And yet lots of people want one and can’t get one, and they’re being scalped for several hundred USD markup on eBay.

A dotfile repo with a personality cult.

What region are you in?

I’m annoyed that I originally picked that queue and then changed to just 512GB without controller. I did not get selected and am stuck on the waitlist and I can’t change without losing my spot, without any information about where that is. I’d literally buy any model available, although I understand why Valve doesn’t want to encourage queue-hopping.

I imagine the bare 512GB is the longest queue.

EuroGamer won’t let you opt out of tracking cookies without paying for a subscription, which is fucking evil.

Here are some other links to similar stories:

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/us-video-game-spending-just-had-one-of-its-worst-julys-ever/

https://www.vgchartz.com/article/468774/switch-2-best-seller-in-the-us-in-july-2026-black-ops-2-top-selling-game/

Definitely a valid use for a living room PC!

I’ve read that, but haven’t come across any issues with gaming … is that strictly an issue if you want to also use it for media?

Yeah… having done similar research (and it was less the price and more the waitlist), there really isn’t much that’s comparable, despite what YouTube dudes and commenters will tell you. Their view of “the market” is months old. I put together multiple builds on NewEgg and even using an NVME I already have, I could really only match the price, and there was always at least one additional compromise.

Frankly, the whole exercise with the BC-250 and pricing out ITX builds has only convinced me that the SM is actually the product I want, and a much better “value proposition” than we’d all like to admit. I do enjoy the BC-250 and it’s allowing me to play games I didn’t want to or couldn’t play on Steam Deck, but the downsides are real and effect every play session (waiting 90 seconds for boot-up, can’t play my emulator because I followed some sketchy ass vibe-coded instructions from a YouTube video and broke something, noisy fan on moderately demanding titles, playing at desk vs. living room, etc.) I haven’t turned it on in a week for many of these reasons.

First thing is the power envelope and cooling requirements. The stock cooler is just so customized for server rack there aren’t really any good no-compromise quiet and cool solutions.

Second is just a lot of software tweaking. While the community has done a lot of really impressive things… they’re also vibe coding a lot of this stuff. It changes often and it’s hard to tell what the code is doing.

Finally is the sleep mode: there is none. You either leave it on all the time (I’ve dealt with Bazzite crashing in this case), or you boot and shutdown every time. Also no power control via controller or HDMI-CEC. (Without serious hacking)

Don’t get me wrong, it’s been a fun side project while I languish on the infinite waitlist. If you have a 3D printer, it’s a good opportunity to utilize that. But the end result, even if you go full AIO cooling + soldering ESP32 power control boards, you won’t have that plug-and-play, set and forget SteamOS experience.

I have a BC-250 and it is so far in the opposite direction of what the Steam Machine is offering. It’s weird to me they’re being compared…

It’s a fun DIY hobby project, but if I ever get the chance at a SM, I’ll buy it because plug and play is valuable to me and this is the exact opposite of that.

I think it’s just part of the grievance politics playbook. I delete my YouTube algorithm every few months which reveals the kind if low-effort chudbait bullshit they feed to people they don’t have a profile for. A very popular video type is “CAR DEALERS ARE FINALLY PAYING THE PRICE” videos. I have no idea what this about, as far as I know car dealerships mirror the rest of the economy. But people fucking hate car dealers so this type of thing is comforting: bad thing happens to people I don’t like.

🤦 thanks for this

The instructions I followed are in the description of the following video. A lot of what happens with this project is hidden away on Discord servers and I suspect what makes it out to the web has gone through the slop filter.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A6juAoY70aU

The bottom line is that I thought this might help with random crashes I’d been having with a particular emulator. Unfortunately it had the opposite effect and the same emulator now consistently hard-locks the system after this “fix”.

Seems that way

Do note the BC-250 can be LOUD with air cooling, uses much more power, and has no sleep or hibernate state.

That’s to say nothing of the pretty substantial tweaking and modification that’s needed to get it that 1:1 performance level. It’s also not 4K/60.

Still a fun project but certainly not the same type of thing as “open box, play games” which is what SM aims to deliver.

I have zero interest in this game, but I’m weirdly rooting for them. We need mid-tier developers taking risks with new IPs.

It also sounded like the devs were personally burned out on Pokemon and needed to try something new. Would hate for their lesson to be “stick to the cash cow”.

Finally some unbiased Linux reporting from… windowslatest dot com.

The only hope for a waitlisted loser like me is that they are moving people off the waitlist “when we reach the end of the reservation queue for that product and region.”

Meanwhile I get to watch every YouTuber getting one just to make ragebait videos about.

Direct link:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/45479024/view/698770449667981836?l=english

Thanks for this! Yes, I do know they aren’t necessary related. However, I had no problems with the Z-offset on my machine until I did auto bed leveling. And subsequent leveling have also left the nozzle too high for proper adhesion (at least with PLA). So they are related in terms of my process of adjustment, whereby I have to adjust Z-offset after a bed level.

For the first few months I’ve had the machine, it’s moved around my shop a bit so I have been running bed leveling more frequently than perhaps normal, since I assumed movement is bad for leveling. Now I think I have it somewhere semi-permanent it should be less of an issue going forward.

I can also adjust Z-offset on-the-fly, which I usually do during a specific bed leveling test print.

What did you replace it with?