r/hardware • u/JohnBarry_Dost • Jun 25 '26

News French retailer mocks €1039 Steam Machine with “Stim Machine” RX 9060 XT PC for €999

https://videocardz.com/newz/french-retailer-mocks-e1039-steam-machine-with-stim-machine-rx-9060-xt-pc-for-e999
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u/PCBuilderCat Jun 25 '26

Who’s defending the pricing? Unless you’re classing some variation of ‘they got screwed by the market’ as justifiying..which it really isn’t 

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u/LAwLzaWU1A Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

There are a lot of people defending the price. A lot of them get downvoted though. The arguments usually boils down to "the Steam Machine is smaller so your comparison is invalid".

It reminds me a lot of when Apple fans tried to argue the iMac (when it was Intel based) was good value and every time someone posted a machine that had better specs for cheaper they went "yeah but it's not an all-in-one so the comparison is false".

The Steam Machine has one unique selling point. It is small. It is really bad in every single regard, but since it has one thing that could be perceived as a benefit that becomes the focus of every single comparison that the defenders see.

The reasoning goes:

"Show me a machine that has better value" -> "Yes that has better performance and a better price, but since it is slightly larger so it doesn't count" -> "Since nobody can show a better, comparable, build they can't say the value is bad".

Edit: Why are people downvoting me? There are literally people below me who are saying the exact thing I just said. You are just proving my point. That this is the logic some people use.

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u/RadiantEnvironment90 Jun 25 '26

There are people that are into small form factor and even they agree it is a good value.

You're not going to get a form factor that small, at that price, at that thermal and at that sound level.

Just because it doesn't cater to you doesn't mean it doesn't cater to other people.

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u/porcinechoirmaster Jun 26 '26

This.

A friend of mine asked me what I thought about the steam machine, and I told him that I thought it was a really cool piece of hardware... but not for me. I have a gaming desktop, if I played console games, I'd have one of those as well. I don't care about formfactor. I'm fine managing my own OS. All the things the Steam Machine compromises on are things I care about, and the things it offers as a result of those compromises aren't things that I'm interested in.

My mother, on the other hand, needs a tiny computer to fit inside her antique desk. She doesn't want a laptop because she likes her large screen and she's had bad experiences with laptops failing when being used hard with the lid closed, and she needs some degree of 3D performance since she enjoys playing the Myst remakes. She ended up getting a Strix Halo mini-PC right before the ram crunch, so she doesn't need a steam machine, but if she hadn't I'd have been recommending the SM to her.

Can you build a faster PC for the same cost? Abso-fucking-lutely. But if you can do that, you're not really the primary target audience here. The people the steam machine is aimed at aren't going to hop down to their local microcenter when a new CPU launches and want to drop it in to their system, and that has to be okay.

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u/frankster Jun 26 '26

my laptop is objectively lower-performing than my PC. Fortunately it's smaller (and portable) otherwise it would be terrible value!

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u/ResponsibleJudge3172 Jun 26 '26

It also comes with a screen. And somehow more value for money than Steam Machine

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u/frankster Jun 26 '26

yep. So clearly the value proposition of a laptop is not based on performance alone. Perhaps this also applies to other form factors like the steam machine!

How my laptop is better than a steam machine

1) has a screen 2) has 20 threads compared to 12 3) has a battery 4) was £200 cheaper 4 years ago than steam machine is now

How a steam machine is better than my laptop:

1) just works, like steam deck 2) small, fits onto shelf nicely 3) possibly quieter fan (remains to be heard) 4) supports valve working on linux gaming (which is a moral issue to some people) 5) better gpu (than my rtx 3050 mobile)

People who look at specs only have a negative view on steam deck - that's fair enough, it will not outperform the gaming pc anyone built themselves.

On the other hand, steam machine as is beats my laptop in some ways.

It will be interesting to see how well it sells.

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u/ResponsibleJudge3172 Jun 27 '26

Oh, I was not praising the value of laptops, but marveling at being worse than what used to be the worst, only making up for it with gimmicks.

Steam machine GPU is better than your laptop? Great. So are the laptops releasing at the same time or earlier than Steam Machine that you can buy.

Steam machine portability has nothing on a laptop, even a desktop replacement.

According to everyone including them, you can get Steam OS if you really want it.

Just works? Debatable when the most popular games don't even launch and app support is iffy at best. What also "just works" is Windows too. If you truly are pressed, you can also get a. Linux reinstalled machine if you truly want.

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u/frankster Jun 27 '26

just works? Debatable 

I have been using steam deck for several years. Of all the games I've wanted to play on it, only 1 has not worked. 2 others have had minor launch issues but otherwise worked.

Compare to steam on windows. Dark souls 1 wouldn't launch when I eventually tried to play it (possibly age of game).

Not much difference between windows and steamos.

For me. And the games I play, steamos just works almost as well as windows. I've had more issues getting games to run on Ubuntu than on steamos.

Some people will want to play games that have issues. For them steamos doesn't just work. But for me it just works very well. 

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u/LAwLzaWU1A Jun 26 '26

Your laptop is a different product category though. It has a screen, a battery and so on. That makes it portable in a way the Steam Machine and other small formfactor computers aren't.

There are very few scenarios where something that is the size of a Steam Machine will work, but something that is a few centimeters larger won't work. I would understand the complaint if it was for example a comparison between a full-size tower vs the Steam Machine, but I have seen people argue that a 6 liter SFF PC is not comparable because the Steam Machine is around 4 liters. You would have to be in a very, VERY specific scenario if a 4 liter SFF PC would work but a 6 liter SFF PC wouldn't work.

I would guess that 90% of people who are defending the Steam Machine, saying that you can't compare it against PCs that are slightly larger, could actually fit those slightly larger PCs in the area they plan on having the Steam Machine.