possibly cheaper than building it yourself.

Sure, but that’s an argument in favour of it costing less.

Consoles are sold at a loss, and they recover it with games because the platform is closed.

Yeah, and the best selling console of the generation is $450 for the digital-only version.

The Steam Machine is not closed, they can’t be sure they’re getting game purchases, because people might be buying this to be their work computer. So they have to price it as a PC, with margin on hardware, not promise of future returns.

Stop this delusion. If this was an actual possibility, it would already be happening with the Steam Deck. Yes, I know you know someone who did it. I know someone who bought a Surface to put Linux on it. There’s dozens of us!

Price might fluctuate between now and announcement, RAM prices are going crazy nowadays.

That I see happening. RAM/storage might triple in price tomorrow which would push the price of the whole industry up.

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- thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  It’s literally a laptop CPU with a laptop GPU.
  
  Not trying to have a go at you, actually genuinely curious: Do you have a source to confirm this, or is it more of an educated guess on your part?
  
  All I’ve seen so far is that it’s a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6c/12t CPU and RDNA 3 28 CU GPU.
  
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  - stevedice@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    An educated guess. The specs of the “semi-custom” components perfectly match with existing products. However, if I were to put my tinfoil hat on, I’d point out that the 7600M has been out for 2 years and you still cannot find a laptop with one. Almost as if someone snatched up all of the supply.
    
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- Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  No, it won’t. $800 will get you a machine that’s around 50% faster. Controller included.
  
  Care to share a link to a PCPartPicker with that? Here’s a link on the same thread of someone building a similarly speck machine for 800 lemmy.world/comment/20649777 and that is without the controller. In case you haven’t noticed, RAM prices are a bit crazy at the moment.
  
  It’s literally a laptop CPU with a laptop GPU.
  
  It’s literally not, they custom developed it for the product, similar to the Steam Deck one, it is based on the architecture used on laptops, but so are Playstation and Xbox AFAIK.
  
  Also not true. A 1k prebuilt is around 70% faster. Controller not included, though.
  
  Can you provide a link to such a prebuilt? Here’s the first prebuilt I could find with similar specs, and it’s 1k periphio.com/…/firestorm-7600-prebuilt-amd-gaming…
  
  Sure, but that’s an argument in favour of it costing less.
  
  Yes, that was my point, the top of what this should cost is the same as a prebuilt with similar specs since Valve buys stuff in bulk it should be cheaper than that.
  
  Yeah, and the best selling console of the generation is $450 for the digital-only version.
  
  And the other one is 700, your point is?
  
  Stop this delusion. If this was an actual possibility, it would already be happening with the Steam Deck. Yes, I know you know someone who did it. I know someone who bought a Surface to put Linux on it. There’s dozens of us!
  
  It didn’t happened with the Deck because it’s not sold at a loss, so it’s cheaper to assemble a similarly built PC for you. But I definitely saw several posts through the years recommending people just buy a Steam Deck as their machine in certain conditions. If the Steam Deck costed 300 I guarantee you people would be using it as their daily drivers or building clusters of them.
  
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  - stevedice@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    Care to share a link to a PCPartPicker with that?
    
    Nope. Already closed the tab and can’t be bothered to do it again. I did check the link you provided and I see where you went wrong. We’ll get to that in a bit.
    
    It’s literally not, they custom developed it for the product, similar to the Steam Deck one, it is based on the architecture used on laptops, but so are Playstation and Xbox AFAIK.
    
    It literally has the exact same specs as a Ryzen 5 7400F and an RX7600M. But hey, you were right, the CPU is actually not a laptop CPU.
    
    Can you provide a link to such a prebuilt? Here’s the first prebuilt I could find with similar specs, and it’s 1k periphio.com/…/firestorm-7600-prebuilt-amd-gaming…
    
    Sure I could. I won’t because you already did and your prebuilt even is a $50 cheaper than the one I had found. Remember that I said we’d get to why the part list you posted was wrong? Here we are. An RX7600 has 32 compute units and a boost clock of about 2.6GHz. The ~~RX7600M~~ “custom GPU” in the Steam Machine has 28 CUs and a boost clock of about 2.4Ghz. This results in the full size 7600 being anywhere from 30% to 70% faster than its mobile version depending on the game and about 50% in synthetic benchmarks. So those PCs with “similar specs” you brought up are not similar at all.
    
    And the other one is 700, your point is?
    
    What other one? The one nobody bought? I guess Valve could go the same route if their goal is for nobody to buy their product.
    
    It didn’t happened with the Deck because it’s not sold at a loss, so it’s cheaper to assemble a similarly built PC for you. But I definitely saw several posts through the years recommending people just buy a Steam Deck as their machine in certain conditions. If the Steam Deck costed 300 I guarantee you people would be using it as their daily drivers or building clusters of them.
    
    It didn’t happen with the Deck because it’s one of the worse ideas ever conceived. It won’t happen with the Cube because it will remain one of the worst ideas ever conceived.
    
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Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

LTT will try to build one

Time for another video of Linus failing to follow basic instructions and going out of his way to break the OS because Linux gaming bad

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- Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Yeah, but to be fair that was a shitty thing the system did, anyone with experience would know not to do it, but honestly it should have never happened. On the other hand, Linus is a bit daft and lots of stuff blows over his head monumentally, in the same video where he said he would be building a Steam Machine he also couldn’t seem to grasp that this is just a computer and people would see it as a prevuilt. In short I don’t think he will acknowledge lots of the killer features in the Steam Machine just so he can claim his thing does the same. But at least it will be an interesting watch.
  
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  - A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Yeah, I agree.
    
    I detest Linus, but at least attack him for legitimate shit.
    
    He was approaching linux as a basic idiot, like someone like me, and that is absolutely something a new average linux user would absolutely do.
    
    iirc, that bug was known before hand, and no one bothered to fix it until famous man made video that got famous.
    
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    Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    It was known beforehand and was fixed already by the time he released his video, he just happened to luck out and encounter it during the short spam it existed.
    
    I disagree that he approached it as a complete idiot, he approached it as someone who knows what they’re doing, when he definitely doesn’t, and that was the issue. Anyone without technical know-how would have panicked at the system asking him to type “I know what I’m doing”, and anyone with enough technical know-how would have paused at that and read the message carefully and moped the fuck out. He had enough knowledge to think he knew what he was doing, but not enough to actually do, and the boldness to think he knew better.
    
    That being said, I agree that there’s plenty of other stuff to bash him for, and that was not a great example, lots of people would have found themselves in that same situation, and I don’t think it’s unfair to say the fuck up there was not entirely on his part.
    
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- Nalivai@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  failing to follow basic instructions and going out of his way to break the OS
  
  Otherwise known as a typical behaviour of majority of users
  
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- Credibly_Human@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I hate LTT, but they did absolutely nothing wrong or anything a normal user wouldn’t do in that video.
  
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  - Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I don’t think so, I think a normal user would pause when the system asks him to type “Yes, do as I say” as that is clearly a sign that you’re about to shoot yourself in the foot.
    
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- Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Good thing his team has a few linux nerds. So unlike that challenge where he was alone, here his team would work on it.
  
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IzzyJ@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
They could totally make money selling it at a loss. The reason so many people care is that there’s an opening in the console market for an affordable option

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- Credibly_Human@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  . The reason so many people care is that there’s an opening in the console market for an affordable option
  
  The consoles are the affordable option.
  
  I fully understand that it sucks that this is the reality, but sucking doesn’t make something less true.
  
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- Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  No, they couldn’t, have you read about the PS3? They were a lot cheaper than building a similar system so several companies bought thousands to build clusters, I personally worked at a relatively small university that had a cluster made of dozens of PS3s, since each Playstation costed Sony around $200 my university on its own costed thousands to Sony, and I imagine every other university and some private companies did the same.
  
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  - IzzyJ@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    You mean the same PS3 that still was profitable?
    
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    Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Only after they closed their system, which they did because they were losing money to every single enterprise in the world who wanted a cluster and PS3 were the cheapest option.
    
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Burninator05@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

…LTT will try to build one…

Jay already tried. It was bigger, didn’t have the custom OS, and cost $1700. He could have done better except he was part limited to what rhe Microcenter he was at had on hand. Doing a bunch or research and getting different parts would probably bring down the price.

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Credibly_Human@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Buying the same build as a prebuilt brings a premium and costs around 1000

For 1k you can get a 9600 9060XT 16gb system, which is waaaaaay more powerful, so this is quite an exaggeration.

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- Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  A prebuilt plug-and-play device? Can you share a link to that?
  
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  - definitemaybe@lemmy.ca ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais claimed that the Steam Machine price had not been nailed down internally, but that Valve’s aim was to offer a “good deal” in line with equivalently powered PCs.
    
    “I think that if you build a PC from parts and get to basically the same level of performance, that’s the general price window that we aim to be at,” he said.
    
    There going to be price competitive with building from parts, apparently.
    
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    Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    The answer I’m replying to suggested you can get a prebuilt with a 9600 for 1000, since they’re replying to my point that a prebuilt with similar spec is 1000.
    
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  - InnerScientist@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    prebuilt plug-and-play
    
    Considering that building a pc isn’t more than plugging in all the parts, I’d say “building your own PC” very much is plug-and-play.
    
    Not saying everyone can do it but “prebuilt plug-and-play” isn’t the wording I’d use.
    
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    Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It’s a lot more than that, it’s:
    
    Knowing what parts to buy, I don’t think most average people can cite every piece in a desktop
    
    Selecting parts that are compatible, try plug-and-play an AMD CPU on an Intel MOBO.
    
    Selecting parts that fit the chassis you selected, unless you went with a full ATX that’s a concern.
    
    Now that you bought the components:
    
    Knowing to ground yourself before doing anything, currently I’m getting static shocks daily where I live, if I didn’t know about this I could very easily fry a RAM by picking it up wrong.
    
    Cable management is not easy, most cheaper chassis don’t have enough or dedicated space for it.
    
    Correct amount of thermal paste is something lots of people get wrong.
    
    Some pieces require strength to lock in place, others break if you even look at them sideways.
    
    Now that you’ve assembled everything:
    
    Installing OS
    
    Installing drivers
    
    Installing Steam
    
    Depending on your OS and controller of choice pairing controller and getting it to work could be difficult
    
    I’m not saying that assembling a computer is hard, but is definitely far from plug-and-play, and not something I would recommend for someone without technical knowledge who just wants something to play games.
    
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    SLVRDRGN@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    That’s the wording a lot of other people would use, I’d say. I wouldn’t be able to put together a PC, and most people I know are like that. I have maybe two cousins that can. But we’d probably all agree that plug-and-play means that you buy something and it works just like that. For example, a refrigerator is likely plug and play, because you don’t expect to have to put together the components to make it work. You just plug it in and it works.
    
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jj4211@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

Consoles are sold at a loss, and they recover it with games because the platform is closed.

Sometimes, but evidently not currently. Sources seem to indicate that only Microsoft seems to say they are selling at a loss, though it seems odd since their bill of materials looks like it should be pretty comparable to PS5…

I’ll agree with the guess of around $800, but like you say, the supply pressure on RAM and storage as well as the tariff situation all over the place, hard to say.

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PhAzE@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Facts

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EarlGrey@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

* Even if you assembled it yourself you would be missing features, such as cec, wake by controller, sleep mid game, etc.

I’ve been actively mass downvoted on Reddit for being excited for these features. People are really fucking stupid sometimes.

I have a significantly more powerful PC (in a tower case) currently hooked up to my tv surviving the same purpose and I will likely be getting the Steam Machine entirely for these features.

“But just use a dongle” they say. And I do. It works about half the time and I have to do this weird dance involving pulling up Kodi

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- Credibly_Human@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  I’ve been actively mass downvoted on Reddit for being excited for these features. People are really fucking stupid sometimes.
  
  I’d bet it was more about the phrasing and it probably commented in a way that downplayed concerns other people had.
  
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  - EarlGrey@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    You’d be wrong then.
    
    “Why exactly would anyone want this?”
    
    “CEC, that alone sold it for me”
    
    points -30
    
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    Credibly_Human@lemmy.world ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I just can’t take your word for it. It doesn’t pass my smell test and I haven’t seen it.
    
    Neither phrase even turns up results.
    
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A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

With all of that being said, it seems to me it’s very likely it will be around 800 but less than 1000

maybe more with the way ram prices are skyrocketing… because even though it comes out next year, they are probably being manufactured and stockpiled right now.

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- Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Yup, like I said, it depends on how prices will fluctuate, my guess is what the price would be if it was being sold now, if RAM increases they would have to compensate for it.
  
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  - A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Yep, and since it has both system ram AND dedicated gddr graphics ram… its gonna be double dipped in the price gouging by the memory manufacturers
    
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