Glad to have you here! And thanks! ^^

I think you may have an unrealistic idea of how much power low or mid-range gaming PC’s use. Only at the very top-end of PC’s with extreme overclocked components pushed to the limit would you come near 1000w (a $3000 Nvidia GTX 5090 graphics card can use 575w, as an example).

The Steam Machine uses effectively a laptop CPU (35W TDP) that’ll likely use 40 to 50w max, and the GPU is also a beefed up laptop GPU with a 110W TDP (it’ll probably peak at 140 to 150w, I’m guessing).

Overall it’ll probably idle at 10 or 15w, and likely use around 70w under average gaming, or 150 to 200w when pushed hard.

The Steamdeck is certainly still more power efficient (it peaks at 25w when pushed hard), and if you find that it’s powerful enough for the games you play, there’s not much reason to consider getting anything else. But the Steam Machine will be pretty power efficient for a desktop. It kinda has to be, since it only has a single fan for cooling.

I doubt it would be feasible to replace the power supply with something that takes 12v DC

All PC’s run off a power supply that inverts 120/220v AC to 3.3V 5V, and 12V DC for the internal components to run off of. Your Steamdeck charger is no different from the power supply inside a desktop PC, it’s just smaller and put in an external shell.

Unless by 12v DC, you mean you’re charging your Steamdeck with solar panels or from batteries directly, in which case, you could use an Inverter to power the Steam Machine.

I’m just working with Adobe maybe to my own detriment haha.

Have I got a video for you :p

I’ve also not followed anything on the gaming side, I heard it’s way better than what it once was

It truly is! In some cases (with AMD cards) it can even out-perform windows. For the most part most games just work without tweaking thanks to Proton being integrated into Steam, but unfortunately competitive online games with anti-cheat can be a no-go if the devs haven’t enabled Linux support (still, even there we have some surprises, like Hunt Showdown enabling it).

Davinci Resolve supports Linux natively nowadays, and the FOSS video editor Kdenlive is actually pretty impressive now as well.

Cyberpunk for sure will play well, as it was one of the games that testers were able to play on one during a preview event. I believe it’s the most demanding game as well, so the rest of your list should work fine as well.

They played it at 4K on ultra settings (with FSR on), and had playable framerates. At 1440p or 1080, you wouldn’t even need FSR.

I’m happily playing with Intel HD 630 integrated graphics myself, though my taste in games doesn’t usually require a beefy GPU.

I think we’ll still get unoptimized crap, but it may sway some studios to consider that lower-end market. We’ll never truly know how much of a difference it makes, but it will undeniably be another data point they’ll have to consider in terms of potential profit.

The new Indiana Jones game straight up couldn’t be played past the first level with 8gb of vram (and their forced ray-tracing made it require a beefier GPU to get playable framerates), and I’m always curious if that noticeably lowered sales compared to their projections by locking gamers with lower-end hardware.

Unfortunately, I’m not very optimistic because of the Unreal Engine monoculture

That is a setback, and I’m not sure how much can truly be done for a studio that opts for UE, other than limiting their game to an artstyle that requires a lower polycount, and perhaps reducing the amount of assets in areas like they used to do for older consoles, but I too doubt that’ll happen.

I’m actually kinda glad it has only 8gb for an odd reason; I hope it encourages devs to optimize their games more so they aren’t locked out of the steam machine market.

Both conflicts are horrific, but what was their alternative? We saw what happened in Germany when few fought back, and that was just as horrific an outcome, if not more so (6 million Jews killed vs 300 thousand on the left side in the Spanish civil war, though estimates vary).

Tens of thousands died under Mussolini in labor camps and via execution, and the same would’ve happened under Franco in Spain (and eventually did, post civil war)

To be clear, I’m not advocating that any country rush to armed conflict, but history seems to indicate that it’s better to be capable of defending yourself vs. not having the option at all.

If you have examples of pacifism being effective against fascism, I’m quite open to having my mind changed. In fact, I would prefer if that were the more effective option, if evidence supports it.

You could make that same argument to the countries neighboring Nazi Germany.

We have examples in history of what happens to unarmed people when fascists take over and few fight back, and it does nothing to quell the fascist’s efforts or ‘fears’. We also have examples of armed people fighting back, like the leftists in the Spanish Civil war. Their defeat was not a given, and they made the fascists work bloody hard for it. The alternative would’ve been the leftists having to blend in or be disappeared/killed, or they could’ve left everything and fled. The less you fight them, the stronger they become, until they become too big to run from or ignore.

As an alternative, if we assume that a significant portion of the left is armed instead of just a minority, Rojava would be a good modern day example of the realistic effectiveness of an armed populace, as they employ horizontal citizen militias to survive against both ISIS and Turkey.

The Spanish Civil War is another interesting example, as the initial response from the left/anarchists when the fascists began their coup attempt was made up of civilian militias formed quickly and armed with whatever they had or could source from a local armory, and they were able to effectively fight off the initial coup in almost half the country, and gather themselves up for a protracted conflict. It’s not quite as direct an example, as the leftists in that conflict we supplemented with tanks and airplanes and artillery from the USSR, but firearms were an essential piece to their resistance, and had the populace been more armed before hand, it would’ve been helpful, as they had trouble producing and acquiring enough through trade.

There’s a great series on the Spanish Civil War here that gets into the nitty gritty, if you’re interested. :)

Turkey is actively killing and repressing the kurds of Syria, such as Rojava, so if we’re boycotting US manufacturers, might be good to avoid turkish one’s too if possible, to deprive their government of tax revenue.

I’m not really sure if there is an ‘ethical’ choice with the big manufacturers anywhere, just different degrees of bad, though definitely worth indirectly supporting the less bad option.

You could opt for small boutique builders that explicitly support leftists and trans, like KE Arms, but those are few and far between. Best resource I can find is this list from the liberalgunowners reddit wiki.

Alternatively, opt for buying used guns from lefitist gun stores (if you have one near you, or can order from them online to a local ffl). That’s probably the best option from a cost and ethics perspective.

Straight to jail. Right away.

The military just needs to say “no.” if ordered to do something unconstitutional, it doesn’t mean they have to enact a military coup.

Your argument technically would apply to Nazi Germany as well, and I really don’t think any of the other countries at the time would’ve looked down upon the Wehrmacht or Germany if they had refused to follow orders, except for Italy and Japan, they would’ve been judging’ hard.

What does America look like to the world if the most powerful military in the world refuses to follow orders from it’s elected government.

Capable of resisting a rogue government that was put in place by a foreign country? A half-functional democracy that thwarted a Nazi Germany 2.0?

Do we really look cooler on the world stage if we just prove our military are stooges that will ‘just follow orders’?