[InitialLastName]

I just did one [0], mostly with regards only to specs and price (rather than quality). It comes out to $150 more, roughly 4X the volume, and about 3 hours more of my time in effort, all to get something that won't be as well-supported by games. What am I missing?

[0] https://pcpartpicker.com/list/KY3VW9

[ThatPlayer]

That CPU comes with a cooler so you don't need that.

At 2TB SSD, you should compare to the $1350 steam machine instead.

The GPU isn't exactly equivalent. Gamers Nexus puts it closer to RX6600 performance. But that ignores the RDNA3 improvements so I don't really have a good comparison for that.

They did announce SteamOS for general computers, so I don't expect game support to be too different.

[danbolt]

I don’t have a horse in the race and I’m speaking from ignorance, but I noticed that Valve’s offering only requires 300W of power. That sounds very appealing for the sort of games I play.

Would it be difficult to make a PC with a similar power/performance profile?

[InitialLastName]

Note that the power estimate for the build above is only 325W. The power supply is beefier than that for headroom and economics.

It wouldn't be surprising if Valve's efforts at integrating the unit (putting the relevant chips on a single board, eliminating anything unnecessary, and improving cooling) could shave a significant amount of power.

[kubb]

Impossible because of the unified CPU/GPU chip that the Steamdeck used.

[vel0city]

Its a MicroATX build. This is considerably larger than the Steam Machine.

The Steam Machine is about a 6" cube. That's ~3.5L in volume. This case is ~33.6L. 33.6 / 3.5 != 4.