8 GB of VRAM and 16 GB of RAM … those are the specs of my almost 15 years old legacy machine. I doubt that the Steam Machine outperforms anything made in the last 5-10 years.
These figures just haven‘t gone up all that much over the last decade. Sure, you can get 128GB of RAM and 24GB of VRAM if you‘re willing to pay for it. But if you don‘t want to spend upwards of $5000 for your PC and you‘re maybe not that experienced, you might just look for a gaming rig from a vendor you‘ve heard of before and get 16GB RAM and 8GB VRAM even in 2025 with current-gen hardware.
I agree, I think it’s all about affordability and ease of use. If they can sell them for a nice price (somewhere around the price of a PS5 pro) and they’re easy to use I don’t see a reason why they wouldn’t sell. Hell, I might even buy one myself. I have a very old gaming pc (close to 10 years old now) and even though I’ve replaced some parts over the years (ram, GPU, storage), the core of it is still very outdated and it might almost be cheaper to switch to something like this then to upgrade my existing pc.
I’m always amazed how much you get taxed for prebuilts. This thing is at least $1k more than what I spent (with a similar config), and the CPU is still worse than the one I got lol.
Sure, doesn’t really take that long to research and build it though, and in my experience if you get a prebuilt, most people aren’t gonna like get it serviced or troubleshoot it with CS unless there’s something seriously wrong with it. They’ll likely just live with minor annoyances.
The only significant benefit IMO is if you really end up needing to RMA something (like if the motherboard is shot), you can just RMA the entire thing instead of figuring out which part is messed up. However, I’ve had mixed experiences RMAing laptops before, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just as bad for desktops.
It’s definitely not worth $1k+ IMO. If I spent $1k more, I could’ve gotten a 5090.
Must be nice to have such awesome 15yo machine, as my 6yo still have only 4gb vram (1650s).
If You had enough coins to buy top top tier 2010 rig with 8gb vram back then, You surely had much to upgrade it in 2015, 2020, and also did nice 5090 upgrade this year too! Who cares single 5090rtx do cost 4-6x than whole Gabecube is expected to cost.
Having industry market is awesome, You can find something ultra powered for Yourself, and I can do find some budget for myself too.
Ngl, I’m slightly jealous You’re in the top 30%, even top of the top of it these 30%, that article is NOT about.
8 GB of VRAM and 16 GB of RAM … those are the specs of my almost 15 years old legacy machine. I doubt that the Steam Machine outperforms anything made in the last 5-10 years.
These figures just haven‘t gone up all that much over the last decade. Sure, you can get 128GB of RAM and 24GB of VRAM if you‘re willing to pay for it. But if you don‘t want to spend upwards of $5000 for your PC and you‘re maybe not that experienced, you might just look for a gaming rig from a vendor you‘ve heard of before and get 16GB RAM and 8GB VRAM even in 2025 with current-gen hardware.
I agree, I think it’s all about affordability and ease of use. If they can sell them for a nice price (somewhere around the price of a PS5 pro) and they’re easy to use I don’t see a reason why they wouldn’t sell. Hell, I might even buy one myself. I have a very old gaming pc (close to 10 years old now) and even though I’ve replaced some parts over the years (ram, GPU, storage), the core of it is still very outdated and it might almost be cheaper to switch to something like this then to upgrade my existing pc.
I’m always amazed how much you get taxed for prebuilts. This thing is at least $1k more than what I spent (with a similar config), and the CPU is still worse than the one I got lol.
Your own time to research, build, debug, service, and troubleshoot your own build is a tax as well.
Sure, doesn’t really take that long to research and build it though, and in my experience if you get a prebuilt, most people aren’t gonna like get it serviced or troubleshoot it with CS unless there’s something seriously wrong with it. They’ll likely just live with minor annoyances.
The only significant benefit IMO is if you really end up needing to RMA something (like if the motherboard is shot), you can just RMA the entire thing instead of figuring out which part is messed up. However, I’ve had mixed experiences RMAing laptops before, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just as bad for desktops.
It’s definitely not worth $1k+ IMO. If I spent $1k more, I could’ve gotten a 5090.
Are we looking at the same link? The one I see is listed for $1099, so I’m not sure how you managed to spend $1k less.
Though anything with an Intel Ultra CPU should go right in the garbage, but that’s a different issue.
It’s configurable. The base model is $1k. Upgrading it goes upwards of $3k (dunno what the max is).
It’s all about the price… and the very recent years weren’t exactly kind in relation for price per performance
Must be nice to have such awesome 15yo machine, as my 6yo still have only 4gb vram (1650s).
If You had enough coins to buy top top tier 2010 rig with 8gb vram back then, You surely had much to upgrade it in 2015, 2020, and also did nice 5090 upgrade this year too! Who cares single 5090rtx do cost 4-6x than whole Gabecube is expected to cost.
Having industry market is awesome, You can find something ultra powered for Yourself, and I can do find some budget for myself too.
Ngl, I’m slightly jealous You’re in the top 30%, even top of the top of it these 30%, that article is NOT about.
Yeah, I admit, it was quite expensive. I never updated one single bit of it, except switching to a 1080 one or two years after buying it, though.
Do you think RAM is the only thing that factors into performance?..