With this year's GDC underway, Valve has been discussing its trio of hardware launches coming in 2026 while commenting on the RAM crisis.
    • paper_moon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      8 days ago

      They probably should do this, just to get the thing sold. Normal users may not have any ddr5 ram laying around or machines they can strip it from, but there’s a subset of geeky users who do. My friend is looking for an upgrade from his aging gaming laptop, and I’m trying to help him plan out what the buy next, it would be great if I could just recommend the steam machine, as I have extra ddr5 ram to give him, but I have no idea when it’ll actually ship and how much it’ll actually cost in the end.

      • renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.netEnglish
        4·
        8 days ago

        This would be very confusing to the average consumer and generate more of a support headache than it’s worth. Most people would not understand that they need to add RAM (let alone how) and just think Valve is shipping DOA hardware.

      • KubeRootEnglish
        4·
        8 days ago

        Remember that laptops typically have a different form factor for RAM than desktop PCs, so if valve goes for DIMM, an old laptop might not be useful for that.

        • paper_moon@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          8 days ago

          Is the steam machine a normal ATX design? I have their original Steam Machine made by Dell, the Alienware Alpha, and it was a custom laptop motherboard with laptop sized SODIMM slots.

          I also wasn’t suggesting using his old laptop ram for the new machines because its a different DDR version, either 3 or 4, i don’t know how old it is. But I have an extra ddr5 laptop I could give him ram from, if he got a bare bones steam machine.

          — edit —

          Yeah, seems like it uses SODIMM slots

          https://www.digitalfoundry.net/features/hands-on-with-steam-machine-valves-new-pcconsole-hybrid

          • zarenki@lemmy.mlEnglish
            4·
            7 days ago

            Its VRAM (8GB) is soldered and not upgradeable. Its main memory (16GB) uses SODIMM but accessing those slots seems to require removing the heatsink which means anyone who does so should be ready to replace the thermal paste as well. That’s a lot to expect from the people who buy this thing considering it’s largely intended for people who don’t already use a custom desktop build.

            Even if they do want to sell it without the SODIMM slots populated to avoid supply issues there, they can’t avoid the supply issues on the VRAM side.