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Valve describes just how brutal RAM negotiations are in 2026 (www.theverge.com)

submitted 1 week ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/technology@lemmy.world

164 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Valve’s Steam Machine finally has a price: a whopping $1,049 for the 512GB configuration or $1,349 for the 2TB version. And those are without bundled controllers, which drive up the cost more.

The prices are so high in part because Valve isn’t subsidizing the hardware, and the company has already indicated that the component crisis forced it to reconsider its initial pricing plans. In an interview with the YouTube channel Gamers Nexus, Valve engineers discussed the reality of sourcing RAM in 2026, with take-it-or-leave-it prices as memory and other components remain in short supply, from only a few vendors like Samsung, Micron, and SK Hynix.

[...]

Valve, of course, isn’t the only company in a bind over memory shortages, as the crunch is forcing many hardware makers to make significant pricing changes. Even Apple CEO Tim Cook is warning of incoming price hikes for iPhones, Macs, and other devices. And the RAM crunch isn’t projected to get better anytime soon.

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[–] MangoCats@feddit.it 35 points 1 week ago (8 children)

My question is: how far back in time do we have to go to get to where RAM and SSD prices were this high (for a given capacity) in the past? Like 2021?

[–] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Bought a 256GB ssd for like 320€ in around 2011 (maybe 2012) so there's that.

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[–] tiramichu@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago

If we look at this on the basis of "how much does it cost to put a typical amount of RAM and storage in your computer?" then I bet we'd be going all the way back to the 90s.

Like seriously.

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[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 35 points 1 week ago (3 children)

After reporting how much the Steam Machine costs, I could tell already. RAM manufacturers are in paradise right now!

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[–] DupaCycki@lemmy.world 27 points 1 week ago (8 children)

If RAM prices are so bad, couldn't Valve give an option to order a Steam Machine with no RAM? So that people could use RAM they already have or buy some locally for a lower price.

[–] plyth@feddit.org 7 points 1 week ago

They give away their OS for free. So add a motherboard, a CPU, a case and a graphics card to it and you can use your own RAM.

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[–] woelkchen@lemmy.world 25 points 1 week ago (18 children)

The point of shitty old processors was to get them cheap. Now that RAM and storage are the biggest factors, they could have gone with newer processors and not be significantly more expensive but significantly more performant.

[–] hperrin@lemmy.ca 31 points 1 week ago (3 children)

The entire cooling system is designed around those processors. Changing them would delay the Steam Machine by multiple years. Also, those processors may be old (or more accurately, based on an older architecture), but they’re certainly not shitty.

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