Discussing DAC's past

 So...DAC is short for Darializa Avila Chevelier, a communist who basically won a NYC house primary recently. And yes, I do mean COMMUNIST. Like, not socialist, COMMUNIST. We might have an outright communist house member here given she ran in a deep blue district where the primary is the real general election. And uh...let's discuss it. Because THIS lady? Yeah, she's pretty much the one situation where the centrists red scaring over progressives winning primaries might actually have a point.

Like, this person was praising flat out communist revolutionaries and crap. Especially non white ones, because hey, let's also combine that with an insufferable amount of intersectionality. Like, basically, they're not just a demsoc, they're a tankie who engages in the most obnoxious communist brainrot I've seen outside of reddit and outright communist countries where that brainrot is literally mandatory.

She has said she's distanced herself from those ideas somewhat, but much like with Graham Platner, how much has she distanced herself, REALLY?

She ran on a pretty socdem type platform, admittedly, and does align with me significantly on priorities, even advocating for a UBI (not sure how serious she is about that), so she seems good at first glance, it's only when the oppo research comes out that you realize she's totally NUTS. So idk. I dont know how to feel about her. Neither do a lot of dems. The centrists are screeching like angry chihuahuas at her for just existing, with some even saying we shouldn't seat her. Jeffries seems willing to accept her though, at least showing all that big tent rhetoric isn't just for show. 

Honestly, seating her is probably for the best. I think refusing to seat someone duly elected by their constituents is a crappy move, and likely to incite more division within the party (I probably would go off about it, communist or not). Let's face it, she's SIGNIFICANTLY less threatening than Trump and his ilk right now. And I do think there is SOME room for socialists in the tent. I would just like someone a bit less apologetic for literal communist revolutionaries. 

Like here's my take. It's fine to criticize capitalism. Hell, I'd echo DAC here in saying that Kapital is probably a good book people should read. Agree with it or not, it IS one of the earliest and most thorough critiques of capitalism. I myself have disagreements with Marx, which I have expressed on this blog, but yeah, it's good for its historical contributions to the debate. A bit dense and difficult to read, but eh, again, it kind of produced a huge worldview there. I'd actually say my worldview competes with Marxism's takes, being similar but differing ever so slightly on certain topics, leading to much different conclusions. 

So yeah. Would I feel comfortable voting for this person myself? I mean she isnt in my district, but I feel mixed. On the one hand, hey, an actual UBI supporter, at least in name only. I just wish they didnt engage in so much commie brain rot. Still, as long as she doesnt bring THAT crap to congress, right? Really, couldnt her district choose someone else? Like someone with similar ideas, but WASNT an out and out commie? Still, she was chosen, she is distancing herself from the most offensive positions, and she seems pretty based in her actual platform. So....give her a chance at least. We can always censure her later if she acts up. 

"But but, they'll turn on you!"

 A common argument I hear from centrists trying to talk me out of supporting DSA style candidate is that they'll "turn on me" when they seem me ideologically impure.

Idk what kind of argument this is supposed to be, but it's not convincing. Are centrists my ally? Do centrists support my goals? No. It's like they're entire existence is dedicated to explaining to me in 87 ways how a better world isn't possible, I shouldnt bother, I shouldn't try, no, I'm not getting good things, but I better vote for them anyway. I mean, that's pretty fricking hostile to me. Are centrists my friend? No, they're not. I actually consider them ideological enemies at this point.

Does that mean the DSA is any better? I mean, kind of? But also no. Here's the thing about the DSA. Yeah, they are pretty extreme. Yeah, they're very purity testy. And yeah, I fail their purity tests. I'm a "capitalist", I like UBI. I've seen those guys crap on Yang relentlessly and I understand that they might not like me either. But I am aware of these differences. And the same applies to them. They dont always pass my purity tests. They do better than most, but let's face it, I gotta grade on a curve because NO ONE, and I mean, NO ONE, gets a perfect score on my own tests. I could run for president myself and I'd be grading my own weaknesses as well. And someone like Bernie at best scores around like...80-85/100. 

WIth that said, my vote is transctional. I dont declare loyalty to any group or candidate. If anything, I'm just strategically voting to get what I think is CLOSEST to my goals. My own stances are pretty clear, Im lukewarm on leftists, yeah, I think sometimes their extreme social and foreign policy positions are cringe. Yeah, I dont even align with them entirely on economics. 

But at the same time, are YOU, THE CENTRISTS interested in achieving my goals? Hell no. And you guys clearly despise me, and I despise you. Really, it's just a matter of who I hate less, or like more. And guess what? You guys aint winning. When it comes to change vs no change, some progress vs none, I am pragmatic enough (ironically enough) to align with the faction that will get me closest to what I want. Doesn't mean that I have any illusions about how they view me, or how I view them. I've hashed out these views already. And I crap on both moderates AND leftists. Hell, I crap on everyone,, if you give me enough time. I'm a purity testy ###hole myself. I know I am. A bit more rational than most, but still, purity testy all the same. If you want me to vote for you, you gotta meet MY purity standards. Not the other way around. Again, I have metrics, I measure them. Hell, let's go over briefly why I side with DSA types over moderates.

Basic income

Neither faction supports it. Progressives might be a little more willing in practice, but yeah. Both centrists and leftists are hostile to it: THey might support a CTC expansion but that's it.

Centrists- 2/10

Leftists- 3/10

Universal healthcare

I currently support a strong public option. Centrists will support a weak one at best, or ACA expansions, and most of the time do F all to actually advance that. Progressives support single payer and dogmatically so. I actually like single payer in practice. However, I just back away from it because I prefer UBI. 

Centrists- 4/10

Leftists- 10/10

Economics

Centrists are variable, sometimes offering policies I like, sometimes not. I have to admit they've gotten better on my other priorities and I sometimes align with them more than leftists, but leftists do tend to more strongly support my secondary new new deal priorities. 

Centrists- 7/10

Leftists- 10/10

Social issues

I really dont align perfectly with either faction on social issues. Even centrists tend to lean too obnoxiously into the woke stuff, and tend to be too extreme on guns and stuff at times. They might also offer weird compromises on religious social issues, although this is increasingly rare these days. Leftists tend to lose the plot, go too deep into like "abolish the police" land and can be mega cringe though. I'll go with the centrists here but neither are perfect.

Centrists- 8/10

Leftists- 6/10

Foreign policy

Centrists tend to be near perfect. I would concede the Israel issue somewhat to the left these days, but leftists suck at foreign policy and tend to have an unworkable foreign policy. They mean well but they lose the plot.

Centrists- 9/10

Leftists- 2/10

Ideology/Worldview

Centrists are often a rather poor match, as to some degree they seem conservative in nature and I do tend to have a progressive flair. In a way, despite being practical on solutions I do think like a leftist to some degree. I guess I have a partial match with centrists, but I also tend to a bit better with the left. On economics we both want big things, but we dont always want the same things for the same reasons. On social issues and foreign policy, they get brain worms at times. neither are perfect, and both have pros and cons, but I tend to align a little better with the left.

Centrists- 10/20

Leftists- 14/20

Dedication to progressive goals

Leftists tend to believe in the crap they advocate for. That's why they purity test, they are ride or die on policies and if you flip flop, you will feel their wrath. Centrists....you can never be sure what they're for. They say one thing, do another, and then attack you for wanting things in the first place. Theres a reason I despise many centrists. Cant trust them at all.

Centrists- 2/10

Leftists- 10/10

Experience/Competence

This is where centrists shine and leftists crap the bed. Many centrists have a wealth of experience and institutional knowledge where they know what they're doing and they run a tight ship. Many leftists are green, inexperienced, and dont know wtf they're doing.

Centrists- 10/10

Leftists- 0/10

Electability

Well, the electability debate is out. I would give a slight edge to centrists, but I think it depends on the race and district. Sometimes progressives ARE more electable. Sometimes centrists are. However, I will say this, to win, you gotta run WITHIN the democratic party. And half the time progressives don't. So I'll give an edge to the centrists here.

Centrists- 6/10

Leftists- 3/10

Total

Centrists- 58/100

Leftists- 58/100

This is not intentional, but yeah, they get the same score and have different strengths and weaknesses. Centrists are more institutional, are more pragmatic, but often lack ambition on economics. Progressives have more passion, loyalty to big ideas, but they tend to lose the plot outside of economics and often times...on economics. Seriously guys, no one wants actual socialism but you guys. 

Anyway, why do I go with the left then? Because my top priorities tend to be weighed more heavily to top priorities, so in the event of a close match, Im gonna focus on which side advances my goals better.

Also, this is basically a stereotypical thing. Individual candidate quality can change this. I mean, I was imagining one of the most unhinged types i leftists here. If you get someone more well rounded like Sanders, this goes up to like 80. You can also improve with a moderate if they support good policies, but theyre typically only gonna top out in the 60s.

Either way, it depends. 

But yeah, I know what Im voting for. I have no illusions about it. I dont fully trust lefties. I also dont trust centrists. I think centrists are more well rounded outside of economics, yes, but at the same time, leftists have the big ideas and passion for implementing them that I want from people. So....push comes to shove, I think that's why I support progressives over centrists. That and I was rather uncharitable to the progressives and was assuming DAC or green party level brainrot here. Again, progressives have a much higher ceiling when competent. 

Centrist democrats condemn "socialism" in new "pledge to America"

 So, 13 democrats decided to condemn socialism in their new "pledge to America". *rolls eyes*

This is a virtue signal, and one of the worst kinds. They extol the values of "hard work" and "growth." They condemn the evils of "socialism" as they understand it, insisting we'll never be a socialist country. This basically comes after 3 socialists won primaries in New York. 

Again, I personally dont like socialism myself. I aint huffing whatever THESE guys are on, with their hard work hugboxing, but I ain't big on eliminating capitalism. However, I'll be frank, sometimes it seems like it's only the socialists who actually have a systemic analysis criticizing capitalism properly, and proposing solutions. Many of their solutions arent even socialist in nature, but social democratic. Hell, they propose similar stuff to me. That DAC chick who won in NYC wants basic income and medicare for all. And yeah, I'm now aware she's absolutely coo coo for coco puffs on foreign policy to put it lightly, but yeah, on economics, sometimes it seems like socialists are the only ones doing anything. 

Meanwhile what do these centrist democrats do? Circlejerk all day about work ethic. Constantly miss the point that the economy isnt working, don't do anything, tell us we gotta vote for them or else because they're the only game in town, sign weird bipartisan virtue signals against socialism like 3 times a year, and then when socialists start winning, because they're the only ones who wanna do F all to solve the problems it seems, they get all weird and condemn them for it while doubling down on some of the worst aspects of the existing system, and acting like they're good things.

And I have one thing to say to these people. Screw you, get out of the democratic party and join the republicans already. I've been saying it for years, these guys are republican lites. They literally have ideals closer to republicans than us. Literally. THese are REPUBLICAN PARTY VALUES they're virtue signalling about. if I wanted this stuff, I'd vote republican. I want the democrats to CRITICIZE the system and actually propose fricking solutions. I'm not saying you have to be SOCIALIST. Again, I'm explicitly NOT a socialist. I consider myself a "human centered capitalist." here. Not quite in the same way Yang is, revisiting his stuff, but close to it. I basically understand all that work ethic and opportunity crap aint doing it for us and that yeah, we SHOULD want the government to do more. Again, if I wanted laissez faire economics, ID VOTE REPUBLICAN! But I don't, which is why i LEFT the republican party and joined the democrats. So yeah, if youre gonna do this crap in 2026 when income inequality is at record highs, the job creators arent creating jobs, and everything is prohibitively expensive, fricking be honest about it and get the hell out of the party. 

The reason people are critical of capitalism and increasingly supportive of LITERAL SOCIALISTS is because the democrats arent doing their job as the left wing party. Thse guys SHOULD be pointing out the problems with capitalism and FIXING THEM. The fact that they're NOT is why people are being attracted to radicals. When they're the only ones calling that out and are willing to fix it, people vote for them. Who ever could've fricking guessed? 

Worthless, these people are worthless. These democrats are not just a hugbox of uselessness, but even worse, when someone actually attempts to do stuff, they condemn it. I hope someone primaries all 13 of these guys and throws them out on their ###. Hell, I'll put it in capitalist terms for them to understand. The voters are the bosses, you guys are the hired help. Do your ####ing job, or get ####ing fired already. Sick of this ####. 

I don't want socialism, but I want change

 So, there's a lot of talk about the rise of "democratic socialists" in the democratic party. Some centrists are kind of missing the point, and saying the most deranged crap, going on about brown shirts and how radical these guys are and blah blah blah. Shut up, you sound like republicans. Really, this "leftist derangement syndrome" is insane and honestly, most of these guys are basically just socdems in practice, so you're tilting at windmills over nothing while looking completely ridiculous.

But some are kind of getting it, and I wanna discuss that. Look, the democratic party has been useless for 10 years now. In 2016, a lot of us wanted change. But then we were told we couldn't get change, and that we had to vote blue no matter who. Every election these guys would gloat and act like the most insufferable people on the planet, being such sore winners that it made us almost, kinda want MAGA to win. Because you guys suck that much. Seriously. 

And now we're wondering why socialists are taking over the democratic party. You could only hold back the wave for so long, and after you lost in 2024, people got tired of your crap. So now people are electing leftists. 

And I'm gonna be honest, I don't want "leftism." I'm not a socialist, I'm a social libertarian, which is basically adjacent to social liberalism or social democracy. I want policies like UBI, M4A (in theory, public option in practice), free college, student debt forgiveness, action on climate change, a housing program, and a shorter work week. 

I've been told for years all of this isn't pragmatic and we gotta settle for incremental change while you act more useless than a cable guy from south park. Well, that caused some to radicalize into literal socialists, I didn't follow this trend since I already had an established ideology, but when change doesn't come from within, it's gonna come from outside. When we don't make the necessary changes to our society to make the system work, people are gonna be attracted to more radical candidates....sometimes too radical.

Now, I'm not convinced many of the people running this year are "too radical." Abdul El Sayed, not too radical. People scream ERMAHGERD HE CAMPAIGNED WITH HASAN, but then he just wants everyone to have universal healthcare and for the ethnic cleansing in palestine to end. Graham Platner has some reddit communist ideas, but he seems to have disavowed them, again, running as a socdem. DAC in NYC who everyone is losing their crap about, one of the three who won the other night, people are making a big deal about crap she said on twitter a while back, but again, running more or less as a socdem, on policy I like like M4A, UBI, a higher minimum wage, etc. 

And that's the kind of stuff we need to discuss. I LIKE the fact that we're discussing this stuff. I like the fact that people who wanna take action on it are winning. Now, not all of them want the exact policies I want. I admit that. A standard socdem or DSA type is probably gonna abandon UBI and go all in with M4A and a GND instead. Standard practice for these guys. But when the options are "change" and "not change", well, I'm gonna vote for change. 

And that's where I'm at.

Look, I dont want "socialism" either, and I do think that long term, the prospect of a left wing tea party could radicalize like the right wing one did, to the point we get leftists massively out of step with the american public and reality. It's one of the reasons I think centrists ignore these guys, give an inch and they'll take a mile. But at the same time, the democrats have been resisting the leftward shift that they NEED to take. They are the only ones who have answers, the right doesn't, the centrists don't either. And we do need some form of second "new deal" here. Maybe it wont be UBI. Maybe it will be a more standard fare of policies. But we need SOMETHING. And we are here because right now, the socialists are the only ones who seem willing to make the changes we need. I probably wont align myself with them long term, especially if they radicalize into full blown communists or some crap, but right now, their policies are refreshing. They're running on stuff like a higher minimum wage, medicare for all, a green new deal, etc. And yeah. If the centrist wing of the party doesn't have an answer for that other than their typical hugbox of uselessness, they're gonna lose. 

With that said, this shift in the democratic party is a very good thing. if it shakes things up, and forces the party to reckon with what the future of the US should look like and what changes should be made, good. As I said, I'm a bit more moderate than the progressive wing in some ways, while being more progressive than the centrists. And quite frankly, whichever wing is closer to my goals is the wing I'm gonna go with in any given election. 

So yeah. I'm gonna join the common emerging narrative that centrists need to wake tf up, realize that they can't win on "nothing", and that they need to actually propose some serious legislation to appease the public here. Btw, this is also why we've been losing to MAGA, because they come off as more change agents than democrats are. And they're basically running on trickle down economics. So yeah, either get off your butts and start doing stuff, or you're gonna let the socialists win, and from there, idk where we'll go because yeah, i do see the same risk of a tea party esque escalation trap like the right has been engaged with over the past 15 or so years. 

As I always say, there are 3 forces in politics: progressives, conservatives, regressives. The left are progressives, the right are regressives. The real "conservatives" are the middle. Now, those "conservatives" will always exist. They'll serve as a moderating force on either the regressives, which represents the republican party, or the progressives, who represent this democratic tea party type wave. I'd rather we operate with a paradigm of progressives and conservatives, rather than conservatives and regressives. When the ideological spectrum is neoliberals and MAGA, it's conservatives vs regressives. When it's leftists vs centrists, it's progressives vs conservatives. Those moderate conservative types NEED to operate as a moderating force on the progressive force's worst impulses. But we still need the progressives trying to make society better, or else we risk stagnation and regression. it's all a balance. But when that balance is knocked out of whack, then what happens is you get radicals who keep getting more extreme, the more "polite society" resists making necessary changes. FDR doing the new deal wasn't just to make the american people better off, it was to head off support for both the fascists and the communists, who were at risk of taking over the country during the great depression. We need the democrats to actually do their job as the more progressive party, but not radically so, if we actually want the best results for society. 

And yeah that's how I see it. 

Hey look, this guy is too good for arguing on the internet now!

 ....See? Nobody cares.

 So, this is a new genetically modified skeptic video. And idk, I didn't vibe with this one at all. It just came off as like "arguing on the internet is a waste of time, i could have argued on piers morgan and instead spent 20 hours waiting to testify at the capitol! And idk, he looked so fricking drained. I know I would be. Like "oh god, why am I here? I can be arguing with steve bannon right now." 

But yeah. He literally had an opportunity, argue with steven bannon or go out into "the real world" and do something there. And like many who go out into said "real world", they come back and act all super self righteous for it, acting like arguing on the internet is wasting time and blah blah blah.

now, sometimes it is a waste, and even i tend to get a little too wrapped up in it sometimes. Like I spend too much time arguing with people, and blogging about it, when I could be doing other stuff. but you know, someone has to do it, it's outreach, and it can make a difference. Especially if, like GMS, you have actual reach with your channel. Like dont ever think, if you got 900k subscribers youre wasting your time. Also dont think youre wasting your time if youre debating ideology. That stuff is important as it can define movements. Like, me crapposting on reddit might have actually helped eventually inspire some of andrew yang's philosophy. If you get in with the right people, you can make a difference. 

if anything, for all the talk of "real world" activism changing things, i dont see how. And this is the disconnect I think a lot of people have with this stuff. Like Biden would always talk like he accomplished this, he accomplished that. but at the end of the day, a lot of people are like "did it actually tangibly make my life better? no". I mean, when you got people working all day, their work is their world. And most tend to define their world through said work as a result. But that also leaves people very distracted, and stuck in that little island of life, separated from everyone else. So people spend 40 hours a week working or more, they go home, they're too exhausted to do anything, they get a paycheck, and what do they notice? Rent going up, healthcare going up, groceries going up. And they get angry and vote for fascists like donald trump. because they dont know how to fix it, they see the democrats arent, so they vote for republicans. 

Often times, the right news guy, if they watch the news, or youtube personality is the only way to get through to them. They dont have time to think stuff through themselves so they consume stuff.

but then you guy this guy doing community stuff and its like YEAH THIS IS MAKING A DIFFERENCE. I mean, I wanna quote Thomas Paine here:

 There are, in every country, some magnificent charities established by individuals. It is, however, but little that any individual can do, when the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is considered. He may satisfy his conscience, but not his heart. He may give all that he has, and that all will relieve but little. It is only by organizing civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pulleys, that the whole weight of misery can be removed.

 And that's the thing, this itself is a trap. This idea that because you're doing "real world" charity work, youre making a difference. I mean, you might help SOME people, I'm not saying you wont. But are you gonna solve problems? Like on a systemic level? No. I mean, you might think arguing on the internet is like being the kid brother playing on a controller that isnt plugged in, but so is a lot of that stuff. It doesnt fix problems. it makes you feel like you are, but honestly, it's just too much work to solve problems. You need a systemic solution. And when I think of the most influential moments in history, like Jesus with his sermon on the mount, or various philosophers with their texts, or people like Rush Limbaugh, influencers MATTER. And we on the left need influencers. As some have been saying, we need our own Joe Rogan. We need people willing to put on that suit of armor and go out there and slay the dragon...which in this case means debate the fascists. 

I'm not going to say that everyone arguing on the internet is doing so effectively. Im not saying it changes that many minds. A lot of the time, it is a relatively thankless task. And maybe for some, it doesnt get the old dopamine centers in the brain going like real world interaction does. But yeah. Idk, as I see it, someone has to do it. otherwise the other side wins the ideological war to change peoples' minds. 

We need people who fulfill different roles. Some are good for in person real world things, but hey, dont knock the online crap, dont knock the arguing. Idk, it just comes off as self righteous. And then them talking about struggling and acting like they made a difference because they had to take care of a screaming kids or something, and how REWARDING that stuff is....ugh...no, can we NOT? Again, it's good SOME people get off on that, but I don't. And maybe I'm too terminally online here, but that's how I view it. Like, I just don't see the point. I dont think I would get enjoyment from that. I would find it very stressful. So stressful I'd probably be like "man I could be arguing on the internet right now instead of doing this." Or, you know, not just arguing, but you get the point. Point is, idk, I LIKE my quiet life of nto having to do a lot of in person things. Like, I watched another video where Linus worked at a tech mall in china for a day. And idk, again, I would find that stressful. Even if I like computers and could possibly enjoy troubleshooting stuff or doing tech support, I could see the pressure of the time sensitive nature of the job, the compulsion to perform quickly and well to be overwhelming. it would suck the enjoyment out of it. And yet, people act like this stuff is fulfilling, it just isn't to me.

Maybe I'm just different due to likely being autistic, but yeah.

I'm not saying this stuff to dunk on anyone who actually enjoys IRL stuff. I mean, we need people who do different roles, I just look at GMS and his choices and Im like "oh god, I'd rather do debate crap any day of the week than this crap." Even if I get burned out on it sometimes, and I DO get burnout from doing it too much, trying too hard, trying to force things, etc., I do get compassion fatigue and dillahunty syndrome, but a lot of that is because I dont really take care of myself and disconnect and chill sometimes.  And some of it is because people are genuinely morons. Idk, like, I should try to chill out and do other things sometimes too. Instead of feeling a compulsion to perform 24/7. Even though I hate the protestant work ethic, I get very work ethicy sometimes in my own life and I end up pushing myself too hard, rather than letting myself be rejuvenated and refreshed from breaks and occasional disconnects.

But that's a lot different than being like "debating is totally a waste of time, so why not engage in IRL charity work instead?" Again, if you're an extroverted person, maybe you like that stuff. I would find that to be hell. So nah, back to my cave with me. I'm good, GMS, really. You do you, though. 

Gaming on a 6650 XT in 2026

 So, this isn't gonna be a hard benchmark video or anything, but I get annoyed by comments i see online. ERMAHGERD THE STEAM MACHINE IS A PAPERWEIGHT, YOU CAN'T RUN GAMES ON 8 GB VRAM! and crap like that. Uh...no, it's not a paperweight. It's perfectly capable for today's games. It's not ideal, but it's not unusable. 

I mean, I've games on crap systems before. I used to game on integrated. I've pushed old laptops to their limits. Ive occasionally had to go back and test old GPUs as newer ones died and i had to wait for a replacement. I know what true "low end" gaming is like. I know what it's like trying to squeeze every frame out of a laughably inadequate system is like. No. THe steam machine is not a paperweight. It's not great value for the money, and I'll even admit, it's not futureproof. But acting like you CAN'T game on it is ridiculous. 

I would know more than most what a steam machine is actually like because my daily driver is functionally equivalent to one. My main GPU is a 6650 XT. it's roughly as powerful, has 8 GB RAM. In practice, it's...give or take, as capable as a steam machine. 

If anything, the rest of my machine far exceeds the steam machine. I got a i9 12900k with 32 GB DDR5 RAM. i dont keep XMP on as it's still under warranty and I quite frankly dont NEED the performance bump, but I also used to game on a 7700k with it, which is a bit weaker than the steam machine CPU. I can discuss my experiences from 2023 running it that way, but yeah, CPU bottlenecks are annoying. 

So, first of all, let's establish the standard. The standard is basically...60+ FPS, 1080p. Beyond that, I don't care how I get there. If I can run stuff on ultra, I'll run on ultra, if I have to run stuff on low, I will on low. If I gotta turn FSR on, I'll turn it on, but I prefer not to.

Generally speaking, this is a low-medium card. I'll be blunt. It does not run most games at high or ultra settings these days. I mean, just to give you an idea how games run on it:

Doom the dark ages- low settings, FSR on, but with sharpening to make it look native. I tried running it at 60 native but I did get some hitching. Part of this seemed to be VRAM, but part of it also seemed to be the fact that the game just runs poorly on all RX 6000 series cards for some reason. Not the first time doom did that to me. I know Doom 2016 ran weirdly like this back on my GTX 760 back in the day. ID tech games seem to run like magic on new cards, very well optimized, but on older ones, performance is a bit borderline. Still, it runs, and it was playable. And it wasnt a bad experience. And given this is one of THE toughest to run games, yeah. It kinda sets the baseline.

Battlefield 6- This is my "main game", it looks amazing, and I spent a lot of time tweaking it to my liking. originally I ran like medium/medium-high, but I'd run into a VRAM limitation where I'd start dropping down to 30 FPS every so often, so after significant tweaking and turning future frame rendering on, it runs at like 100 on average generally, minimums in the 80s, which is how I like it. It's low-medium mostly, but with high textures, ironically. But yeah. Looks great, runs great, all native resolution. 

Call of Duty Black Ops 7- While previous CODs typically ran at high or ultra, this one runs closer to medium. And I did have to use an upscaler to get the most out of it, otherwise it would hover around 60 FPS, when in reality, for a game like this I'd like it to run above like, 80 at all times, so I ended up settling on fidelity FX CAS. Gives it a native like look but with the performance of upscaling. Anyway, runs great. 

Outer Worlds 2- Native resolution, medium low, runs around I'd say, 80ish FPS. Havent checked recently, but yeah. Could get more if you upscale. You can ALWAYS get more if you upscale. if you upscale enough you can get insane FPS on this card in most games. BUT...it looks horrible so native it is. And yeah, that limits me, again, to low-medium settings. 

Heck, that's kind of the trend with everything relatively demanding. Wanna play, say, starfield? low medium. Callisto protocol, which came free with the card? Low medium.

Dont get me wrong, older games run great. Typically high-ultra at high FPS with no ray tracing, but yeah. Great experience. Even cyberpunk runs like 60+ on like high-ultra without ray tracing. 

And yeah, that IS a necessary compromise, these older AMD architectures have poor RT abilities, so yeah, you cant really ray trace in most games while getting above 20-30 FPS. Of course, nvidia cards, or cards with 8 GB RAM in general don't really do great either. You kinda need to pay 2-3x as much for a card to be able to reasonably do that stuff.

Which kinda brings me back to a point I've always noticed on hardware forums. Most of the people who post on them these days are not scrappy middle class buyers with 3060/4060 tier hardware like your median gamer on steam hardware survey. They're these hardcore enthusiasts with 1440p or 4k setups, they want high FPS (120FPS+), and they often wanna play with ray tracing. And, of course, if you try to game on ultra at a high resolution with ray tracing, yeah, this card is gonna get CRUSHED. It's literally not designed for that. It never was. It was a 1080p oriented card released 4-5 years ago now (6650 XT is 4 years old, but the underlying architecture was released in 2021, with the 6600 XT originally being a $400 1080p card competing against the 3060 ti). It's always had inferior ray tracing, it doesnt have DLSS, and it didnt make sense at $400, which is why it quickly went down to $230-250ish just a year or two later. And at that price, it was great for those of us who saw the writing on the wall with our aging 1060/580 type GPUs. And honestly, it's been a decent card. it's not perfect. The 8 GB VRAM buffer is the worst aspect of it, but still, it runs stuff on low-medium perfectly fine, and if youre like me and you're fine just playing the game at a decent FPS and getting SOME decent experience out of it, it's fine. 

I will say it's had some quirks though. While the problems of AMD drivers are exaggerated, problems exist. Like when I first got it, I decided to use Crysis and Crysis 3 as benchmarks. And Cry engine does NOT like AMD cards. I know this was true back in the day as well in some regards, but yeah, it did stutter a lot more than I hoped. Now, with crysis 1, I blame the CPU. I ran it on a 7700k, and was HEAVILY CPU bottlenecked. And that's kind of the issue with crysis as a benchmark in the modern day. The game wasnt designed with multithreading in mind so basically it runs on 2 threads and the rest of your CPU is idle, and the CPU is now the benchmark. And while I was getting like 120 FPS, it felt like a stuttery mess, because CPU benchmarks DO feel like that. heck, COD games like MWII, MWIII, and BF games like BF1, BF5, and BF2042 all ran with a horrible stutter on it simply because I had a CPU bottleneck early on. This alleviated itself after getting the 12900k, proving it was indeed the poor CPU that held me back, but yeah. Would a 3600x tier CPU do better? A little, but I do suspect that it might be too little in some instances too. You dont really wanna game with a CPU bottleneck, and for as much hate a weak GPU gets, I'd take a weaker GPU like a 6650 XT over a weaker CPU like a 3600x or 7700k these days. Because at least with the GPU, the games mostly feel smooth and can be scaled to the GPU in question, as long as it's not horribly weak or outdated. CPUs, you run games at that frame rate and if you dont like it, tough. It's one of the reason I got such a bonkers CPU with such a "weak" GPU. The other reason being microcenter deals. Seriously, $400 for the CPU, motherboard, AND RAM. A typical CPU upgrade runs $500ish when you do that, and that's for a mid range build. $400 is like a budget upgrade, $300 being ultra budget, and $600 being more premium. So....this isn't really out of sync money wise with the price I aimed for.  But I digress.

Another issue I had with the AMD side of this card was the game delta force. It's basically a F2P Battlefield 2042 type title, it's pretty good, highly recommend it if you cant afford BF6 and want a BF experience. But yeah, it kinda ran weird on AMD cards for a while. It got better over time, but yeah, there was a certain stutter that seemed related to AMD drivers and yeah. It did make the frame pacing highly inconsistent. 

Now, for a lot of steam machine buyers, they're likely not gonna play these kinds of titles. As people can tell, I like playing multiplayer FPS. But steam hardware aint good for that. You normally need a native windows environment due to anti cheat, and half of the above games won't even run on a steam machine running steam OS. Speaking of which, what kinds of games do steam machine buyers play? Well, a lot of people attracted to the deck seem to play indie games. They play relatively simple, low requirement 3D games like subnautica and stuff. Ya know, stuff that runs on 10 year old hardware just fine. So....if one of those super weird, trendy niche SFFPC buyers who dont care about playing the best, you just want a living room experience playing low spec games, yeah, this machine is overkill. 

As for how futureproof it is. How long is a 6650 XT tier card going to last? Under normal circumstances, no RAMpocalypse, I'd be aiming for 2027 to replace it. I'd expect the 6000 series nvidia cards and their AMD equivalent to be out by then, and hopefully we'll get a decent bump over the 5060/9060 XT, with 12-16 GB VRAM becoming standard. Honestly, I prefer to upgrade when I can double my performance, and my next card is probably going to REQUIRE more VRAM. Seriously, when I think about what's gonna kill my current card's viability, it's not the raw power. It's the VRAM, and probably AMD's shoddy driver support for older architectures. Keep in mind I got a 6000 series card, whereas the steam deck is 7000 series. Despite the 6650 XT and 7600 being functionally about the same, AMD has been seemingly leaning toward sunsetting support on the 6000 series earlier than the 7000 series. Which is...well...an AMD issue. They're infamous for that. But still. The point is, when I look at future titles and this GPU starting to show its age, it's not the raw power that's gonna be the biggest issue. I mean, you can always scale down the resolution more and more, and I dont see a huge jump in power any time soon, even with "next gen consoles" around the corner (given the economic situation). It's the VRAM that ultimately becomes the factor of "yeah, either this GPU runs the game fine or it's a stuttery 15 FPS experience." It's ultimately driver support that determines "will this game even start?"  

Now, given the fact that even before RAMpocalypse, you were looking at $350 just to get more than 8 GB VRAM, and even the base 9060 XT and the 5060 both having 8 GB,  it's possible that 8 GB was gonna be the standard for running a game for another 2 years or so, but I think that might be extended further given the crisis and the fact that next gen consoles are likely going to have a several year phase in period. It would be a gut punch to anyone who bought a current gen 8 GB card to not get support. Still....I know how these things go historically and uh...remember the 960 2 GB? At this point, Im sitting here on the equivalent of the 660 ti in 2015, and people are buying 960s. Now, maybe if you could afford that fabled 970, you'd be good for a while (equivalent of buying say, a 5070 today), but below a certain price range? Yeah, you're boned. And right now, you need to pay around $450 to get a decent GPU that isnt 8 GB (intel notwithstanding). 

So yeah. I jsut cant see them requiring 12 GB for games in the next, say, 2 years or so. Like HARD requiring it. It would screw over much of the existing PC market with no real affordable replacement. So with that said, I'd expect the steam deck to be relevant for 2 years at least.

Still....is $1050 a good deal for a machine that might lose its relevance 3-4 years from now? Hell no. A $1k PC should last, I'd say, about 4-6 years without too many issues. The Steam Machine is using what amounts to 3 year old mid range parts NOW (comparing to the 7600). Assuming a 5-6 year lifespan, that's 2-3 years left. 

But at the same time, I'm just trying to prove that, yeah, you can game on it. Some people are acting like this is obsolete TODAY, and it's a paperweight TODAY, and that just ain't true. It will be eventually, but if we wait long enough, so will everything. I'd say the steam machine's hardware is dated, I wouldnt recommend buying it at the price it's at, but can you game on it right now? Yes. It'll probably be fine until we get next gen consoles and we see a rapid increase in system requirements that goes along with that. Which...we might see next year, but I honestly dont think they'll push the requirements too hard until people can actually afford the hardware to run the next gen games. 

Again, I'd say it'll be fine for probably 2 years. After that it gets iffy.  

Contrasting Yang's ideology with my own

 Just as I don't fit exclusively within the DSA led progressive wing of the democratic party, neither do I fit exclusively into Yang's ideology either. Both of us have similarities, but we have major differences.

Core similarities

Both of us are members of basic income's third wave, ie, the wave of support that happened after the 2008 financial crisis pushed us toward new solutions to deal with the economy.

Both of us recognize the current jobs based system isn't working. Both of us are for UBI. Both of us were initially for medicare for all but shifted in a more public optiony direction. Both of us are for "human centered capitalism." We seem pretty similar, but we're also much different.

Working class vs entrepreneurial class

Perhaps the biggest difference is our backgrounds. I'm from a more lower middle class background, and in my adulthood, Ive become a bit of a self described champion of the working class. I come at the topics of economic change from a left populist standpoint, combining the class consciousness aspect of things with a more reformist, capitalist outlook. But the whole point of these policies and ideas is to challenge the left. Yang sees himself more as a moderate and a problem solver. I'm less compromising and more ideological, he's more compromising and pragmatic. Basically, I'm more radical, and he's more moderate.

Human centered capitalism

For me, human centered capitalism is a philosophy. It's based in humanism, and defines my ideological goals. It challenges the existing worldview based on fundamentalist christian hegemony and the protestant work ethic, and is intended to be a counter to it, citing that human institutions exist to serve us, work is merely a means to an end, and gee maybe we shouldnt spend all of our time working and focus on things other than GDP than growth.

Yang's take is a bit more...surface level. Its like came into contact with some iteration of my ideas via scott santens and used it in a more pragmatic way. He still wants to downplay GDP and have human centered institutions, but his big goal was to push his american scorecard thing, representing his more pragmatic technocratic background, whereas my goal was an ideological recentering of our institutions in a way to serve us better.

On work

For Yang, work is generally a good thing. He fundamentally believes in the American dream and that work gives people purpose and structures their lives. He just understands that work isn't working and we need some way to take care of people as we automate jobs and the job markets are disrupted.

I'm more explicitly anti work. I want to actually move away from our obsession with work. It's part of the reason my human centered capitalist vision is designed as it is. It's designed explicitly to reorient how we approach the economy morally, and to break all that protestant work ethic nonsense.

I recognize that no matter how ambitious Yang is on the economy, that the powers that be will resist his policy prescriptions. Because we got a huge moral problem with work. Yang is a little too naive and practical for his own good, not understanding this. Anyone who has studied the issue thoroughly knows the issue isnt whether we CAN make a world with less work, the real question is whether that's actually desirable. For me it is, for those in charge it isn't. Even Yang seems to struggle with this, given how we've been brainwashed as a society to be pro work, and given his entrepreneurial nature, i dont think he's truly against work. This is why he's experimented with ideas like "social credit" (not China's social credit, but an alternative currency for doing odd jobs) and stuff. He actually sees the idea of men who don't work as sad and thinks their lives will go badly because humans fundamentally need work. Meanwhile, I see the aspects of the current system that try to coerce people into work. So my focus is on changing the social stigma around not working, making it more acceptable, and crafting a society that allows people to opt out. So my vision is more transformative than Yang's. 

UBI and healthcare

Yang's policy expertise (or lack thereof) kind of shows through with his policy ideas. He developed his UBI assuming that the wealthy would stop hiring people and we can't rely on income taxes. So he funds it via a consumption tax. I fund mine on an income tax, seeing it more as a redistribution from the rich to the poor, and understanding that these MFers will always create new jobs for people to do. They wont be good jobs, and they'll pay poorly, but UBI for me, is intended to work around these tendencies. Again, Yang just sees UBI as a pragmatic solution to the problems of the current economy.

On healthcare, we shifted to a public option for different reasons. he got scared off of the logistics of shifting. I dont think the logistics are a problem as any plan would have a reasonable phase in. Even my public option would be similar to the early phase ins to single payer, I just stop at it being a public option and dont ultimately outlaw private insurance or force everyone onto the public plan. 

I see Yang as not knowing what he's doing a lot of the time. he comes up with ideas, doesn't know how to implement them, does it poorly and backs away from stuff. I know what I'm doing, and make my decisions a bit more strategically and with intent. Just the benefit of understanding the issues and the policies more deeply. 

On ideology and compromise

 Due to my working class background and humanist ideology, and desire to crush the republican party and its current ideological hegemony, I'm less likely to compromise. I know what I want and my goal is to get it and win. yang....he seems more willing to compromise. More willing to build relationships. More willing to abandon ideas. And this kind of makes me frustrated with him because he seems to not keep his eyes on the prize. He also seems to diverge into other issues, going into stuff like political reform, which is also important, but then kind of backing away from his core 2020 ideology to make others happy. He's also doing this cell phone thing to try to get people less hooked on smartphones. Meanwhile, as an anti work enthusiast, I dont see the time "wasted" on the internet as wasted. This is, also, to some extent, a generational issue. Being younger, I'm more open to technology while older generations are more in that "back in my day we went outside" mode. 

Conclusion

So, with that said, Yang and I are fairly similar in our ideologies, but we also have significant differences. Ultimately, it really does come down to working class populism vs upper class technocracy, as well as ideological dedication to goals, vs pragmatism and willing to compromise. In a way, Yang is more like an "establishment" type figure on UBI, and yes, I know he's anti establishment himself, but he really lacks that anti establishment populist vibe, and I tend to offer that instead. Like, he IS anti establishment, dont get me wrong, but in a much softer way. I'm more hard nosed, more like a bernie sanders in that I'm more fiery, more ideological, seem more aware of what we're up against, and more knowledgeable in getting us where we need to go. 

Contrasting with the DSA types

 While my ideological goals are closer to Yang than they are to what the DSA types want, I still have that DSA like populist vibe, where I have a leftist critique of capitalism, but I also have more liberal solutions. Yang is just, a moderate lib through and through. he positions himself from the center with his version of the ideology, I position myself with the fiery, populist left. it's why I end up, push comes to shove, falling in line with the left sometimes. Because sometimes Yang just seems to lack that authenticity. Again, he's too pragmatic, he offers too many compromises, there's too much wondering "will he actually do what he says he will do?" I'm more thoroughly loyal to my own ideas, I dont care about compromise, and I care about pushing my goals, even if it does, sometimes, make others unhappy. 

Idk, just how I see it.  

How do I fit into the progressive movement these days?

 So...let's talk about this emerging progressive movement. It actually looks quite a bit different than my own politics, and this isn't super surprising given my own takes on things over the years. While we arguably were in similar places in 2016, I'm not sure where I stand in 2026. While I'd still vote for them over die hard centrist candidates eh, I've had my differences over the years. Let's trace both of our movements since I became a democrat in 2012.

2012- It felt like the party was united behind Obama then. I was a former republican who came over because I kinda realized "wait, I actually hate conservatism!" and redesigned my own ideology since.

2014- This redesign was helped by the secular humanist/New Atheist movement, which formed the basis of my worldview, and I very quickly became a social democrat and human centered capitalist. I didn't want to abolish capitalism. I learned about the flaws of the USSR and socialism, but I did form the basis of my existing ideology around this time. Going into 2016, I believed we needed a progressive left movement centered around a "new new deal", with the three planks I envisioned being UBI, Medicare for all, and free college. 

2016- Bernie Sanders was never my exact match, but I very quickly came to support him, as he would do the most to further my goals. Clinton was useless, and felt like that 90s kind of liberalism I never really liked. She actually reminded me more of my moderate conservative days, which makes sense since I'd vote for her in 2008 over McCain, but not Obama. Still, I understood that despite the socialist label, he was basically running as a social democrat.

2018- The democrats' putting their finger on the scale for Clinton soured me on the democrats and I went further left. I didn't change my convictions but I did kind of become more open minded to certain forms of socialism around this time. However, I never committed to socialism because let's face it, my own analysis of capitalism and its problems is fundamentally different, reflecting Widerquist's indepentarianism more than traditional marxism.

2020- Yang emerged as a candidate and I started falling out with the Sanders faction somewhat. Yang was closer to what I always wanted and the whole ERMAHGERD ITS NOT SOCIALISM thing turned me off. However, I did ultimately go Sanders because while Yang did represent my ideology, he did so somewhat poorly, abandoning medicare for all, and going to the center, and I just thought Sanders was a stronger and more electable candidate at the time.

2022- I did shift more toward that Yang wing in fine tuning my proposals. I understood in part why Yang went for a public option, I just felt like he didn't stop there or do it for the right reasons. Yang kind of felt like he'd sell out his convictions just to compromise and make others happy and it kind of turned me off from him. Still, the differences between myself and this emerging "leftist" camp started piling up. I never wanted socialism. Yes, I wanted significant change, more than the democrats offered, but my ideology and priorities are markedly not in line with them. This is why I'm "left out left" and not an outright "leftward progressive" on pew's typology report.

2024- Differences continued to pile up. Leftists didnt appeal to me at all, especially as they shifted away from economics to purity test over Palestine. In some ways I actually agreed with the moderate wing more. And even on economics, I feel like the core ideological distinctions between my ideology and mainstream leftism were piling up. I mean most of it comes down to UBI and the moral stance on work, but that is VERY significant in terms of the solutions we want. I want UBI, they want a more jobist vision. And while they do more than centrists, sometimes their policies are mutually exclusive to mine for budgetary reasons. We just evolved in different ways.

2026- In 2026, I find I'm not even super pro medicare for all any more. This breakthrough ironically came after reading El Sayed's book and redoing the numbers again for my own project. It's too expensive. And it might not even save as much money as I thought. Don't get me wrong, you can do it, but I'm not sure you can do it...AND fund a UBI. And I kind of really want a UBI. It's my top priority. And that's the thing. In my ideology and my envisioning of a progressive New Deal type proposal, UBI is the centerpiece, everything else gets pushed around it. And a public option makes budgetary sense. BUT...the mainstream progressive left are jobists. They arent anti work, they just want more fair work, and possibly to own the means of production. THey support medicare for all and a green new deal, and while I am in favor of more moderate proposals there, wanting to fulfill those priorities while letting UBI do the real heavy lifting, again, the ideological difference is rather large here.

So...idk what my future in the democratic party and the progressive movement is. I understand I dont meet a lot of modern leftist purity tests, in 2026, the two things they want absolute purity on is Israel and M4A. M4A i kinda understand as if I felt we could fund both easily enough, I myself would want both. I do think M4A is better on paper. I just aint willing to abandon UBI for it so I'd go with my backup framework, which is a public option. 

But yeah. I'm no longer as attached to the progressive movement as I was, especially as mainstream dems move left. Like, Michigan is a good barometer of the three paths the dems can take. Haley Stevens is just...no for me. Abdul El Sayed is progressive, I like him. But IM not super attached to his policies. Mallory McMorrow and that middle ground is actually where I'm at outside of UBI. Like a progressive democrat, but not a DSA style socialist. 

Still, I understand McMorrow comes off as insincere AF, shes an awful candidate, and push comes to shove, choosing between Haley Stevens and Abdul El Sayed, El Sayed is the guy I'd want. He's more honest, less compromised, and yeah, while Im not ride or die on M4A, I also recognizie it has potential. And if anyone can design such a policy properly, it's this guy. He literally wrote the book on it. So...yeah. Push comes to shove, between the centrist faction and the DSA faction, make no mistake, I'm pro DSA. BUT....if I had my way, I'd do things a bit differently.

Still....in a realignment, the DSA representing the left is a positive development, as it would pull the entire overton window left where even I seem like a moderate. Compared to where we were in 2016, we're much further left. Like, I have to remember, I didn't change a ton MYSELF in the past decade, the factions are realigning around me, with me mostly just fine tuning my ideas and making smaller, more incremental shifts in my own worldview. 

DSA wins big in New York, and the democratic party civil war

 So, I wasn't gonna cover this since I didn't think it was that significant, but everyone is making a big deal about it. Apparently in NY there were some primaries last night and the DSA swept. And apparently the democratic establishment isn't happy, and they're talking like they're preparing for all out war against the progressive wing of the party.

Now, again, I don't think the wins are a huge deal. I mean, it's New York. NYC is like D+20....D+30....something like that. Point is, they're unrepresentative of the majority of the country. But, we are seeing a populist wave. And we are seeing candidates like Mamdani pop up elsewhere. Think Graham Platner in Maine, Abdul El Sayed in Michigan. It's the democratic tea party, baby, and they're coming for the party.

I actually think it's ironic the second the progressives start winning centrists get OH SO SALTY. I mean, what happened to "vote blue no matter who" guys? Oh, you represent an entirely different ideology and find us unacceptable? Gee, how about that? That's how we've felt when you shoved centrist after centrist down our throats for the past decade. And, as you guys know, I aint big on blue no matter who, the only thing keeping me being so loyal to democrats is the fascist threat. I was hoping we could unite for now and settle this later, but meh, if you guys wanna throw down, we can throw down.

Because here's the thing. Centrist dems are very unpopular. No one likes these guys. They got the same energy as the centrist republicans who were expelled from the party 15 years ago. And given you guys had your chance, and you very predictably couldn't pull it off, well, yeah, we're coming from the party. And I say this who isn't even DSA. Like, I might be willing to vote for them and accept them, but my own ideology and priorities is a bit different and a tad more moderate. But make no mistake. Between your ilk and those guys, I'm with those guys. Centrists are useless. They've been holding the party back for 10+ years now, and the dam is finally breaking. Remember what I said. 2016 was the 36 year mark the coalitions started breaking. But it takes around 12 years in modern politics for something to emerge from that. And in 2028....we could see a very progressive dem come from nowhere, take over the party, and BOOM, realignment.

Now, if you centrists are salty and wanna take your ball and go home, unlike you guys, I wont stop you. Unless you literally support full blown fascists. but let's face it, you leave and join the republicans, you moderate the republicans. Then THEY gotta put up with your bull####. And they probably wont because I know how those guys work, and i left the GOP for a reason so meh, you'll be back. So either you'll bring the GOP back from the brink of fascism, or you'll be so horrified you'll just keep coming back and voting for us, or vote third party yourselves. And what are you gonna do, join the forward party? Hopefully you'll embrace UBI if you do, in which case maybe I'll eventually join you, because guess what? Im not a socialist either. But let's face it, you guys are too uncool to do that. So idk, have fun being on the outs. Really, displacing the dem establishment with progressives is the best thing that could happen to this political system at this point. The realignment will be favorable to my perspective. It'll move BOTH parties left, where they belong. So...go ahead, make my day, centrists, make my day.

I just love how salty these guys get. Oh, you mean all that blue no matter who crap was bullcrap? You mean that you actually do recognize progressives and leftists are so radically different from you we SHOULD be in different parties? But yeah. Unlike you guys, I won't complain. Unless you actually think voting for fascists is favorable, in which case I'll have to condemn you for that. Seriously, even I voted blue in 2024, and plan to in 2026 and 2028. If you turn your back on the democrats in our darkest hour because your guy isn't winning, well....yeah you can go screw yourselves for that one. Have fun living with that for the rest of your lives. But honestly, I think we'll be fine. If anything, I think a bit of realigning like this is exactly what we've needed all along. I just wish we did this back in 2016. 

What is the cheapest gaming machine you can make?

 So, apparently in a recent interview, Valve basically said that "Obviously, if you just don’t have the budget for it, you don’t have the budget for any real gaming PC at that point." And, I wanna emphasize, this is bullcrap. 

You obviously can make cheaper gaming PCs, I came up with a performance equivalent build for around $740, and you can arguably go lower than that.  Once again, the problem with the steam machine is the form factor. They went all in with the SFF PC trend, trying to make a low profile device, leading to higher costs, a limited power budget, and worse performance. The CPU was especially bad, being a 30W mobile part that performs closer to a 3600x than a 7600x, despite being zen 4. This allowed me to come up with a build with a Ryzen 5 5500 (3600x equivalent) and DDR4 RAM (cheaper, largely bypasses the RAM crisis), saving hundreds of dollars compared to what THEY did.

I wanna emphasize that the steam machine's flaw is the design. They went all in with DDR5, got hit by the crisis, and then got a machine that performs like a Zen 2 part anyway because they went in with power efficiency. The machine I suggested above won't be as efficient, and it will be significantly larger, but hey, that's the tradeoff. Because the problem is form factor, getting rid of form factor reduces the costs.

With that said, I had a thought, what IS the cheapest reasonably performing PC you can make these days and what does it cost? Normally I'd say $500-600, but with RAMpocalypse and the GPU price hikes, obviously a true budget machine is kinda dead. Still, I did figure, what if I adjusted this and reduced the price as much as possible? What would I get?

Well, making a couple adjustments, I came up with this.

 So, this costs $663. A bit higher than $500-600. It's more $600-700. Around $650ish. The main changes include:

Cheaper SSD (probably about as good in practice)

Lower end PSU (550W, still C tier on the cultists PSU list) 

RTX 3050 8 GB

The GPU I wanna talk about most. The market is screwed with GPUs. Currently, true budget GPUs are harder to come by than cheap RAM...as you can obviously tell. The $240 3050 8 GB is the lowest I'd recommend here. Now, you CAN probably find better deals on the used market, but I dont trust the used market and for two, the deals are person to person so not everyone has access to the same deals, so...yeah. But yeah if you want new, $240 for a 3050. It's not AWFUL AWFUL, I mean, you can run new games on it, but yeah it's the lowest possible card that I'd recommend.

Basically, you need a card that:

1) Has access to modern features (RTX 2000 series or RX 6000 series or better)

2) Has enough VRAM (8 is a hard requirement these days, so no 3050 6 GB or 2060)

3) Is actually available (so sadly the 6600 deals have dried up)

And the 3050 is the worst that is available that meets those requirements. I'd probably recommend investing a bit more in a 7600 or 5050, but you could also spend a bit more than that on a 5060 or 9060 XT, and then OOH! another $100 on a 9060 XT 16 GB!...and then you're spending double. So recognizing I'm trying to cheap out as much as reasonably possible, yeah...

So...yeah. Is this a great machine? Well, not really. It'll get the job done. 

Btw, full disclaimer, have not tested this build, do not own it, I'm just spitballing here, do your own research. But yeah.

Point is...you DO NOT need to spend $1050 on a gaming PC, even today. I'd say the floor is about $650, with the steam machine's equivalent performance coming in around $750. 

This actually is a relatively good experiment because it shows me PC gaming isnt really dead. But yeah. This isn't the best machine either. And heck, if you wanted to make further compromises, you could probably get it to $600 by going with a cheaper non wifi build and going with the 6 GB 3050, which absolutely WONT run certain games with a hard 8 GB requirement, but it's still....probably the one card that's cheaper that I'd recommend if you REALLY wanted to cheap out and are fine being limited to older games.

So yeah, the even LOWER floor at $600.  Would I recommend THIS? Only if you're fine with the compromises I mentioned, I mean it will still kick the crap out of not having ANY GPU at all, but yeah, it's below what I'd consider is acceptable today. It's also the kind of PC you'd have to hard wire since it has no built in wifi. 

But yeah. That's the cheapest you can realistically go. I wouldnt recommend going THAT low, if anything I'd probably want to spend a bit more on more quality components here, but yeah, these are options...that's the wonderful thing, PC gives you tons of options and choice, you can make whatever you want. These are just the cheapest things i could possibly come up with.

And again, disclaimer, do your own research before purchasing, I'm recommending this with minimal research myself, it's more an intellectual challenge to prove it can be done, at least in theory.  

Discussing James Talarico and his "hating Christianity" comments

 So, another scandal is breaking in Texas, where the republicans released audio of James Talarico calling himself a "Christian who hates Christianity." Honestly? My opinion is that this is a nothingburger. I mean, anyone who is outside of the segment of Christians he's clearly referencing will understand what he means. I see this sentiment a lot with liberal Christians. They're christians, but they hate the ideological Christianity of the fundies and the Christian nationalism of the republican party. They support the spirit of the law, rather than the actual letter, and think that fundies are basically Pharisees, that they're spiritually dead inside but put on a lot of airs and act holier than anyone without being so.

Honestly, anyone who is outraged by this is exactly the kind of Christian Talarico is referencing. And you know what? Those are the Christians that drive my "new atheist" vibe as well. Those guys do so much damage to religion that some of us, like me, just cant stand religion in general. No offense to the moderates, I still think that they're "lukewarm" and I'd rather just disavow myself of the entire movement, but yeah. I can see how moderates with different interpretations look at the crazy guys and how they're like 'OH MY GOD STOP YOU'RE ALIENATING EVERYONE WTF". And yeah. I mean, for a while, I was one of those liberal Christians in the late 2000s/early 2010s. I just decided that I had enough and felt it was more philosophically consistent to just give up on the entire religion. I mean clearly there was more to it than that, but that was...part of it. 

Then again, as they say, preaching to the choir.

Anyway, some are saying this is gonna outrage religious republicans, but you know what? Good. And before people think this will hurt him a ton, well, again, if youre outraged, you're the target of the criticism. And let's face it, most of those guys are white hot balls of rage upset that a trans person went into a different bathroom within 1000 miles of them. So...screw them, as I would say as a secular humanist with new atheist vibes, your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer. Bring it on. I welcome your hatred.  

Discussing a new theory for the 7th party system and the future of politics

 So I've been trying to figure this out lately. There's been debate. As we know, we're in a weird political time. I believe that these times can be at least somewhat explained by VO Key's party realignment theory. He had a theory that there were generational coalitions that made up the parties, and once in a generation, they implode and remake themselves to fit the politics of the time. There are arguably at least six major realignments in American politics.

First Party System: Federalists vs Anti Federalists (1796-1828)

Second Party system:  Jacksonian Democrats vs Whigs (1828-1860)

Third Party System: Lincoln Republicans vs Confederate Democrats (1860-1896)

Fourth Party System: Populist republicans and democrats (1896-1932)

Fifth Party System: New Deal democrats vs Eisenhower republicans (1932-1980)

Sixth Party System: Reagan republicans vs Clinton Democrats (1980-?) 

As we know, there is some debate over the current era, and what path we are on. I've posited several theories in the past, but I think I have an idea what's going to happen next. I'm going to take a page from history here.

The transition from the fifth to sixth party system

So, the theory somewhat breaks down in the modern era. The strict 32-36 year period between alignments kind of broke down here, and we didn't transition clearly from 5th to 6th like we did the others. There arguably was some messiness in other alignments too. Both the transition between the 1st and 2nd and 2nd and 3rd had an election where the coalitions seemed to implode, before being remade (1824/1856). The realignment into the 6th was supposed to happen in 1968 but didn't. Or did it?

In a way it did. In 1968, we had George Wallace's third party run fracture the south off of the democratic party over civil rights. 

In 1972, Nixon engaged in the southern strategy, attempting to woo these guys to the republicans over dog whistle politics.

However, Nixon imploded and in 1976 we got Carter, who basically temporarily revived the New Deal coalition. But then he crapped the bed and we got Reagan in 1980.

Reagan was THE realigning guy. He won over almost the whole country overwhelmingly. 1980 was THE moment, and in retrospect, I dont think we can deny that, that's where everything changed. Reagan came in like a bulldozer, and remade the country in his image, similar, to FDR. His administration was so successful it led to 12 years of uninterrupted republican party role and when the democrats came back, they moderated and spoke his language. They cobbled together whatever coalition they could, and that largely defines the political map we've had since. Yes, Clinton did win part of the south, but he established the democrats as socially liberal and fiscally centrist. And those have functionally been the coalitions since.

2016 and glimpses of the future

Now, if we follow the theory, 2016 should be the next realignment. And in a way it was, but it wasn't. I'm actually going to go with the whole "it wasn't" argument. It was more the DEalignment, similar to 1968. it was the year the 6th party system broke, BUT....I don't think the true 7th party system has emerged yet. And I don't think Trump is a successful enough realigning figure to pull it off. 

2016 did give us glimpses of the future though. It split the country into four factions:

Establishment Republicans- Old guard republicans like Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, etc.

Establishment Democrats- Old guard democrats like Hillary Clinton

Anti Establishment Republicans- Trump and his populist MAGA brand

Anti Establishment Democrats- Bernie Sanders and his economic populism

So there are two divides, establishment vs anti establishment, and left vs right. Four factions, with different visions. But I don't think we actually saw a real realignment yet, and here's why.

Why we are still in the 6th party system

So I've been discussing the coalitions of the parties for years now. Especially the democrats, who seem somewhat torn between their efforts to reach out to "moderates" (establishment republicans) and bring them into the party, and the democratic party base, which is where most younger people are, who was a more progressive vision for the country. In the modern era, the democrats have a problem. They can't go too far to the center or they alienate the progressives and lose elections. They also cant go too far to the left without losing moderates, arguably speaking, although I would dispute this. But generally speaking, the democrats are still operating off of the coalition they made for themselves in 1992, and the leaders are aging, and very old, and often out of touch. This causes their brand of politics to be fundamentally unpopular, making them relatively unreliable in winning elections.

However, their problems pale in comparison to the GOP's problems. Trump is...not a great realigner. He's a failed realigner, and I'm calling it now. It's been debated over the past decade what his status is in this, but after thinking like a republican strategist lately, I kinda realized something, the GOP is still Reagan's GOP. Trump did NOT fundamentally change the republican coalition. It's STILL the same coalition Nixon and Reagan built. It's just its final form, the logical end point of the most extreme members. The mask is off on the racism, the religious fundamentalism is rampant, the only thing he did was to have an economically populist veneer which saved the party from destruction.

This party has been struggling since 2008. The Reagan coalition started fracturing with Bush. Heck, I'd argue the ONLY reason it's still relevant is because the democrats are REALLY bad at their jobs. The right KNOWS they're in deep crap. Their coalition is aging out. They're poised to become a minority party, as America browns, and as younger people replace older generations. And that's why they're so authoritarian. These guys KNOW they have a problem, they KNOW they're screwed, and they're trying to prepare to govern as a minority party, throwing democracy out the window. If they can deport brown people, they can ensure whites remain the dominant demographic. if they can ensure more whites have babies, which their social conservatism encourages, they can ensure they can outnumber other demographics. If they can engage in voter disenfrenchisement, they can ensure that only they vote. A lot of these guys openly talk like this, they'll say things like "we're not a democracy, we're a republic, we don't want EVERYONE voting, that's bad for the country." We're seeing them talk about having one vote per family and crap so only the head of the household (typically the man) can vote. They're trying to undo the civil rights act. They're trying to gerrymander the districts. They might even try to declare that the votes in the 2026 midterms are invalid and try to force their outcome on the country. And that's scary. The GOP's path to success into the future is...basically to govern like a minority party.

In a way, they already are. They've been the minority for almost two decades now. Their coalition has thinned. It's mostly held together by electoral advantages like the massive rural advantages our system affords them. It's held together by gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement efforts. They can't win legitimately, they have to do this to remain relevant and to remain powerful. If they can't do that, then they lose the future. 

Quite frankly, the only OTHER thing holding the republicans together is the democrats being so bad at their job. The democrats are too nice, they care about procedure and decorum too much, they are the anti charismatic party. The boring party, the crappy status quo that no one likes party. And the only thing holding the democrats back from realizing their full potential is themselves. So right now, we bounce between the parties, going from republicans to democrats, and both being equally powerful, the republicans so because their coalition is imploding and the democrats because they're not even really trying, and honestly, if anything, the modern era feels like that 1970s era where we had Nixon and then Carter, and no one likes anyone, and all the politicians suck. 

And even Trump....Trump IS a failed realigner. He did temporarily save the party by bridging the aging republican coalition with swing voters via economic populism, but he has no solutions. HE HAS NO SOLUTIONS. And while he seemed to govern just well enough to be remembered fondly after his first term, in his second, he's also imploding. Heck, it really does seem like the current parties are kinda operating in that 1970s holding pattern, with Trump and Biden both being Nixon and Carter in their own ways. Trump is both nixon and carter, corrupt, but also extremely incompetent. Biden is also like carter, incompetent, but also like Nixon, kind of the guy who did build the next democratic coalition in a way. He did manage to thread the needle between moderates and progressives in his first term and while he ultimately failed to make either happy, that coalition could be used in future elections. 

I used to think that the realignment was gonna break either way: on left right lines, or establishment/anti establishment lines. One future is a populist MAGA party vs an establishment uniparty (bad realignment), one is a progressive left democratic party with a center right republican party. But what if I was wrong on that?

The new theory: 2028 and the broad democratic tent

Both FDR and Ronald Reagan won the electoral college by MASSIVE numbers. They won over basically the whole country, minus a couple states. The popular vote wasn't as extreme as the electoral vote, because there always is that 30-40% of the country on the losing side, but being able to pull together a coalition of 60%+ generally is indicative of a shift in power in politics. And as we know, that dominating coalition never remains at 60%+, FDR's coalition moderated a bit after he died, with truman still keeping it together, but Eisenhower finally cracking the code and giving the republicans a return to power. Reagan and Bush enjoyed massive margins followed by the democrats clawing themselves back with Clinton. Then things kinda normalized for a while. 

What if 2028 is an electoral earthquake that doesn't depend on either a centrist democratic party or a progressive one, but rather a broad tent one? The tent will itself be unstable, but if we can secure 60% of the vote for the next decade or two, that will force the republicans into the wilderness, as they implode. I could see this happening after Trump. Hell, we're already seeing it with the Senate map. The country is turning on Trump, he has his loyal base that is ride or die for him, but if he can't seal the deal behind him and keep moderates on his side, that coalition isnt stable. 

Even worse, after Trump, the republican coalition might implode into irrelevance. The MAGA base is so dangerous and so extreme the country might decide "never again", rejecting the republicans again and again as the name "Donald Trump" goes down in electoral history similar to "Herbert Hoover" or "Jimmy Carter." And while very popular among his base, no future replacement (looking at you, JD Vance, Marco Rubio) can pull off the same magic, leading to the republican coalition to FINALLY destroy itself as we go into the 2030s. 

This will leave the democrats as the default option that no one is quite happy with, but everyone will vote for again and again just to keep the republicans out. Over time, there will be a tug of war between the two wings of the party, the moderates and the progressives, and one side will eventually be forced out and merge with the republicans, who shift their messaging to appeal to them. This could either become a populist anti establishment party, but I suspect it will lead to a more moderate republican party who takes the establishment centrists with them, allowing the democrats to move left and the progressives to FINALLY take over the party. 

What democrats need to do

Democrats need to retake the house and possibly the senate in 2026, and then, in 2028, win the presidency. They can win with just about anyone I'd argue, but only the best candidates will truly be realigning. If the democrats fail to seal the deal, MAGA can claw their way back to relevance, leading to more authoritarian backsliding. Ultimately, they need a transformational agenda to fix the country. 

This isn't just economic at this point. Economics is important, yes, we do need a second new deal, either my own, or at least a middle of the road progressive version featuring raising the minimum wage, a public option version of universal healthcare, free college and student loan forgiveness, and some sort of build back better style climate program. 

They also need an agenda of actual political reform. They need to guarantee and expand voting rights, they need to detrumpify the government, end gerrymandering, possibly repeal the reapportionment act of 1929 to basically uncap the house and reduce the overwhelming rural advantage. Basically, everything opposite of what the republicans have been doing. If they can do that, they can rule the future, ensuring republicans can never win office again, at least in the near future. Not because of anything authoritarian, mind you, but because they're genuinely unpopular and the stigma of being associated with MAGA and trump sinks them for the next decade or two. 

From there, we can hash out our differences to our heart's content. But we need to basically have some project 2029 plan to crush the GOP the way they tried to crush us, but rather than do it for evil by taking rights away, we use it for good. Again, more voting rights, not less. More democracy, not less. 

The emerging democratic supermajority won't last forever. heck, I'm not even sure it will last for long. The democratic coalition is itself somewhat unstable. Things will eventually go back to each party winning roughly 50% of the electorate, and each party winning elections roughly 50% of the time. By 2040, it's back to business again probably. The republicans will claw their way back to relevance probably, and they'll start winning again. What will they look like? I'm hoping they moderate and come back winning over those weirdo centrist types who alienate us over here in the democrats. And then the democrats will have a left coalition, and will eventually retake power, pass more progressive stuff, and things will keep going this way until around 2064 or so, 36 years after this theoretical 2028 victory. From there, the cycle continues. The democratic coalition ages out and fractures itself apart, and by 2076, we have another realignment into an 8th party system. 

That's my theory at least. As for whether it will happen, idk, I'm just spitballing here.  

Is the steam machine THAT bad?

 So....on the other end of the spectrum from the glazers are the people who seem to HATE the thing and seem to think it's terrible in every day. They bash the specs, act like it's a low end experience that isn't acceptable, blah blah blah. Even HW unboxed's take seemed to stray into this territory, mainly due to the GPU. I wanna offer a slightly more nuanced take. 

I think that a lot of it comes down to the idea that there arent really bad products, only bad prices, and this is a badly priced PC. For $1050, you can do so much better. I provided an example yesterday with that 5600/32 GB/5060 PC, and my own dislike of it basically comes down to the form factor. Mini form factors suck. As I said, small/portable, cheap, powerful, pick 2. Heck in this case, pick...1.5. Since it actually aint super powerful, but it's enough to get the job done.

But that's the problem. In a normal, functioning market, this should be a $500-600 gaming PC these days. It's very entry level. But between the GPU market BEING screwed, and the RAMpocalypse making the situation worse, best I can do is about $750 for a similar PC, from PCpartpicker. And honestly, it makes compromises I dont like.

Like, I'd almost never recommend a Ryzen 5 5500 or an i3 12100f (intel equivalent), they're cheap, sub $100 entry level CPUs. I mean, yeah, entry level. Like, legit, real entry level. "I3 territory" as I call it. The steam machine has a CPU that's on par with a 3600x. Now, to be fair, that's roughly what the PS5 and Xbox Series X run, so that is the baseline, and it is just "good enough", but having gamed on a 7700k until 2023, and knowing that that's only about 25% weaker....eh....I was bottlenecking with that thing on my 6650 XT ALL THE TIME. It was infuriating. And I guess, an extra 33% or so performance would have given me another 20 FPS in games and mightve made things a bit smoother, but games have also gotten a bit more demanding since then, so yeah. I mean, this is weaker than an i7 8700k, an i7 from now 9 years ago. It's a budget AMD R5 from 7 years ago, comparing favorably to the i5 9600k on power, and the 10600k on price. It was never an amazing product, and it never aged well. You can game on it these days, but it's rather anemic, and it's the lowest anyone would reasonably recommend anyone buy in 2026 ever. It's the "you're trying to recommend your poor friend a gaming PC" tier CPU. Anyone who has enough of a budget to go up would get a 5600, 12400f, or maybe a 12600k since that can be surprisingly cheap. 

The RAM....16 GB....that's....acceptable. I'd say pre RAM crisis to get 32 if you could for futureproofing since 16 is strained at times and 32 GB is gonna be good for a while to come, but I also understand you need to be mr moneybag to afford that these days, and yeah. I went with DDR4, slower than the steam machine. But given the AM4 CPU tier performance, it's not that it matters. DDR5 is wasted on such a weak CPU and only adds to the cost unnecessarily. What matters more than speed here is the capacity, and 16 GB is adequate, but relatively low. It works because that's what consoles use, and in this economy, it's what people can afford, but ideally I would've liked to have seen 32. 

SSD. I feel like low capacity SSDs don't get enough hate. Games these days are MASSIVE. Like...50-100 GB massive. At the same time, storage is punitively expensive due to the RAM crisis, costing 3x what it should, so while a 512 GB SSD should be very cheap (we were seeing 1 TB for around $60 and 2 TB around $120 pre RAM crisis), this is another "you gotta do what you gotta do" scenario. It's not great, but in order to make it relatively affordable, yeah, we gotta make sacrifices. 

GPU...now this is ironically what gets the most hate. But again, do what you gotta do situation. A lot of people are acting like gaming on a 6600-7600 tier video card is an awful experience. But again, can't all be mr moneybag over here. It's what's affordable. The sub $200 market is screwed. The lowest end card I can recommend ANYONE buy in good faith and be able to run NEW releases is the  3050 8 GB....and even then you'll be using DLSS A LOT just to get the same result as a 6650 XT or something, which I own. Heck, as a 6650 XT owner, which is about on par with the steam machine's GPU....it's....acceptable. I mean, it feels somewhat dated, but it gets the job done. There isnt a game that WON'T run on it. THe fact is, and this goes back to before the RAM crisis, the low end GPU market is screwed. Hell, it's insulting that a nearly $300 GPU like a 7600 or 5050 can be considered "low end", but that's how messed up everything is. You gotta do what you gotta do and it works because...again, this is what the consoles run on. Basically a 6650 XT/6700 tier GPU. And as some benchmarks show, the PS5 is faster due to optimization, but you can get a "good enough" experience here.

People keep comparing it to the 5060 and the 9060 XT, and yeah, those are better, but they WERE $270-300 and are now $340-380. And those newer cards still have 8 GB VRAM which is the big bottleneck.

With that said, is the steam machine bad? Well, it tries to match a PS5 or Xbox Series X. And it can run any game in theory that those systems can run. You'll find more limitations from Steam OS than you will from the hardware itself in terms of game compatibility. But it's not futureproof, at all. I mean, I bought my 6650 XT back in 2022, and it costs $230 back then. It costs $280 now for a similar card. We havent progressed AT ALL since the COVID/crypto pricing broke in price/performance. We were starting to with the 9060 XT and 5060, but then the RAMpocalypse happened, and here we are. Now it's $190 for a 6 GB 3050 (dont buy, 6 GB doesnt have enough RAM), $240 for an 8 GB 3050 (literally the most bare minimum card you can get for new games), $280 for a 7600, and $290 for a 5050. It's not that it's great, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

The real gut punch is that...this is $1050. FOR THIS. For this mini PC that's on par with 6 year old console hardware that launched at $500. We have not really advanced at all in price/performance since late 2022/2023. If anything we have regressed in some ways. 

Now again, the form factor is the problem. If a full blown PC, you could make this for $750. Again, if you gotta do what you gotta do, yeah. Im budget sensitive myself and I totally get people dont have infinite sums of money to throw at the problem. Even tweaking builds from yesterday, I cant get a good entry level PC under $680-700 or so. That's just the market. Ideally, entry level starts around $500-600. I mean, pre rampocalypse, you could argue something like this:

Ryzen 5 5500- $85

Motherboard- $80

16 GB DDR4- $50

512 GB SSD- $35

RX 6600- $220 (variable)

500-600W PSU- $50

Case- $50

Total: $570

I mean, you could make it for $500-600, maybe closer to $600. And that's why there were so many people who thought thats what the steam machine should cost. Valve just decided to go with some weird niche form factor for some reason. So that's part of what makes this fatal. 

And yeah, now it's $700-750 for an entry level machine, and this is a relatively entry level machine given there isnt much to downgrade other than replacing a 7600 with a 3050 and saving $40. 

So that's the big problem. And it's not futureproof, due to the form factor it CANT be upgraded, which is another thing. A PC like this, you could stick in a stronger CPU like a 5800XT or X3D, you can get a better GPU. Nope, with SFF PCs, you're screwed, the specs are the specs. Again, just a terrible decision by valve to go with that form factor. That's the BIG killer. I think $750-800 would be acceptable in the current market. But $1k+ isn't. 

Beyond that, I think there's another topic that should be discussed here. And that's the future of consoles. As we know, its 2026, theres rumors of a PS6 and next gen xbox in 2027-2028, and I really gotta ask...WHY?!

It just seems like more tech bro billionaire ITS TIME TO CONSOOM HOLDING ONTO DEVICES TOO LONG IS BAD FOR THE ECONOMY. No, you wanna know what's bad for the economy? 4 years of hardware stagnation for the money. Quite frankly, I dont want new consoles. I dont want that relatively reasonable baseline of performance to go up. Again, the steam machine works because it's literally targetted to parity with the PS5, give or take a little. But if you make a console that's twice as strong, and costs 2x as much....well, the whole gaming industry is boned, isn't it? 

Like there's no need for a new generation. I dont want a new generation. Graphics arent advancing like they used to, we should hold onto stuff longer, and the market exists for the gamers, gamers dont exist simply to make rich people money. Of course, that's what the billionaires think. WE NEED OUR PROFITS. Okay, well this isn't sustainable. AT ALL. Normally console generations are driven by the expectation that after 4-8 years, we can get 4-10x the performance for the same price. Here we got the last gen consoles ending the generation at a HIGHER price than they started, and we wanna start having a NEW generation? It's insane. 

Again, to make a PC on par with these consoles is $750. I know because the steam machine IS that machine, and I tried to make a cheaper version of it a couple articles ago. What is a next gen console gonna cost $1000? $1200? Even $800 is a gut punch. We can't afford this crap. Let's at least wait until 2030 before we talk new consoles. Seriously. No one can afford this ####. 

Discussing weirdo niche hobbyists and the steam machine

 So...the debate over whether individuals can adequately construct their own steam machines for similar price points continues. And, much like with the steam deck, the weirdo niche hobbyists are rearing their ugly head arguing for their specific niche and expensive tastes and saying that no, you absolutely can't make your own steam machine at the same price point. The hangup seems to be on the form factor, the one point of discussion I freely concede the argument from the get go. Because idk about you, but I don't particularly care about the size of the PC, assuming it's at most an ATX mid tower build. I mean, if you want to get a super tiny PC, yeah, you're gonna need to go all in with a specific form factor, and that limits the parts you have access to, and that limits your options. 

I would argue for like 98% of people, most are just happy to have a PC. They dont care about "OMG I WANT THIS SPECIFIC FORM FACTOR FOR THIS SPECIFIC LIVING ROOM PC", and if anything, the form factor is a negative for me with the steam machine. As I've noted before, talking about handheld PCs, steam decks, gaming laptops, etc, you're often overpaying when you NEED to have a certain package in a niche form factor. The reason i dont get the appeal of the steam deck or the nintendo switch 2 is because the idea of a machine that's that large that it barely qualifies as being portable, while being that expensive, just makes the whole thing unappealing. Just because you CAN do something doesnt mean it makes sense or you should, and normally the tradeoff of making such ideas work is cost. Size, power, cost, pick 2. A small and cheap machine isn't gonna be powerful, a small and powerful machine isn't gonna be cheap, and an affordable and powerful machine isn't gonna be small. That's just the economics and physics of computing. And I tend to go either powerful and affordable, meaning I'm fine with a full/mid atx tower build, or small and affordable, meaning I'm making tradeoffs on power. 

But again, the niche hobbyists are like some of the most annoying vocal and unpleasant people I've encountered in the tech space. They're the ones who defend the steam deck and are like ITS NOT FOR YOU, while going on about how great it is to play 2D indie games on their $400 $550 $800 device. Meanwhile I look at that machine and would rather game on a dedicated gaming PC, or an android handheld. And these guys seem annoyingly vocal and defensive about their very unique special snowflake needs. 

The same is true with these guys. I posted the builds from the previous article on several forums and I got some pretty fricking toxic responses from "SFF PC" fanboys (small form factor = SFF) who are like WELL ACKSHULLY THATS A 30L CASE, I WANT A 5L CASE LIKE THE STEAM MACHINE AND YOU CAN'T DO IT AND BLAH BLAH BLAH. yeah, I admit it, I can't. I also dont want to, because I'm not a super special snowflake with super special needs. And people might be wondering why I'm being so nasty myself, and it's because these specific hobbyists are that nasty and combative with me. It's actually kinda stupid. And my honest take is "oh my god, who the hell cares", but these guys really care a lot to the point it seems to be their entire personality in arguing online. 

Look, you're free to like whatever you want. You are free to your own special unique tastes. But it kind of reminds me of the "expensive tastes" argument van parijs made in his real freedom for all book where it talked about how people with different tastes might have different needs and a normal UBI wouldn't do it. Well, in that case, if you're really that super special and finnicky, you can either make do with less or get a job. Im not gonna go out of the way and do special treatment with that.

And with this, it's like, yeah, you can either make do with the larger form factor, just being happy to have a reasonably affordable PC, which is difficult in the current market, or you can pay out the nose because of your expensive tastes. And to use the logic you guys often use against me, if you dont like my builds, THEY'RE NOT FOR YOU. But you know what? Im sure 98% of prospective buyers out there would be happy to have a cheaper performance equivalent machine even with a worse form factor, or a more powerful machine for the same money. Not everyone wants to spend hundreds of extra dollars because they need a literal gamecube form factor. 

 As a matter of fact, this is the machine the guy I was arguing with linked me. Let's go over it

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/G6pdH3 

Ryzen 8400F- NO ONE, I mean, NO ONE, except for these weirdo SFF hobbyists buy the 8000 series ryzen parts. They are underpowered and overpriced. They literally only make sense for these specific guys. And msot of them dont even want a dedicated GPU, they want to use the powerful integrated graphics. Any sane mainstream buyer can go with a Ryzen 5000/7000/9000 series part.

CPU cooler- I mean, I wouldnt go with a processor that requires a fancy cooler if you want that form factor, or a lower price point, in mid tower builds I'd recommend a peerless assassin/phantom spirit but yeah those coolers are the size of the PCs they are talking about themselves. 

ITX motherboard. Yeah. Really special tastes here.

DDR5 RAM...yeah, totally blowing your budget spending 2x on RAM as me. 

B570 intel card, not a terrible choice but intel can be weird with some games compatibility wise. Id probably stick with AMD. 

Expensive ITX case. Yeah. Again, paying for form factor.

850W PSU...I mean, WHAT?!  You don't need that for a low power build, I put one of those in MY PC because I'm running a 240W 12900k and while I got the 6650 XT, if I go with say a 300W GPU in the future, i have the headroom. 

But yeah. THis is a totally pointless and unbalanced build. He literally made unique choices for form factor that dont make sense for any reasonable buyer looking to get the most value oriented product. Again, super specific niche expensive tastes here. 

Could I do better? Lol nope.

When I try to come up with a build, I run into the following problems:

1) For ITX, the only motherboards i can find need a bios flash to run 5000 series products, causing problems, and the 3600x is $200, despite it performing the same as a $85 5500. 

2) I LITERALLY cant find a GPU that fits into a 5L case, because guess what, those kinds of PCs typically rely on integrated graphics. So building a literal steam machine sized machine is impossible, but thankfully, I'm not a super special snowflake that needs a super special form factor and can just use an ATX build like everyone else, so yeah. 

Heck, going back to HIS build, let me try to improve THAT:

 https://pcpartpicker.com/list/GfxL9K

I went with Intel, 12100f is 5500 level performance. I went with the 7600 for additional game compatibility and parity with the steam machine. I couldnt swap out the PSU because of his dumb form factor choices and the 850W was ironically cheapest that didn't suck. But hey, this is totally HIS design choice.

Heck going for steam deck price parity, I went with this:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/NFmdH3 

 The 12400 is so much more expensive then the 12100f i just went with the 12600kf. And I was pigeon holed into a more expensive 9060 XT to upgrade.

So yeah, can I STILL make the price point work?

Yeah.

But who would want to? 

Again, I just dont see the appeal. 

And if people are wondering why im being this petty over it, it's because I find these guys obnoxiously annoying. Like again, you're free to like whatever you want, but when you start complaining other people who are finding cheaper ways of doing things arent fitting your super special specifications, it's like, screw off and shut up. Like, again, I bet 98% of people would be happy with any build I'd recommend. It's just that other 2% who have super special needs ans who absolutely HAVE to have a specific form factor aimed at a specific niche of people who are annoyingly vocal about their hobbies and seem very cult like in their defense of them.