I got a place on the 512GB with Controller list, and got an email a few days after they started. I ordered it on Friday the 3rd and got it today on Thursday the 9th. The tracking codes were all over the place and gave different estimates depending which branch of each company I used. Steam claimed it was shipped when the courier said they hadn't got it so I was worried for a few days. But this morning Royal Mail (UK customer) sent me an email saying it would arrive today, while GLS said it would arrive tomorrow.

Safe to say I'm happy to have it now and be playing games!

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[–] 94 points 4 months ago (64 children)

Congratulations! Even though they are overpriced, they are the right size and wife approved aesthetically. They are also more functional than a console. I still want one. But I got waitlisted hardcore. I hope you enjoy yours. Do write up your first impressions and a detailed review after you’ve had some runtime with it. It’ll help us less fortunate souls decide to wait out the waitlist, or go build something on our own cheaper but less slick looking :)

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  • [–] 128 points 4 months ago* (10 children)

    I will not call it overpriced because the current PC market is crazy because of AI. Even Valve isn't happy with the price.

    Overpriced would mean that Valve would be making a significant profit. They will not.

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  • [–] 66 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Yeah, the fact that they are using bespoke parts, but still barely come in above the independent build cost tells me that they aren't raking billions off of this. I'm fine with the price. Expensive, yes, but so is everything else.

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  • [–] 30 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    It is 'overpriced' compared to a desktop in the same way laptops are 'overpriced' compared to desktops. Making things smaller increases cost, especially when there is a lot of heat dissipation needed.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 child)

    Is this 'overprice compared to laptop" reflection still valid with the current AI driven price peak of separate components?

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    Yes because the desktop equivalent cost machine would be faster, no cpu locked at 30w or cut down gpu. Just like with a laptop.

    It is expensive for a pretty low end machine but also so is everything now. And it does look nice and comes with a more console like experience out the box.

    No one should be buying this thing based on performance alone, but it still ticks many other boxes

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  • Something can be overpriced and the company can still be losing money on it. How much profit the company making it makes is entirely irrelevant to the usability for the end consumer.

    If they made a bunch of poor choices that made the cost of the product go up that doesn’t change the fact that I could’ve gotten more for my money from a better designed product. Like they could make the entire chassis a solid copper cube and that could cost say $1000 alone. And it could cool like shit. If they did then this $2k copper steam machine would be extremely overpriced.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    I want to see what Sony and Microsoft price theirs at and how much of a loss it will be for them.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Sony can afford to discount on the promise of online sales and planned cost reduction. I'm not sure Microsoft are going to manage another Xbox.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    Well... no.

    Thats... Sony and MSFT raised prices on all of their hardware too, same with Nintendo.

    We're at the point where being a huge player... can only get you priority in the queue for chips and parts.

    It can no longer secure bulk pricing discounts.

    That's how bad this is.

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  • [–] 34 points 4 months ago (51 children)

    I got mine yesterday. Copying my thoughts from a comment in another thread:

    Don't mind my essay here. TLDR: I love this thing.

    I got mine yesterday. It's the 512GB with no controller since I already got the controller separately and the 2TB version felt like an especially bad deal.

    I was initially on the fence about the price and reserved just to get into the queue to make the actual buy decision later. I was expecting more people to have thoughts on it out before my spot in the queue came up, but I ended up getting my purchase email very quickly on 6/30. I let the email sit for a day but ended up deciding to pull the trigger for a few reasons:

    One, I've owned every first-party Valve device so far, and all of them have been more than the sum of their parts. Two, I wanted a HTPC, travel, and LAN party PC that's a bit less restraining than a laptop. Three, being a bit of a performance snob has been distracting me away from actually gaming and I wanted to get back into the no nonsense side of PC gaming again. And four, I don't mind spending a little extra money advancing Linux, repairable hardware, etc.

    I feel like I have to acknowledge reviews from the PC space have been largely negative, but they seem to be undervaluing a lot: the form factor (a 6" cube is still tiny compared to almost all other SFF builds), performance per volume (almost the entire cube is a heat sink), and the benefits of more standard performance targets we've already seen with the Deck.

    As for first impressions, the device is packaged well, and unboxing was very satisfying. I did have some trouble getting my controller paired since it was already paired to my existing desktop PC and plugging it in directly wasn't enough to get around that like I expected, but looking up how to pair it to multiple PCs got me past that.

    I spent a few hours testing a mix of light to demanding games, and I'm more than happy with what it can do. I haven't tried gaming beyond 1080p yet, but I'm going to be very selective about when and how I do that. 512GB is proving to be plenty of space for what I'm playing at any one time, and I think that would still be true if I didn't have other devices acting as additional storage.

    I feel like all my expectations above have been validated, and now I'm really looking forward to getting the Frame. I want to make a travel backpack or suitcase with foam cutouts for the whole set.

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  • [–] 37 points 4 months ago (17 children)

    wtf who says this to people? Who raised you?

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Read the room buddy, this is a celebratory thread. We're excited the machines are shipping. This is a happy place. (With some gentle joking out of jealousy.).

    You threw a big 'ole damper! OP is happy they got a thing and you respond with "have fun when it breaks!" You're going to get some funny looks when you do that.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    While I am not one to shit on peoples excitement and personally I kinda want a steam machine (and especially want the controller), I do also think its fair to say the fediverse absolutely loves to be anti-consumer until its consumerism that appeals to us as a group 😅

    Still not gonna be antagonistic about people's joy though 🤷🏻‍♂️ I kinda want one, I'd be jazzed if mine just showed up too

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    I feel sorry for anyone that doesn't have at least one area they are enthusiastic enough about to splurge a little in. Still, can we really call it consumerism when Valve releases hardware so infrequently? Seriously. 11 years between controllers? 7 years between VR headsets? 6+ years expected between handhelds?

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    I mean you could have made your comment about that and not “lol I hope your $1k cube breaks.”

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Someone here never got a single quality toy from their parents. That explains some things.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Electronic devices aren't toys and them breaking is a fact, not an opinion. Literally nothing lasts forever. Accidents happen too.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    That's evident, there's still no reason for you to be raining over their parade. Only people with hate in them come out and do shit like that out of the blue, generating more hate, of course, which seems to be your intentiin now that I said that.wao, and I fell for it too. Good job.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    Nah bruh. No hate here. I guess I was bored at the moment and started posting without a second thought. This definitely is the wrong place, but I do think that what I said is true. This steam machine v1 will most likely end up like the licensed steam machines valve launched way back when.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    I agree that there is a chance that it may happen, but I also think that this time around they came better prepared with way better hardware and software, which could end up being what the world needs right now to put Xbox, Nintendo and Playstation to sleep permanently.

    I seriously wanted one myself, but I refuse to pay the price it was launched at, even knowing that it's not Valve's fault. And while I can build something nominally more powerful for the same money, I don't believe I can build something that checks as many boxes as this steam machine does in terms of power to noise to electricity usage ratio plus the convenience factor. By all means this is finally the first light gaming PC that can give consoles a run for their money. No platform lock-ins, with the convenience of any console.

    So, do I think you're wrong? Not entirely, only time will tell. But for now, I hope that everyone that got one enjoys it for themselves and for those of us that couldn't or chose not to get one at launch.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    I disagree on the hardware. I think that a custom apu with rdna 3 in 2026 and this anemic is basically doa. It can barely handle, 1080p and you can forget about high refresh rates.

    Also, have you seen teardowns? It's a very complicated device to service. Something as simple as replacing/adding ram is very much a non-trivial task.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    Lol. Don't assume I'm going into these purchases on blind fanboyism, and don't confuse "niche" with "bad." I just have very good experiences with their hardware going all the way back to the OG Controller, Link, and the Vive (which I consider theirs more than HTC's), and that informs decisions that follow.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    "Objective"? Any objective person would have come through the thread, and then move on. There's nothing objective about you except for the fact that you're and objectively sad individual who is probably going through some bad life situations. By the way, I'm being as objective as you, in case you're wondering.

    What a fucking moron 🤣

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (17 children)

    Repairability isn't an absolute scale, and smaller form factors need to make more compromises in modularity. It'd be silly to judge this on the same metric as a fully modular desktop PC since it's not trying to be a substitute for that use case.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    The PC won’t be the same size. Or have CEC.

    Side note: Seriously how the fuck do normal ass PCs not support CEC?

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (3 children)

    I love that you talk about being "objective" and then make a bunch of extremely subjective statements.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (2 children)

    Not taking into account the cec bit, everything else is pretty objective. You're trading in a few cm² for a lot of unnecessary inconvenience, and you're not even saving any money.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    "Not that much smaller" is doing some heavy lifting. Every SFF build or mini PC compromises something, price, size, thermal performance, whatever. Physics necessitates it. It's perfectly fine for you to not value size so much that a 3.8L case isn't compelling to you over let's say a 6L ITX case (or the 8L you really need for a discrete GPU), but it's also okay to feel the opposite.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    I think you're just not seeing outside the bubble of the use cases that make sense to you. I already have great daily driver PCs currently running a mix of Bazzite and CachyOS (and Windows, ew), and I have built a couple SFF PCs before, so I'm no stranger to all of that. I can't speak for anyone else here, but part of why I find the Steam Machine compelling is it covering the opposite end of that spectrum to a degree other SFF options haven't reached.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Well, I never claimed it filled a necessary niche. It's a luxury good by definition. I just don't mind having multiple options, redundancy, and overlap in hardware roles even if that means some of it gets underutilized. That said, I'm not planning to keep the thing under the TV indefinitely. It's going to justify its standalone performance at least occasionally.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (3 children)

    but the steam machine simply does not make sense for me.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Does the Steam controller wake the Machine?

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago

    Not only does it wake it from sleep, but it also turns it on if it was shutdown.

    That being said, I had the same issue as the previous comment when initially pairing my Controller to the Machine (I got the 2TB Machine but had a Controller from when they initially launched). I had to do my setup with an Xbox controller instead and after running the initial updates, it paired without issues and I've been able to easily use it on the Machine and my desktop PC.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago

    Just tested it. Yes, it does. It woke it from sleep and also woke it from shutdown.

    CEC, on the other hand, is behaving weird for me. That's probably a software issue Valve will soon patch or an issue with my TV. I have a 2017 4K Samsung that I will never connect to the Internet and have never bothered to update. I'll just keep its remote handy in the meantime.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (4 children)

    Sorry, that's what I mean. I mean custom pc

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (2 children)

    Nobody said that

    I think the confusion here is that you see gamers as nerds who all want ray tracing and photorealism

    They aren't. Some are

    But steam directly tests that hardware in steam os, so less likelihood of issues. Also, not all hardware is compatible with each other when building either

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    I'm literally playing nfsu 2 and signalis. I also think ray tracing is dumb af and we're nowhere near phitorealism. So no, you're dead wrong.

    However, I also want to play the latest RE and Control Resonant when it comes out. Not to mention that I play these games on a 1440p 170hz screen and would like to upgrade to alienware's new ultrawide oled. Something like the steam machine would not be enough for that.

    steam directly tests that hardware in steam os, so less likelihood of issues

    Issues like what, exactly? Unless you have a pc that's over a decade old, you won't have any "hardware issues".

    not all hardware is compatible with each other when building either

    There's this thing called hwpartpicker. You should use it. Hw incompatibility isn't rocket science.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    I worked at a computer store for a few months. Tools like PC part picker likely aren't always 100% accurate... And, even small things like cases can cause issues.

    And, you still can have weird issues. I bought an omnibook and was getting random stalls. I'm still not sure it was fully because I didn't have enough ram. You shouldn't, but it does still happen.

    Nobody is forcing you to buy it. But a lot of people just want a turnkey solution (like I said) where everything just works with minimum effort. I actually play games on a 4k tv.. using a rog ally.

    It's not like steam likely won't update their steam machine specs again when it makes sense either. It's unlikely they'd run the same cycle length as Xbox, Nintendo or Sony

    At the very least, I think part of the reason, like the steam deck is to kick off other similar products too. Even if you don't like the steam machine there will likely be others which are preinstalled and target steam

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