What's the Matter Daddy?

**Alex** (0:00)
This week, Valve announced pricing for the Steam Machine, the long-awaited Steam Machine. Hands up if the pricing was lower than you expected.
Yeah, I didn't think so, nobody. It's unfortunately, as you probably know, by listening to this, it's over $1,000 for the entry.

**Jeff** (0:19)
Little rough, but again, announcing a product in the current state of affairs of consumer electronics, not something I would want to be doing.

**Alex** (0:31)
Rumor has it that they wanted to get this thing in the sort of 750, 800 range, which I would have probably jumped on, to be honest with you. But now it's $1,049 for the base model. And base here means 512 gigs of NVMe storage, 16 gigs of RAM only, and 8 gigs. This is the one that kills me, 8 gigs of VRAM.

**Jeff** (0:53)
That was kind of known, but go ahead, Adam.

**Adam** (0:55)
Yeah, I was going to say the exact same thing. It's not like they changed the specs for the release to lower it because of price constraints and the issues going in the market. And I will say, I feel for Valve, I have actually been part of a recent product release and I'm going to be part of multiple more releases. It is not an easy time to play this game. So thank you, AI.
Yeah.

**Alex** (1:21)
So I wonder, right, LTT have been actually doing some great coverage of this this week. And one of the first videos of theirs that came out was the unboxing and then the review. And then the next one predictably was, I'm going to build a replacement machine from off-the-shelf parts for the same price and oh, look, isn't it better?
How long is the lead time on hardware builds like this? You know, is it custom silicon? Do we know in the Steam Machine? Like, what's the sort of lead time here? Like, did they have to lock this build in six months, 12 months ago?

**Adam** (1:54)
It's semi-custom. So the GPU is a similar, a very similar spec to what is out in the market. I think the 6700 or 6900, something, one of those is very similar in spec.
As is the CPU, it's basically a mobile CPU, is my understanding. But they've combined these two little beasts together, and so semi-custom.
I will tell you, they actually have been very clear that they have not only had challenges in... They didn't specify that it was the CPU slash GPU combo that was an issue, but they were very open and verbose about the fact that they are not able to source the parts effectively. That's partially why they've gone to these lengths with the lottery system to block scalping and to help with that. But they've... the other... this was an interesting factoid. They are actually releasing these, and there is no guarantee that you will get two RAM sticks, even though it's a dual channel setup. There will be some that come with a single DIMM, and some that will come with the dual DIMM. And they're just saying, did you want to get one? If you did, this was the best option.

**Alex** (3:11)
Fingers crossed.

**Adam** (3:13)
Right?

**Alex** (3:13)
You get the single stick, right?

**Adam** (3:15)
Right.

**Jeff** (3:15)
No, you want the dual stick.

**Stephen** (3:16)
No, you don't.

**Jeff** (3:16)
No, you want the dual stick.

**Adam** (3:17)
Upgrade.

**Alex** (3:17)
Because you can then go and buy one off of Facebook Marketplace or whatever, and shove it in without having to buy two.

**Adam** (3:23)
Correct.

**Jeff** (3:23)
Okay, fair, but I mean, there technically is a performance hit for not having dual channel with Ryzen. So technically, you want the dupe.

**Alex** (3:31)
You're missing what I'm saying.

**Jeff** (3:33)
I know what you're saying.

**Alex** (3:33)
I want them to send me a single stick, because that leaves an open slot for me to go to the secondhand market and buy one for cheaper, without having to do the resale parts.

**Jeff** (3:44)
I mean, here's actually an interesting question. Would it have made more sense for Valve to do a framework DIY package, where they just sent you the box with no RAM, no hard drive?

**Adam** (3:58)
Yeah, but it's for gamers.
It's supposed to be an appliance, like a console. So I don't think it follows the same sort of ethos that framework kind of built their business upon.

**Alex** (4:13)
But can we just take a moment to appreciate the fact that a gaming console, okay, it might be a little rough around the edges. The price might be a little higher than we would like. Can we just take a moment and appreciate the fact that a genuine gaming console is shipping with Linux as the OS? Can we just smoke that up for a moment?