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 ####.
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