grue

I'm not sure anybody really cares about the streaming codec as long as it works with good quality.

But fair enough: I agree it would be nice to have a "Steam Link 2" that could do 4K60 (or better) and (as pointed out in a Machine review video I just watched) support HDMI CEC.

(Maybe some third-party company should do it and name it the "Missing Link," LOL)

Hope is nice, but realistically the difference in urgency is intentional ratfucking.

Full disclaimer: While I think the above reasoning is sound, I think we should be very careful regarding how unauthorised cleaning operations are punished. For example, it seems absurd to me to give jail time for it. When the person in question is obviously acting with good intentions, it's much more reasonable to sentence them to take some course where they can learn about why what they were doing was potentially harmful, and perhaps sentence them to community service working on some authorised project. That way, you help them learn, let them work on something they want to contribute to, and get more resources for the authorised projects.

I feel like the punishment should depend on whether they did it competently or not. You should definitely get punished for screwing up even with good intentions, but if you actually are good enough to know what you're doing, you should get away with a relative slap on the wrist.

Reminder: there is no such thing as "intellectual property". The term is loaded language designed to serve the interests of the copyright cartel and should be rejected.

Depends how many memory channels the CPU supports. On a small consumer CPU, no benefit, but start getting up into bigger chips like Threadripper or especially Epyc and some of them support even more than four channels.

(Also, it might be worth noting that I'm pretty sure the Steam Machine only has two RAM slots, let alone channels. 4x8GB won't even be possible.)

What they should have done is made a new Steam Link with more capable hardware for cheap. That would have sold like hotcakes.

The Steam Link was pretty much a dumb terminal for VNC. In what way does it need to have "more capable hardware?"

I also would've been more interested if the thing had unified (but not soldered) memory, like a cut-down Strix Halo.

Sure they're doing it for the simple reason of Steam machine owners being guaranteed Steam gaming customers

That isn't even the most important reason, IMO. I think they're doing it mostly to actively push Steam OS and thus normalize Linux for gaming. Not because they care about Free Software in principle, mind you, but as a hedge against the existential threat of Microsoft locking them out of Windows.

It's very compact and quiet and has very good driver support without any tinkering.

The first two are real advantages, but I think any random AMD-based system (CPU and GPU) would be damn near equal in terms of driver support.

For a TV PC the cube form-factor is nice, in a "sit on top of the furniture looking pretty" sort of way. However, I think a short-depth 1U form-factor to stack with hi-fi equipment would be a good way to do it as well, and relatively easily achievable to DIY with off-the-shelf parts.

• $279 or $290 - RX 7600 GPU, or RTX 5050 (up to preference. The 7600 is generally comparable or slightly better overall, but you will see much better with it on Linux. On Windows the 5050 might be the better choice)

If you want it to be like a Steam Machine, you should definitely go for the AMD GPU so you can run Steam OS on it.

Apparently, some units will ship with 1x16GB RAM and some will ship with 2x8GB RAM. I understand Valve's decision to scrounge both types of memory to be able to ship more units, but I wish they'd let customers express a preference.

As it is, there will be some 1x16GB customers annoyed they didn't get dual-channel and some 2x8GB customers annoyed they can't easily upgrade, and it's a shame those groups will be larger than they needed to be.