Am I the only one who thinks the steam machine's price is very reasonable relative to the current PC component prices?
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2026
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The number of "steam machine killers" that immediately popped up with the release shows how good it is actually.
Of course a PC enthusiast can get more performance per buck but that's not their demographic. For the price you get the computing power in an unusually compact form factor with a lot of effort put into an silent and efficient cooling system.
It's a unique consumer device with a reasonable prebuilt markup.
I would say it's commensurate, which is exactly what Valve said to expect. The problem is people are either comparing it to existing consoles, which are subsidized, or giant PCs 4x the size.
It may also be all the people not realizing just how expensive ram and storage have gotten.
I was initally shocked by the price, then looked at how much it would take to upgrade my pc and decided I'll just keep playing indie games for the time being.
It may also be all the people not realizing just how expensive ram and storage have gotten
It is largely that. Yes, there's a price premium for the form factor, but it's not that much
I thought it was expensive, but always thought the expense was the right choice compared to a razor-blade model that would have created an evil incentive to close their platform.
Now that we're looking forward to years of bearing the full effects of Trump's tariffs and unregulated AI hyperscalers cornering the semiconductor industry, however, it's starting to look downright cheap.
I think it's pretty reasonable. I just wish they'd gone a little more aggressive for their performance goals.
Everything else, from the clean design, open specs, etc. is great.
I just wish they'd gone a little more aggressive for their performance goals.
Same. They have their CPU and GPU power limited to keep the temps (subsequent fan noise) down. If they put in a more powerful PSU in and let the fans ramp up it'd do significantly better in benchmarks
I have a worse desktop (overclocked R5 2600 and RX 7600) and it generally performs fine. Some CPU-heavy settings have to be turned down in some games, but it manages medium-high at native 1080p for everything I've tried. White room benchmarks aren't everything.
at that form factor and support level yes the price is good
anything shown as competing so far isnt the same product really
No you're not.
Turns out... it is actually pretty hard to build an SFF PC with comparable gaming power, for comparable or cheaper... if you're not a giganto megacorp that can muscle in for priority on components.
Not even they can even get bulk discounts now, not really... thats why all the console makers had to jump up their prices too.
I think the “steam roller” from Meta PCs proves that it’s reasonable. Similar price, slightly better specs, but not crazy better. Though I do like the fact they have a full on video card that can be independently upgraded. It’s a shit market currently.
For me it's specifically the price to performance. They targeted such old CPU and GPU tech. The CPU especially could be better for that price.
It’s all relative.
For me, the price of a base steam machine is $1,509 CAD plus tax.
Even then, they’re constantly changing their wording (“delivers 4k60fps” to “up to 4k60fps”), and real world testing it doesn’t make sense for me to consider this.
The Switch 2 is more than half the price ($629 CAD without the bundle) and has subjectively better price to performance plus it can be docked: it’s basically a steam deck and steam machine in one console.
Significantly less games, and Nintendo hardly ever has sales. So you will easily make up that difference in software over the life of the machine. Unless you're going for the Nintendo exclusives, this doesn't seem like a better deal.
Less games? No, pretty much every popular third party game is on it.
Epic probably has more games in their store than Nintendo. Steam has significantly more games than epic. There's no comparison. You miss out on a handful of Nintendo exclusives, or literally thousands of PC exclusives.
Ah, epic, the storefront that barely works on Linux. And steam, which on Linux ships with proton that may or may not work, why? Dunno 🤷♂️
I’d rather have something that works out of the box.
You clearly haven't used proton recently. With the exception of malware level anticheat the only issue I've had is forza horizon 6 was pretty shit at launch. (Not available on switch by the way)
Pretty much everything just works now. At most I might need to switch between proton versions. All of the MS games on pc, not on switch. All of the PS games on pc, not on switch. And that's just in the AAA space. Indie games galore not available on switch.
Switch is fine, but it doesn't come close to what you'd get from a steam machine, or any desktop pc.
I used it yesterday, I had to jump through hoops just to launch a game. If it “just works now” I shouldn’t have to switch proton versions.
New electric car rival offers 2000KWh engine and tight styling. Comes with no batteries or wheels.
Would an article ever run like this? This is a combo deal on a motherboard & gfx card. Not sure how it became a 'Steam Machine rival'.
I assume because it's advertised that way. 
So smart to not even include RAM. Or storage.
Smart from a business perspective, probably, not necessarily in providing a product.
"Barebone" market does exist, and since market couldn't exist without money... I guess there are "money-bringing entities" (aka customers) already for that sort of stuff. ...but electric cars without batteries and wheels market? not quite sure about that.
Not sure how it became a ‘Steam Machine rival’.
Is a Steam Machine rival in the sense that Valve has to bent and pray to ram cartel to have a batch of machines to sell; AOOSTAR don't. Of course, AOOSTAR doesn't have the reaching power of Valve; but this may help Valve to understand there are options to what the ram cartel forces them into.
Yep yep yep.
Tons of manufacturers are offering barebones builds of many models of miniPCs and similar, because... the environment is just that insane.
They can do all the work of designing their cases and boards and SOCs or cpu/apu/npu integrated mobos and such...
But RAM? SSDs? Sometimes GPUs?
They can sell more if they do 90% of the work, and the ... basically enthusiast by definition consumer base does the other 10% of 'final assembly'.
If a barebones model doesn't appeal to somebody... okey dokey then, good luck finding a better deal without any work on your end, convenience maxxing consumer.
Do people not like, get, that most PC components are ultimately made by ... cartels? Do people not get that?
They're literally cartels, they just make and sell computer components, not cocaine.
TL;DR: AOOSTAR's GODY mini PC offers a Ryzen 9 7940HX and RX 7600 XT GPU for $849, undercutting Valve's Steam Machine price, but it lacks RAM and storage, requiring users to add DDR5 memory and an SSD amid high DRAM prices. It runs Windows 11 and is larger than the Steam Machine.
Also no storage. So it's probably around the same price-to-benefit ratio of a steam machine: lacks the smaller footprint, tighter integration (including steam controller dock built in), no CEC (if you care about that); gains better upgradability, better gpu and cpu. Probably noisier as well, considering the higher tdp.
EDIT: Forgot to mention that 16 cores is pointless upgrade for pure gaming.
Instead of buying this, I'd just build a pc myself. This is the thing these steam machine killers are not getting: the gabe cube is not made for people who can build a pc on their own, it's made for the ones who want to have a pc-console that just works, no faffing about, no tinkering, no opening up and figuring out if the ram is seated properly or not. It's for those that want plug, sit and play.
i have a soup for you that is a better price, it comes with water and a rock
I mean, a better comparison is, I have a soup to sell you but it doesn't come with the protein or stock components. Which is actually a thing.
better not be 80% of the price of normal
makes me think of those overpriced scammy online only overhyped influencer meals
The CEC thing is weird to me; does it need special hardware other than just HDMI? Couldn't that be handled via software?
Valve literally had to develop hardware to do it because consumer graphics cards just don't offer it, or the access needed to make it work. No steam machine come will offer this in the short term, but they might in the medium term. Reliability and consistency might differ once it does exist, but that remains to be seen.
Short answer is yes, it requires hardware that to my knowledge isn't available on normal consumer motherboards.
CEC is a standalone pin on HDMI, so if the adapter or cable doesn't wire that up (for whatever reason) then it won't work.
And if you're using DisplayPort output (Which is probably the case, since HDMI has a load of issues), then you need to ensure whatever adapter you're using supports translating from the DP encoding to the HDMI-CEC pin.
If that all works, then you should be fine, as the software side has supported it for ages (i.e. Linux 4.8 added support)
Yes, LTT tried getting CEC to work, and at the very least, it isn't trivial. I'd hazard a guess that someone with more determination and willing to go deeper might find a way of spoofing the signal using an esp or something, but at the very least, it's not something you can just enable or disable with a toggle.
Uh huh. I am a steam machine rival too. Just give me ram, storage, cpu, gpu and a motherboard and I'll run games for ya no problem at all. That'll be nine ninety-nine.
So +4-600 dollars usd
How many of these Steam Machine Killers are going to contribute to Proton? That alone is why Steam gets my money over them. These other players are in it for the cash, riding on the work that is done by others. At least Valve is putting their money where their mouth is.
Same with the whole Steam Deck thing.
All those "Steam Deck killers" but all of them are forgetting the big picture, contributing to a compatibility layer so we can play games outside of Windows/Microsoft bullshit.
I'm happy for anyone who gets one of these Steam Machine "killers" because if this suits their needs, they never wanted a Steam Machine in the first place.
It leaves more available for the people who actually want a Steam Machine because they know what it is.
Okay. But what about the level of bloatware?
Yes, it has windows
Ah so I need two mortgages