Valve's Steam Machine Gets iFixit Teardown

[Christopher Shaffer]

The is the eerie thing about the Steam Box. The high end, long lasting models will be in the 1000s. If I were to purchase a PS4 or Xbox One I know this console will last it's lifetime 5-7 years and I will be able to play whichever game I want and it will run adequately. But if I do get the lower-mid end Steam machine for 500$ I will need to upgrade the parts after 2-3 years to run games the way I want. For example take some PC hardware from 2006 when both the PS3 and Xbox 360 were popular, I can still play new games on the "Last gen console" (Bioshock, Crysis, Battlefield) while if I had that PC build in 06 I would have needed to upgrade it for a lot more than the overall price of a console. I don't see how they could target the console audience if the overall price to maintain a Steam Machine (Upgrades to keep it up to date) will cost a lot more than a console.

I think we're comparing apples to oranges with the "next" gen consoles and their potential vs. the last gen consoles and their potential. The dev tools simply weren't up to par when the systems launched and the capabilities have just fully been realized within the last few years, especially with PS3 (though, I will argue Kojima didn't seem to have any issues when MGS4 launched early on in the PS3 life cycle; that game was beautiful).

I also think we all seem to forget about Moore's law when we talk about consoles vs. PCs. The limitations to the lifespan of a PC are greatly exaggerated when we consider where Moore's law has brought us in the last 5-10 years. 10 years ago, if you built a gaming PC, then yes indeed, it would probably be dragging a year or two later on the latest games. This is no longer the case.

You can easily get 3-4 years out of a well-built system while enjoying the latest graphics; you can upgrade to the latest graphics for roughly the price of a new console, usually less. You do NOT need an entirely new system to get the latest graphics if you just do a little planning when building. You cannot upgrade the graphics quality of a console for an equivalent price. You have to instead hope developers will be able to squeeze more out of this generation in a way they could with the last generation.

I'm personally happy to see the improvements with consideration to hardware on the "next" (now current) gen systems, but I don't think we'll see the same graphics pacing with these systems as with last gen unless Sony/MS release improvements allowing better optimization of hardware (i.e. something like Mantle) that somehow improves on the close-to-the-metal relationship already found in console dev machines.

SEAGATE HARD DRIVE, don't buy a steam box. Seagate has highest failure rate 10 fold.

This is a completely unfounded statement. Seagate is also the ONLY manufacturer of the SSHD hybrid drive... because they basically invented it. Seagate had a bad failure rate on a few particular models a few years back -Barracuda drives - you can read about it right here on Tom's where it was compared to WD, Samsung, Toshiba and Hitachi - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hdd-reliability-storelab,2681-3.html.

The common consensus is that when a manufacture's failure rates increase, it's usually in a particular product line that uses the same moving parts. This usually means a bad egg in design or maybe a defective part that is used over and over only to be discovered once it hits market. This issue has plagued all major HDD brands.

Note that Seagate now makes Samsung's drives, too.

Note that the failure rate on Seagate SSDs is below 2% and that the SSHD is considered a higher-end drive. The Barracuda is along the lines of the WD Blue in terms of quality promises (in other words, mainstream, not performance), which have had similar failure rates previously. Also note that Seagate's failure rates have been increasingly better over the last few years, even in the Barracuda line, which has a comparable or better failure rate to WD Blue/Green series, and that the Barracuda issues stem back to 2009/2010, since when they have been redesigned to be more robust.

Don't spread misinformation.