Valve is once again doing something mysterious, is it not? They have decided not to be content with just the largest PC gaming store ever and to move forward with hardware once again. The tweet of a user named Pirat_Nation sparked the whole argument again. The claim? That the Valve ‘Steam Machine’ will be having specs that are ‘equal or better than 70% of all the PCs the users will have at home.’ That is a very bold claim. A very hot one as well. The gamer community, as usual, had… their opinions about it. A lot of them.
The tweet was accompanied by a screenshot showing what was believed to be a spec sheet. It included an AMD Zen 4 CPU, an RDNA3-based GPU, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 1TB NVMe SSD. If that is true, we are looking at a pretty good mid-range machine for 2024. The GPU is likely to deliver around 8-9 TFLOPs, which in layman’s terms means it will be capable of rendering games at 1080p and even 1440p without much problem. The dispute here is that this very configuration would really be surpassing a lot of the systems that the most recent Steam Survey has counted.
But wait, what was I saying? Oh yes, the reaction. It came so fast and, as usual with Twitter about gaming, totally everywhere.
The reaction was very mixed. Some people doubted the whole thing from the beginning. User Catnip_Frier was very skeptical and made a very strong argument by saying, ‘You can’t beat marketing based on a flawed survey; hence, PC gaming is more than just Steam which is just one storefront.’ Which, admittedly, is a valid point. The Steam Hardware Survey tells only a part of the story, not the entire one. Another user, TheTankBall, was even more sarcastic, simply saying ‘Source – “I made it the F up”.’ The very first thing that was put into question was the reliability of the main assertion.
After that, the discussion changed to the issue of price, which was the next point to be made. The specs are one thing, and their price tag is a whole other matter. The original tweet did not mention the cost but that did not stop anyone. GamerLXXXVI made a very expensive comparison, linking it to other Valve hardware: ‘Price out a Steam Deck and their Steam VR headset and report back without cuss words.’ By this, he indicated that Valve is usually overpriced. User DH5tv put it that there was a feeling among the gamers that he was speaking for when he said: ‘because we can’t afford to upgrade.. I have had disposable income for the last 2 years but have not been able to justify the cost.’ So, even if the machine is good, the unanswered question is how much Valve is asking for it.
The debate got even more engrossing when it turned to the question of who exactly this ‘70%’ is referring to. The user _BTPC_ made a very crucial differentiation: ‘I think it has to be compared to the people who game. Of course, the majority of users do not have a dedicated graphics card or more than 16 GB of RAM or 1TB of storage. However, if you asked the people who actually game, you would find that they will generally agree with you that it is average to below average.’ This is really the core of the matter. The Steam Survey includes all those potato laptops that simply have the client installed for chatting. It would be somewhat strange to compare a dedicated gaming box with that. _BTPC_ even shared his specs—a Ryzen 5 5600x and 64GB of RAM—and stated that he does not play every game on ultra at 2K. Perspective, dude.
And then there were the detours, because no Twitter thread is complete without them. Some users immediately went to the idea of just installing Windows on it, with Catnip_Frier claiming it’s ‘just a way for Valve to cash in on the Xbox changes without paying MS licensing.’ Meanwhile, others were involved in a technical debate about thermal design as the machine seems to be a small form factor (SFF) PC. User FlamaTeh highlighted the very nature of the challenge: ‘All SFF PCs are thermally limited. You don’t have enough to put in proper heatsinks and fans. You can’t cram more fans/heatsinks, so it’s not as efficient at dissipating heat.’ So, the raw specs on paper might not tell the whole story of performance if the thing throttles under load.
A few proud PC master race members flexed their own setups. ShibaWokest said, ‘Just got myself a pc for 1000 with a rtx 5070, I’m good thx’ (the RTX 5070, however, isn’t a thing yet). The conversation also touched on the broader console landscape, with some wondering how this machine would compete with the latest offerings from PlayStation and other platforms.
