Don't waste your money on the Steam Machine

Valve's announcement of the Steam Machine price has unsurprisingly spoiled the excitement of the console-like PC competing in the market.

Starting at $1,049 for the 512GB model that comes without the controller is simply unappealing to both PC enthusiasts and newcomers, making PS5 and Xbox consoles look far more valuable, despite their recent price increases.

Ultimately, the blame isn't completely on Valve. Just like MSI's new Claw 8 AI+ EX handheld with an MSRP of $1,799 (which is far more outrageous), Valve has had its hand forced by the impact of the RAM crisis, making the Steam Machine an overpriced mini PC.

Fortunately, though, there are far better pre-built gaming PC options available on the market. No, they're not on Amazon as Prime Day deals, but yes, they're much cheaper than the Steam Machine and more powerful.

One in particular is the Acer Nitro 60 available on Walmart for $898 (was £1,449.99), saving customers an incredible $551.99. With this specific build featuring an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 8GB GPU, this is a gaming PC that will provide solid performance at 1080p and even 1440p when using Nvidia's DLSS 4.5.

It's also worth noting that it's using 16GB of DDR5 RAM, in a market where memory prices are completely out of whack due to the ongoing crisis, and a 1TB SSD that's just about enough for most setups.

The Steam Machine's base model is not only currently more expensive than this Acer Nitro 60 PC build, but it's limited to 512GB of storage space, and will be outperformed by the Nitro 60's RTX 5060 GPU.

AMD's FSR 4 has only just been made available for RDNA 3 architecture, which includes the Steam Machine's custom AMD GPU, but this reportedly won't be at launch, and doesn't stack up to Nvidia's DLSS 4.5 in terms of performance and image quality.

The only major advantage the Steam Machine holds over the Nitro 60 gaming PC in terms of game performance is its AMD hardware, which will run better on SteamOS, as Nvidia hardware isn't suited for the operating system just yet — but this is likely going to change in the future.

With the unpredictable climate of the PC hardware market, a move for the Acer Nitro 60 is a no-brainer, especially at such an affordable price.

More Prime Day deals in the US

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Garden: tools, mowers, planters from $24.99

Headphones: 50% off Beats, Bose & Samsung

Laptops: Apple, HP & Dell from $199

Mattresses: Sealy, Serta & more from $186

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Isaiah is a Staff Writer for the Computing channel at TechRadar. He's spent over two years writing about all things tech, specifically games on PC, consoles, and handhelds. He started off at GameRant in 2022 after graduating from Birmingham City University in the same year, before writing at PC Guide which included work on deals articles, reviews, and news on PC products such as GPUs, CPUs, monitors, and more. He spends most of his time finding out about the exciting new features of upcoming GPUs, and is passionate about new game releases on PC, hoping that the ports aren't a complete mess.