u/Quibblekrust

If you've never tried it, Google Earth VR is tons of fun! I don't know what it is about looking at little miniature cities, but it's just so compelling. Also fun is when you turn on human-scale and actually have to look up at the buildings and such as you walk or fly through the city, or the Grand Canyon, or whatever!

Oh shit! That would be a deal breaker for me.

Generally, no, because it's a capacitive sensor and most plastics don't conduct electricity. You'd need to find a pair that says it supports the sensors. Mine don't, for instance, but I never used that feature anyway.

I never check my email. I just learned I missed the Steam Machine purchase email 10 days ago. I didn't even think I was in the queue! I got the original "you're not in the queue" email. I must have been close to the top of the waitlist.


In any case, I don't really want it anymore. It's basically not upgradable, and even adding RAM is hard. It's a cool looking machine that takes up little space, and it's neat that companies can make new faceplates and stuff for it, but as a computer, I'm just not sure it's the best value.

Instead, I'm looking at mini PCs that feature an Oculink port. It lets you connect to an external GPU with a cable. Something like the GMKtec K12 has an integrated Radeon 780M, which is good for lots of gaming, but you can add a GPU for high end gaming. And then the GPU is upgradable.

I have an old RTX 3060 12 GB sitting around (which I'll keep for CUDA tasks like photogrammetry) but I'm looking at maybe a Radeon 9060 XT or 9070 XT for gaming. I don't have to decide now, and I can upgrade later. Turns out the 3060 is almost identical in performance to what's in the Steam Machine but has the advantage of 12 GB of VRAM.

Maybe I'm not the average potential Steam Machine buyer. I happen to already own a GPU and an ATX power supply, so I only need to buy these things:

• $689 GMKtec K12 (32GB RAM, 512 GB NVMe SSD)

• $110 Minisforum eGPU dock

• $25 Oculink cable

$824 total

But that's because I already paid $250 for a used 3060 12GB years ago, and ~$80 for a power supply.

So the real total for buying this system from scratch right now is about $1,150 but you get an upgradable GPU and 32 GB of RAM. The CPU is also better. Sadly, you don't get a Steam Controller.

The big downside of Oculink is the machine has to be powered off before you plug it in. It's not hot swappable. It's literally just external PCIe. However, some eGPU docks support USB-C or Thunderbolt 4/5, which are hot swappable, and there's even new tech on the horizon called MCIO which is like Oculink but has 8x PCIe lanes instead of 4x. Not that 4x is much of a bottleneck for gaming. Gaming just doesn't require that much bandwidth.

Anyway, I just figured I'd share my thoughts because I'm sure other people are in the same boat: wanting a Steam Machine but can't get one, or they want something a little more upgradable, or they just dont want to wait all year for it to ship.

Same, but I'm also looking at mini PCs that feature an Oculink port for an external GPU. I'm currently leaning toward the GMKTec K12 which has a Radeon 780M internally (pretty common in mini PCs). That's good enough for a lot of games (much better than than Deck), and I have an old RTX 3060 plus a power supply sitting around.

The PC is $689 and a Minisforum eGPU dock is $120. So for ~$800 I could have a tiny living room PC that can have some beef when I need it. It just wont be as pretty with the GPU attached. And I can even upgrade the GPU later. Something from AMD, ideally. Seems like a good deal to me.

Parts List:

- 1x Steam machine

- Etc.

Well, fuck.

Tunic was fantastic. It's not a unique perspective I want. I want a cute action adventure game 3D VR. 😄

What I want more than anything is a billion dollars, but second to that is a top-down VR Zelda game. I fucking love A Link Between Worlds, and I can imagine a VR game like that where you look down at the world from above, and actually look behind objects. The idea of looking down on a tiny world and controlling a character like Link is so appealing.

The game could hide secrets behind things in this way, or use it in puzzles. Maybe you would be able to spin the world around and look at it from different sides.

Are there any existing games like that?

What's your point? The video shows a 19% increase in making zip files. And almost nothing in any of the games.

Different person here. I did watch, and it sounded like a bit of FUD. "It could be unstable. You could get a random crash some months into the future and you don't know if you need to blame it on the RAM or something else." that's basically all he said.

It was better than clicking "Next" every second for 45 minutes trying to check out, and then failing to get one. Nothing can truly stop scalpers except the original seller doing the scalping themselves with a silent auction.

::: spoiler What I mean

I'm not suggesting this is a good system. Hence I'm hiding it in a spoiler.

Imagine if Valve launched the sale, and everyone names their own price (with a minimum price). Everyone bids their maximum amount, and Valve just picks the top N people to get one. The rich idiots who just _have_ to have one buy it for whatever price, and more normal people buy it for less, but probably more than the minimum.

Would you have bid $50 more than the min to get one right away? I might have. I dunno. Do people with more money deserve a machine more? Well, no, but that's the world we live in. The lottery is the best alternative we have.

:::

You don't speak for all of us. I appreciated the summary.

Also, you're being a real dick about it. "Mentally incapable"? Maybe you need to break from the internet.

You can always replace the storage yourself. A 2TB NVMe doesnt even cost $300 (most are around $250), and if you swapped it yourself, you'd have a 512 GB one to stick into an enclosure and use as a portable hard drive.

And you don't even have to do that immediately. 512 GB is plenty to start. Especially since not everyone plays enormous AAA games with hundreds of mods. You can upgrade at any time.

It doesn't matter who they're "targeting". If they sell it at a loss because it's more powerful than it costs, people who don't care at all about Steam will purchase it as a computer to run emulators or normal software. They are not going to do this.

You're forgetting that it's just a computer, and can it can be reformatted, and you can install any OS on it to do anything with it. It's not locked to the Steam Store in any way. It's not like a console where they can sell it at a loss and make money on games later because console companies make it impossible for you to use it as a normal computer. Steam does not.

I can think of many cool things I'd like to do with that

Care to share any of your ideas?

Oh, so it's like a portable monitor with a keyboard attached to it? I had no idea these were a thing.


Can you explain this lapdock setup you're talking about?

Ah, so it is. I read the URL and assumed that was the title as it often is.

What a weird title! ~~Yours, I mean.~~ It's sold out within 24 hours of _being made available again_ after weeks and weeks of _not_ being available. The price hike is just ancillary information.