• Steve Dice@sh.itjust.works
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    18 hours ago

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

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

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

    Fair enough.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    • thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works
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      14 hours ago

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

      Not trying to have a go at you, actually genuinely curious: Do you have a source to confirm this, or is it more of an educated guess on your part?

      All I’ve seen so far is that it’s a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6c/12t CPU and RDNA 3 28 CU GPU.

      • Steve Dice@sh.itjust.works
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        6 hours ago

        An educated guess. The specs of the “semi-custom” components perfectly match with existing products. However, if I were to put my tinfoil hat on, I’d point out that the 7600M has been out for 2 years and you still cannot find a laptop with one. Almost as if someone snatched up all of the supply.

        Edit: Forgot to mention what those existing products are. Ryzen 5 7400F and RX7600M. (The M is very important. Don’t forget the M).

    • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

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

      Care to share a link to a PCPartPicker with that? Here’s a link on the same thread of someone building a similarly speck machine for 800 https://lemmy.world/comment/20649777 and that is without the controller. In case you haven’t noticed, RAM prices are a bit crazy at the moment.

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

      It’s literally not, they custom developed it for the product, similar to the Steam Deck one, it is based on the architecture used on laptops, but so are Playstation and Xbox AFAIK.

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

      Can you provide a link to such a prebuilt? Here’s the first prebuilt I could find with similar specs, and it’s 1k https://periphio.com/gaming-pcs/firestorm-7600-prebuilt-amd-gaming-pc/

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

      Yes, that was my point, the top of what this should cost is the same as a prebuilt with similar specs since Valve buys stuff in bulk it should be cheaper than that.

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

      And the other one is 700, your point is?

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

      It didn’t happened with the Deck because it’s not sold at a loss, so it’s cheaper to assemble a similarly built PC for you. But I definitely saw several posts through the years recommending people just buy a Steam Deck as their machine in certain conditions. If the Steam Deck costed 300 I guarantee you people would be using it as their daily drivers or building clusters of them.

      • Steve Dice@sh.itjust.works
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        12 hours ago

        Care to share a link to a PCPartPicker with that?

        Nope. Already closed the tab and can’t be bothered to do it again. I did check the link you provided and I see where you went wrong. We’ll get to that in a bit.

        It’s literally not, they custom developed it for the product, similar to the Steam Deck one, it is based on the architecture used on laptops, but so are Playstation and Xbox AFAIK.

        It literally has the exact same specs as a Ryzen 5 7400F and an RX7600M. But hey, you were right, the CPU is actually not a laptop CPU.

        Can you provide a link to such a prebuilt? Here’s the first prebuilt I could find with similar specs, and it’s 1k https://periphio.com/gaming-pcs/firestorm-7600-prebuilt-amd-gaming-pc/

        Sure I could. I won’t because you already did and your prebuilt even is a $50 cheaper than the one I had found. Remember that I said we’d get to why the part list you posted was wrong? Here we are. An RX7600 has 32 compute units and a boost clock of about 2.6GHz. The RX7600M “custom GPU” in the Steam Machine has 28 CUs and a boost clock of about 2.4Ghz. This results in the full size 7600 being anywhere from 30% to 70% faster than its mobile version depending on the game and about 50% in synthetic benchmarks. So those PCs with “similar specs” you brought up are not similar at all.

        And the other one is 700, your point is?

        What other one? The one nobody bought? I guess Valve could go the same route if their goal is for nobody to buy their product.

        It didn’t happened with the Deck because it’s not sold at a loss, so it’s cheaper to assemble a similarly built PC for you. But I definitely saw several posts through the years recommending people just buy a Steam Deck as their machine in certain conditions. If the Steam Deck costed 300 I guarantee you people would be using it as their daily drivers or building clusters of them.

        It didn’t happen with the Deck because it’s one of the worse ideas ever conceived. It won’t happen with the Cube because it will remain one of the worst ideas ever conceived.