this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2026
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Crazy people are trying to drown out your comments with down votes when you are just stating facts.
The stream machine is unfortunately a failure for the price. It should have been 600ish tops for the hardware. You can get a much better system for similar or slightly more which makes it's price to perf horrible.
Yes I know it's because of datacenter and price fixing but it doesn't make the steam machine a good system compared to others
You maybe could have gotten a much better system for a similar price a year or two ago but I’m not sure you could at today’s prices. Especially if you price out a small form factor one. I wouldn’t be surprised if the original price of steam machine was in the 6-700 range before the current ram/storage/gpu crisis
You can get a sff machine with a dedicated gpu and better processor though
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GLDVNNFG
One example that has a much better processor and gpu and smaller form factor too. Plus you can upgrade it so its not a giant paper weight.
https://www.microcenter.com/product/708800/G533_Gaming_PC;_AMD_Ryzen_5_7500X3D_40GHz_Processor;_AMD_Radeon_RX_9060_XT_16GB_GDDR6;_16GB_DDR5-6000_RAM;_1TB_Solid_State_Drive;_Microsoft_Windows_11
Way better but limited to microcenter.
Many DIY options too
https://www.pcmag.com/news/i-configured-four-small-pcs-to-beat-the-steam-machine-at-its-own-game
Those first 2 you posted are roughly 10x the volume of the steam machine, which is one of the big draws for me
16.6" x 10.2" x 14.4" = 40 L
8.5" x 15.75" x 16.50” = 36L
vs
6.1 x 6.0 x 6.4 = 3.7 L
And even the DIY page the cheapest config they came up with is $920. I think Valve pretty much cannot sell their machine less than comparable PC, because if they did, people would just start buying them as general purpose small PCs, so they need to make at least a small profit on them, unlike the dedicated console makers who can take a loss on the machines since the only way to get software on them is through them
Lol you used volume to compare the physical size differences to make it sound much bigger.
Enjoy your very expensive paperweight in a few years because it can barely run games now well, let alone future ones.
I posted some examples I found in a few minutes checking that will offer a massive performance improvement and not take up a lot of space. You can find others if you cared to look