Shortly after Valve's Steam Machine went on sale, a mini PC clone appeared online, going for roughly half the price. The Steam Machine's price was recently revealed to start at $1,049, with controller bundles and larger storage options increasing from there, all reportedly well over Valve's original price point before the component crisis really took off. An alternative has already cropped up, but it may be a bit dubious.
Reddit user kaldeqca spotted an online listing from China of a Steam Machine clone for roughly $688. The advertised specs include an AMD Ryzen 5 5500, RX 6750 GRE 10GB GPU, and 16GB of RAM with a 2TB SSD, according to TweakTown. Built specifically to run SteamOS, the cube-shaped mini PC looks a lot like Valve's Steam Machine, just with an all-white colorway. At nearly $400 cheaper than the most affordable Steam Machine model, this particular clone appears too good to be true – and it might be.
TweakTown's analysis of the Steam Machine clone spotted a number of suspicious errors in the gaming PC's listing. Its processor is not compatible with its SSD, and the GPU is unlikely to physically fit in the pictured chassis. Those technical problems aside, price estimates for the listed components, plus the cost of actually manufacturing and shipping the thing, exceed the $688 price. In other words, the listed product would likely not be profitable at that price, so anyone hoping to score a cheap Steam Machine alternative should be aware of scams.
Valve's new mini gaming rig is a PC, to be sure, but it's also designed for convenience (and to conveniently keep customers in Valve's ecosystem), making it similar in function to a traditional home console. Consoles are often (but not always) sold at a slight loss, however, so the manufacturer can make up the difference via game sales. This does not seem to be the case with the Steam Machine, nor is it how PC components are priced more broadly. That is to say, a Steam Machine clone with similar specs is extremely unlikely to be priced significantly below the $1,000 mark.
This Steam Machine clone and other more legitimate alternatives do show that there is a market for mini PCs, and even specifically those designed to run SteamOS, as the Machine does. Valve's operating system runs on Linux, and is designed for the aforementioned convenience. If you have no interest in tinkering with other software, SteamOS lets a PC exclusively focus on games – albeit only through Steam.
Market conditions are tough for the Steam Machine, and its level of success (or, potentially, lack thereof) won't be clear for a while yet, but these clones may be an indication that SteamOS is on its way to becoming more popular. In fact, alongside Steam Machine orders becoming available, SteamOS was updated to increase the configurations it is compatible with. Valve has always had difficulties moving hardware, and the Steam Machine may be no different because of its price, but its small form factor appears to be influencing other rigs to adopt SteamOS.
