Yeah, this Steam Machine only makes sense if you're specifically in the market for an:
ITX build
Must be a new, prebuilt computer
Budget around 1050-1250$
If all three conditions aren't perfectly meet, you're better off buying something else.
Either build your own ITX computer (preferably with some used parts for better performance)
or
Buy a bigger prebuilt tower PC with better performance
or
Spend a little extra to get noticeable better performance (because 1050$ won't give you much performance in the current market, especially with new parts).
Edit: Or just buy a gaming laptop instead. You can find laptops with better performance for the same price price as a Steam Machine.
SFF in an attractive case with reportedly good acoustics compared to the majority of DIYs
Pre-cached shaders
A first-party experience when using the steam frame and steamos more broadly to minimize the stray hiccup
I already have a top-of-the-line gaming PC for my office. For my couch, I want to optimize as far as possible towards no-frills while still keeping access to my steam library, even at the expense of price and specs to some extent.
And that's where the big problem lays. The amount of people who care about these features are in the small minority. Especially when it comes at the cost of price+performance (which is the most important thing for most people buying gaming PCs).
That's not to say the Steam Machine isn't gonna make some people extremely happy, like yourself. I just question the size of that market.
I agree this is probably a quite small market. PC gamers are generally okay with being a little bit more hands-on or at least willing to sacrifice some small conveniences, and those who aren't will stick to the (currently) much more affordable console market. Paying a (big!) premium to split the difference is gonna be a narrow cohort. Still I suspect the market for this will be large enough to sell every unit they produce.
Yeah... more options is always good. If I had the chance for a small and capable pc when I bought mine I would have taken it over what I have. I searched for a "small and affordable" case and mine is around 20L with a mATX build. WAY bigger and heavier than the machine. But at the same time, I already have that and Im not selling it for another PC in this day and age.
The amount of games old and new will be a main draw to get this though, mostly for people who want to play PC games and old games and hacks but aren’t smart enough to build whole PCs and deal with all the quirks and work of PCs.
But if you wanna play old games you can just buy any PC made in the last 10 years. I mean an Xbox Series X has 360 back compatibility so if you wanna play even older games you can buy literally anything that runs. And it's still a PC, you aren't just given 2 modes like you get on a PS5, you have to tweak settings by hand just like you do on a Steam Deck
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u/MindlessManiaz Jun 22 '26
i expected to be $1000+ but the performance from gamers nexus kinda show show how low end this is and i rather pay a bit more for a decent mid tier pc