Valve’s Pierre-Loup Griffais claimed that the Steam Machine price had not been nailed down internally, but that Valve’s aim was to offer a “good deal” in line with equivalently powered PCs.
“I think that if you build a PC from parts and get to basically the same level of performance, that’s the general price window that we aim to be at,” he said.
They’re going to be price competitive with building from parts, apparently.
The answer I’m replying to suggested you can get a prebuilt with a 9600 for 1000, since they’re replying to my point that a prebuilt with similar spec is 1000.
Oh, weird. I just read the whole chain going up and I don’t see any indication the figures were for prebuilt systems. Maybe someone edited their post or something isn’t federating?
Regardless, Valve is apparently going to be competitive just in hardware costs, which makes sense—they can’t expect to extract extra value from software sales, but they should still be able to have an acceptable profit margin with their scale and lack of layers in their distribution model.
Knowing what parts to buy, I don’t think most average people can cite every piece in a desktop
Selecting parts that are compatible, try plug-and-play an AMD CPU on an Intel MOBO.
Selecting parts that fit the chassis you selected, unless you went with a full ATX that’s a concern.
Now that you bought the components:
Knowing to ground yourself before doing anything, currently I’m getting static shocks daily where I live, if I didn’t know about this I could very easily fry a RAM by picking it up wrong.
Cable management is not easy, most cheaper chassis don’t have enough or dedicated space for it.
Correct amount of thermal paste is something lots of people get wrong.
Some pieces require strength to lock in place, others break if you even look at them sideways.
Now that you’ve assembled everything:
Installing OS
Installing drivers
Installing Steam
Depending on your OS and controller of choice pairing controller and getting it to work could be difficult
I’m not saying that assembling a computer is hard, but is definitely far from plug-and-play, and not something I would recommend for someone without technical knowledge who just wants something to play games.
That’s the wording a lot of other people would use, I’d say. I wouldn’t be able to put together a PC, and most people I know are like that. I have maybe two cousins that can. But we’d probably all agree that plug-and-play means that you buy something and it works just like that. For example, a refrigerator is likely plug and play, because you don’t expect to have to put together the components to make it work. You just plug it in and it works.
A prebuilt plug-and-play device? Can you share a link to that?
They’re going to be price competitive with building from parts, apparently.
The answer I’m replying to suggested you can get a prebuilt with a 9600 for 1000, since they’re replying to my point that a prebuilt with similar spec is 1000.
Oh, weird. I just read the whole chain going up and I don’t see any indication the figures were for prebuilt systems. Maybe someone edited their post or something isn’t federating?
Regardless, Valve is apparently going to be competitive just in hardware costs, which makes sense—they can’t expect to extract extra value from software sales, but they should still be able to have an acceptable profit margin with their scale and lack of layers in their distribution model.
This is the thing I’m replying to, emphasis on the prebuilt.
But yeah, I don’t think the machine will cost the same as a prebuilt, but that’s the high end of the price range.
Considering that building a pc isn’t more than plugging in all the parts, I’d say “building your own PC” very much is plug-and-play.
Not saying everyone can do it but “prebuilt plug-and-play” isn’t the wording I’d use.
It’s a lot more than that, it’s:
Now that you bought the components:
Now that you’ve assembled everything:
I’m not saying that assembling a computer is hard, but is definitely far from plug-and-play, and not something I would recommend for someone without technical knowledge who just wants something to play games.
That’s the wording a lot of other people would use, I’d say. I wouldn’t be able to put together a PC, and most people I know are like that. I have maybe two cousins that can. But we’d probably all agree that plug-and-play means that you buy something and it works just like that. For example, a refrigerator is likely plug and play, because you don’t expect to have to put together the components to make it work. You just plug it in and it works.