Valve’s new Steam Machine has already caused plenty of sticker shock. So it’s no surprise that a flood of cheaper alternatives is hitting the online market. Valve is currently charging over $1,000 for its tiny-living-room SteamOS PC, and of course, people are trying to offer the same feel for less money,
One listing from China is a great example, but it looks a little too suspicious. According to VideoCardz, a Steam Machine-style mini PC listing shared on Reddit claims to offer a compact SteamOS system with a 2TB SSD, AMD Ryzen 5 5500 processor, Radeon RX 6750 GRE 10GB graphics, 16GB of DDR5 memory, and a price of 4,680 RMB, or roughly $688. This sounds incredible… if it were true.
Why this listing makes no sense
The first red flag is the claimed platform. The Ryzen 5500 is an AM4 desktop, which does not support DDR5 memory. However, the listing shows this processor with DDR5 memory. Then there is the GPU. The Radeon RX 6750 GRE is a desktop-grade discrete GPU, and not a tiny mobile chip that can fit inside a mini PC chassis. VideoCardz also notes that the listing image appears similar to CHUWI’s UBox, which uses mobile APU hardware and does not have room for a desktop graphics card.
How the pricing is suspicious too
Even if you believe the specs at face value, a quick check of the Chinese component pricing found that the parts alone get too close to the listed system price. Adding the GPU, SSD, RAM, Ryzen CPU, and motherboard, the pricing came to around 4,375 RMB, which is about $645. This does not even include the case itself, the power supply, the cooling components, or the controller shown in the promotional image.
Keep in mind that not every SteamOS-style mini PC is a scam, and the hardware combination could exist in a normal small form-factor system. The problem is that some of these components don’t add up, and the pricing is too low.
