French retailer mocks €1039 Steam Machine with “Stim Machine” RX 9060 XT PC for €999

I have a 15% vat in my country so I guess im just not used to the US not having a vat. Stupid US stop excluding tax from your prices its insanity

The average user doesn't want to install an OS though, that's the whole point of selling it as a complete, pre built package.
Sure, this is a little more powerful than the steam machine, but it lacks all of the actual selling points of the steam machine.

It is basically the equivalent of comparing a desktop PC to a laptop. One is cheaper if you completely ignore the form factor and purpose of the other.

Have you seen the GN teardown? Every bit of volume that isn't already occupied by something is dedicated to cooling. The heat sink runs essentially edge to edge, so no issues with airflow either.

I'm aware that you can build and even buy a better machine for cheaper. This has always been the case, even now to a degree. Probably why I'm on my third self-built system, but I digress.

That said, if you already have an Xbox or Playstation, then the Steam Machine works right out of the box. You plug it in to your TV and you have a controller.

Compared to this where you will need, at least, a mouse and keyboard. Then potentially monitors and speakers or a headset, whatever you want to do.

I'm still trying to convince my console-only friends to get a Steam Machine because, to me at least, it is the simplest way to get them to play PC games with me which has been my goal forever.

The trouble is, tax rate varies dramatically across the whole U.S. We don't have a consistent nationwide VAT like much of the rest of the world.

Civil rights aren't even equal from state to state.

Okay so make it consistent then?

Easier said than done.

There is no Federal VAT, and each state decides its own tax policy. Most states charge a “sales tax.” Some states charge more, other states charge less. These are set by the state and depend on each state’s overall budget and taxation structure. For example, a state like Tennessee that doesn’t collect income tax may require a higher sales tax to meet budget demands, whereas a state like Oregon that collects a high income tax may have no sales tax at all.

What’s more, some states let local municipalities charge sales tax. Alaska actually charges no state sales tax, but allows local sales taxes. Several states have both a state and local sales tax. So even within a state it can be different depending on where you are.

So instead our prices don’t include tax and we just know we have to throw on anywhere from 0% to 11% depending on our location.

In order for pricing to include taxes, you’d have to display a different price for every state or municipality. Or, we’d have to get everyone to agree on one VAT standard, which will not happen because different states have wildly different ideologies regarding taxation.

The last thing i'd ever want to do is go with a kit for SFF. I have built exclusively for over 20 years at this point and picking a motherboard, cooling solution, PSU and overall internals myself tends to get me something that is better quality than a kit using cheaper versions of everything they can't sell to fit a price point. I don't think i've done a build as cheap as 1k since I was a teenager, but i'm not just buying the most expensive shit either.

Those silverstone cases are super fugly. It's like they haven't updated shit since 2010, and this kind of lines up since that case is well over a decade old. The case can only fit GPUs that are up to 270mm long by 129mm tall, which really limits what you can put in there. My steel legend 9070xt is 298 x 131, so it can't fit in two dimensions. I have a 3070 suprim that is 335mm x 140mm, that thing is never gonna fit either. You have to really seek out something that fits.

If I was going to give someone advice on a smaller / ITX build today i'd say go with something way more comfortable to work with like a Cooler Master NP200. My last build is a 25L ATX build with no sacrifices. Cable management is one hell of a struggle.

Very possible to build something that will be faster for cheaper, or grab a deal on a gaming laptop around the same price with better ram/storage and similar GPU, but there's no way to build something smaller than the machine really.

Ah I was getting it confused with HDCP

This post and op replies just seem like a thinly veiled ad…

Welcome to the world of pre-built PCs! Like, technically you can upgrade your GPU but you‘d have to upgrade most of your machine too to actually get a performance boost.

It's an average gaming PC. Tune down your arrogance a little.

Not gonna lie, sometimes US seems way more divided up than EU

Stop being a drama queen, I have worse hardware than a steam machine and can play most modern games at 60fps 1080p on medium settings, or high with fsr. The vast majority of people aren't targeting 240fps 4k on Ultra.