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Comment by sambaumann | Hacker News Reader

In their video today, they said they asked Valve the original pricing, and they said (paraphrasing) "we can't tell you exactly - but the increase we recently had on the steam deck is about how much the pricing for machine increased" - which is how they came up with the $800 number

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Depends on if the Valve employee meant percentage increase (+50%) or dollar increase (+$200).

That's set the steam machine at either $650 or $800, depending on which interpretation you're using.

Why would it be the same percentage increase? RAM is only one component of the whole machine. "We were going to sell our airplane for $10 million, but one screw doubled in price so now we're selling it for $20 million."

Because it's not just one screw, at the moment RAM, flash and GPUs are experiencing massive price increases.

And in both machines a similar percentage of their price is caused by these components.

>GPUs

AMD GPU's are all still basically MSRP. You can get a 9070 for $600 off amazon right now.

Because of the proportion of the two critical component increases as a part of the whole. It's not like a screw, more like the propeller or something. I just bought ram at retail price, and in my currency it went from $100 to $600CAD for 32Gb. I can't even justify a nvme drive at this point, the prices are comical.

I built my current computer in 2020, went from part-time junior engineer to full-time senior engineer, and I couldn't afford to replace that computer at the same specs today. It's unbelievable.

I couldn't afford to replace my current NVMe drives (which is why I'm very happy I set everything up with the Samsung 970 Pro, as they're 2-bit drives that will outlast even my grandchildren).

I actually had to RMA some RAM yesterday, and even that has gotten so expensive that it now costs more than my entire computer cost in 2020.

Ya that all sounds about right. Crazy times. Ironically, I followed a similar progression with slightly different variables. Maybe intermediate engineer in 2020—certainly not fresh anyway—but because of the volatility in the job market I couldn't bring myself to spend on a new PC then, so I built a piece of crap out of used parts I literally found on the street. Fast forward to now, finally stable and earning decently, decide to pull the trigger on these recent (modest) upgrades, and then bam, fired. At least I'll have a gaming rig to kill time for the next two years of unemployment lol

Yup, and another source:

https://bsky.app/profile/papapishu.bsky.social/post/3movfklq...

Ohh, I thought it was in their earlier videos. I did not see they released one today lol, my bad!

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