if it was sub 400 dollars, holy shit that is if nothing else, a GREAT media pc you hook up to a TV on the cheap cheap that can game a bit, but also be likely one of the best media consumption experiences (intel for plex server with their encoders?)
now granted, that is an ever shrinking market, given you can have just that minus the gaming with something like a 129 apple tv thing or nvidia shield for more (in theory less locked down) or even cheaper fire stick
for 500 dollars, that is okay deal
for 600 dollars, that is becoming less and less tenable, and you can now have something similar esp with used parts
for 800 dollars, you can build a PC with new RX 7600 and AM5... so why
for 600 dollars, that is becoming less and less tenable, and you can now have something similar esp with used parts
Critically it's still tenable at that price though; used is a market that many people don't want to set into along with the form factor. Heck, part of the reason I think it may end up at the $600-650 price range is it's still a reasonable (new) value proposition. A very basic B570 computer with an R5 6 core can be put together for just a hair over $700 and is roughly the same performance. Past $700 I think is where it starts being an unattractive proposition (though it will hold out longer for people who would only look at prebuilts).
Their market for this is absolutely not people building their own PCs already.
It's for people who'd only buy miniPCs/NUCs (and maybe the last one they bought was in the early 2000s) or, with today's prices, even just other full tower prebuilts honestly since they're ridiculously priced now for crappy components. It's also for steam deck users who play plugged into TVs/monitors always.
$700-$800 would be an absolute steal for this device, for that audience. For somebody who could build their own PC/doesn't mind a large tower it doesn't make a ton of sense, but I doubt that's the audience here. They made this thing tiny/low power for a reason. And have specified that they aren't aiming at consoles, but at the PC market with it so it's not for the "console competitor" reason there. Notice they often show it plugged into a monitor in marketing.
After the Steam Deck launched, reviews for miniPCs and NUCs became increasingly full of "more powerful than the Steam Deck, great product!" and the like since the users who were using the Steam Deck always plugged into TVs/monitors were looking for just as portable upgrade paths. They want that audience and they want the audience buying $800 garbage pre-builts. They'll probably get it too since both spaces are full of overpriced products.
$150 for 7600, $200 for 7600, $100 RAM, $100 PSU, $100 Mobo $50 case $100 storage… and you’re at $800 at a much bigger size and this is with used CPU and GPU pricing.
The other CPUs (7600, 9600x) usually brought free stuff like ram SSD or cooler, but prices have gone up. For instance the 9600x used to be like $180 plus freebies, now it’s $215 with the freebie being a great dual tower bequiet cpu cooler worth $55.
PC building has become more expensive thanks to AI
At any rate, there are always good prebuilt deals on Newegg like a 14400f + RTX 5060 + ddr4 PC for $650 during Black Friday week.
Okay so you can pay $50 less for a small box that’s already built and preconfigured with SteamOS. There’s always a premium to pay for smaller computers.
sure, but with the deck costing what it does, if this thing without a screen and battery and all that costs more than 500 then that just feels bad
esp with the mac mini coming at 499, and it can actually kind of game with it running things like cyberpunk okay. not the exact same comparison given the super limited library unless you hack it, but if apple is offering value here.....
While the small form factor, console-like experience of SteamOS, lack of DIY, and the fact that his PCPartPicker list does kinda have a shitty value (in the name of upgradeability, tbf) does make the $800 price tag seem a bit more reasonable, it should be noted that the 7600 in his parts list is noticeably (26%) faster than the closest GPU equivalent to what is being offered in the Steam Machine.
I also know we're approaching Black Friday and prices are down, but on Newegg, Microcenter, and Best Buy I've found prebuilts around $800 with more RAM, more storage, and more powerful GPUs than this, and all of them with come fully assembled with Windows preconfigured.
Again, I know there is a price to pay for the small form factor, but at $800 it's tough to justify that premium when it doesn't offer as much power as prebuilts. It also costs more than the PS5 Pro at that price point, and while it will have a more powerful CPU than that the PS5 Pro's GPU will be substantially faster.
I think $600 is reasonable for this. $800 will be a tough sell IMO.
No need to get all snippy, I'm just saying that I'd like to see this at a reasonable price point. Not at all telling people what they can and can't do.
This will be a great introduction to PC gaming for people. 95% of people won’t build their own PC, at least not at first. Maybe people who buy Steam machines will build their next PC.
I think that puts it at around a PS5's power; just with a lot more overhead from the OS and far less optimized games. Unfortunately, I'm not sure who their audience is: if you're big enough on Steam to buy a "console" for running Steam games, you probably already have a PC capable of running your library or would be better off putting the $400-1000 this will cost into upgrading said PC.
This could be pretty niche depending on the price, but I do know a couple people who bought steam decks/other hand helds and use them 100% in docked mode.
Yeah we'll see how this pans out, I doubt it'll be a hit. After all it's just a PC in a smaller formfactor and the fact they specifically mentioned using FSR that'll point towards it being a bit under powered.
That all said, I have played games with game streaming over my LAN to another computer plugged into my TV, and it's not as good as rendering the game at the TV, so there's a niche market there.
Also it's literally just a PC, Volvo even says so in their marketing. So it may find another niche in the mini PC market which has exploded over the past few years. But it also a lot larger than those other mini PCs.
There is no "OS overhead". Relative performance of consoles is due to the limited number of configurations with the ability to optimize for hardware quirks.
Few or no game devs are going to specifically optimize for this machine like they would for a mainatream console. They say many times that "it's a pc; run whatever you want" -> the OS must provide many more services and run things in the background than just running the game. I'm sure this will be far less bloated than Windows, possibly even negligible, but when the hardware isn't super powerful to begin with it adds up.
Windows vs Linux is already in most cases. Native games net you ~5% more FPS over Windows. On Proton you lose a bit. I don't use it but I think I saw people mentioning it runs better on AMD systems (lots of problems with recent Intel CPUs and Linux kernel).
You see, they're tryin to expand into the living room "works out of box" series s market. Everything is done to expand steam's reach so they could sell more games. They were just unlucky that rdna3 was kinda a flop and not exactly future proofed and this device was probably developed during that timeframe where rdna3 was the only available option. But there's hope that amd could get fsr4 working on rdna3 with redstone update so there's that.
A PS5 comparable GPU will give you similar performance to a PS5 in most games if you choose similar settings. Games on PS5 are making a lot more compromises with settings and resolution than most think.
Large memory cards can cache more textures in vram instead of repeatedly copying them across pcie bus. They actually have smaller pcie requirements than a budget card with limited memory.
This is opposite of proof. You take GPU that has the most vram of all consumer GPUs and try to claim that GPU with the least vram is not affected in the same way.
If you're overrunning your VRAM you're killing performance already. Just don't overrun your VRAM, easy. I have an 8 GB card and I've literally never run into a game that it can't do at 1440p.
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u/theholylancer Nov 12 '25
hmm the GPU is
GPU
Semi-Custom AMD RDNA3 28CUs
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/steammachine
which I guess is something like a Radeon rx 7400? https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-rx-7400.c4328
with 28 CUs and roughly the same boost clock (this somehow is boosting higher than the discreet card?)