Aapje

Nope, you might need to get it fixed.

That Youtuber constantly uses clickbait to get views. You shouldn't take that seriously.

I wouldn't classify it as entry level. Entry level is the Quest 3S. The Quest 3 and the Frame would be midrange, IMO.

Well, Dell sells 4050 and 5050 gaming laptops that are most likely slower than this. Valve claims 2.45GHz max sustained clock with 28 RDNA3 CU's, which would put it a bit below an RX 7600, so it might be around a 3060. I don't know whether that max sustained clock requires you to keep it in a freezer, or whether that is achievable for normal temperatures with a decent airflow to the machine. Whether it throttles significantly for a somewhat reasonable setup is not something I can judge based on the specs, but it is not a given that it will. Gaming desktops typically have air bypassing the radiators, pull exhaust air from one radiator into another radiator, pull exhaust air back into the case, have turbulence, have fans run too slow for optimal cooling because people don't like the noise, etc. Can it be made good enough for high-wattage components? Sure. Is it efficient? No. Of course, making it more efficient has downsides, which is why I said that desktops sacrifice cooling efficiency to achieve other goals. The point of what I said is that the Steam machine can achieve better cooling efficiency by choosing a different trade-off. Note that Corsair is about to release a triple-chamber case that solves one of the issues mentioned above (warmed up GPU air going into the CPU or vice versa). See this recent video by Tintin:

You actually did say that "certain things inherently contain weaknesses." And "The relevant point is that, in any event, the rules of heat/size apply...always have, always will. Pesky physics." Then when people address those statements, you come up with contradictory claims that frustrate the other people in the discussion and cause them to seek clarification or to make objections, but you just keep coming up with more inconsistent statements that means that the debate fails to move past the point. This kind of debating style is exactly why debates with you have a tendency to keep going in circles. From an engineering perspective, this is just total nonsense. A Raspberry Pi is very reliable despite being very small and having minimal cooling, because it doesn't use much power. Thermal reliability issues are about keeping components within safe thermal limits. This is not even just about cooling, but also keeping heat away from thermally sensitive components, even if that means that other components stay hotter. If the thermal solution is adequate for heat that is being produced, then there is no reason why a relatively small device can't be reliable. Given that these devices can measure the heat, they can ramp up the fan or throttle down the chips when excessive heat is detected. Note that full size desktops nearly always have a cooling solution that is very inefficient, because desktops also sacrifice optimal cooling. However, they sacrifice them for flexibility in components and room to do easy maintenance. So on the one hand you admit that there is a benefit to this trade-off, but then you argue that the only reason why people buy these things in large volume is due to deceptive marketing, rather than that many people simply prefer this trade-off. This dismissal of choices that you don't seem to understand and/or like is exactly why people are saying that you judge things based on your personal preferences, and not professionally. It is typical for discussions with you that you interpret even the mildest criticisms of your debating style as personal attacks, and this utter inability to take criticism is surely why you keep persisting in behavior that causes these out of control and unproductive debates. When those happen on this forum, you are typically the common factor. These bad debates appear to frustrate you greatly, so this inability to improve yourself seems to hurts you. So when I make these statements, I do so because I think that if you would take them to heart, it will be good for everyone, not in the least, you.

Yet you don't seem to understand that there are different use cases. Mature, useful advice explains the use cases that the device is not good for, but also what it is good for. You completely fail at that latter part. Fact is that 10's of millions of gaming laptops are sold each year, sales of those are increasing and people very often buy another gaming laptop, so they often seem to have no regrets. Yet a gaming laptop has similar heat/wattage limitations to a small factor PC. Furthermore, people also buy consoles, also often small designs with little upgradability. Actually purely bad ideas are the old Alienware desktops, which had horrible thermal engineering and lots of custom components hampering upgrades. And these were full-sized desktops, so you didn't even gain portability or space efficiency, which are actual benefits of small form factor PC, gaming laptops and consoles. But a trade-off that you personally don't like is not automatically a bad idea and it is also not necessarily something that the market will reject.

I checked where this $1200 figure comes from, and it seems to come from Vice who are not even claiming that this is the price. They wrote an article based merely on Linus saying that he heard from Valve that it will be priced more like a PC than a console. Then they start throwing out various prices based purely on speculation. See: https://www.vice.com/en/article/steam-machine-price-range-may-have-leaked-and-its-not-cheap/ So please stop acting if $1200 is an actual leak. It is not.

+ Snapdragon 8 gen 3 instead of the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2. + 16 GB RAM vs 12 for the Pico and 8 for the Quest 3. + Eye tracking (which is probably fairly expensive) + High quality audio with 4 speakers built in + SD card slot + Built in IR illuminators for use in the dark + Better IO chip than the Quest 3 (same as Pico?) + Up to 144 Hz display vs 90 for the Pico and 120 for the Quest 3 + Heat pipe-based cooling is probably much better - Monochrome camera's - Smaller battery (?)

That may be great competition for pre-builds, but the PS5 is $500, so not sure whether it can compete with those. People may also be postponing upgrades in general, with the increase in RAM/storage pricing and an increase in layoffs. So it may be launching into a weak consumer market. SteamOS is already a Linux distro. It would be more interesting to me if they make it very easy to install, configure and use the most common applications for normies, like a mail-client, Whatsapp, Netflix, Spotify, etc.

The MeganeX 8K Superlight is also a headset to consider.

It feels a bit like a Quest 3 Pro to me. From what I've seen so far, it seems that they have put a lot of effort into the details, so I do expect it to be more pleasant in practice than the specs suggest. That is an absurd expectation. It has more expensive hardware and will have less sales volume.

You can take them off completely and wash them with a mild dish soap and lukewarm water.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSflUrHfM9AB0f-0WGyhOLxvXQNMr7E8TBDSYYJUBQ8kqaDC7g/viewform

The Flanker is not natively supported by the AB9 for now. The Constellation Alpha does work.

You can't upgrade just the CPU because you would need to replace the platform anyway. 12-14 gen Intel uses a different socket.

Keep in mind that we don't know the release date and have no idea how good the software will be nor do we know how good the hardware is really. Waiting is a gamble.

You have to decide for yourself. We can't decide for you what tradeoff you prefer.

No issue for me, but I have pretty big hands (XL). The sensitivity of the controls is more of an issue for me, with the the 4-way hat on the side often triggering 'up' when I try to do sideways. My old Gladiator didn't have that issue.

I've heard a bunch of people comment about the small size of the Kosmosima and that was also my experience. I now have a Virpil Alpha and it has a lot more girth.

I assume that you tried the Gladiator? That is known to be small, but that is not representative for the Gunfighter grips.

The selection of controls is indeed the best thing about the TWCS and on that front it punches above its weight. Unfortunately, the actual throttle part is very poor, and the durability is also not very good. It is commonly recommended as a decent entry-level product, but it is very much an aged product that is overpriced for what it is, IMO.

@DejmienoPl A lot of people focus blame the poor quality of their old stick on it being plastic, but high quality plastics used in the right places (with metal components where needed) are actually very good and comfortable. Real modern planes never use metal sticks. You often pay a substantial premium for getting a metal grip. Anyway, the VKB Gladiator is the best mid-range joystick. Basically, everything below it (and even several more expensive products) have major issues. Then above that you have the separate bases and grips, where VKB and Virpil provide very good solutions. Keep in mind that these are designed to be mounted, so that can result in extra costs for mounting kits. Winwing is cheaper as you've seen, but you pay for this with poorer quality control and especially poor service. There are a lot of horror stories about them where people basically get screwed over, and end up with no money and no functioning product. So are you willing to take that risk? The highest end of the scale are the FFB bases, which are way nicer still and probably will fully cannibalize the top end of the previous category. You have the VPForce and FFBeast, which are top tier, but also in price. Then Moza has a solution with a good base, but mediocre software and a poor grips. I personally have the Moza AB9 with a Virpil grip, which works quite well and which was substantially cheaper than the VPForce and FFBeast. Any day now they will also come out with a cheaper AB6-base with less power. Virpil and Winwing are going to release a FFB base as well, where Winwing has announced very attractive pricing, but their base is very tall (although less wide than the competition). This may require a full rig, and not be suitable for table mounting. We also have no idea how well their hardware and software will actually perform. And I'm personally very happy with the VKB STECS throttle.

I mount it to my desk. It is a very solid desk though (hand-made, thick wood).

The disadvantage of the 9950X3D is that is has two compute-chiplets, and one of them is not suitable for gaming. So you can have issues if the game decides to run (partially) on the wrong chiplet. That is why you see people messing about with Process Lasso, to manually decide what runs where. With the 9800X3D, you don't have these issues. The downside is that you have fewer cores, but almost no games use that many cores, so this is more an issue when you also want to use the CPU for heavy video/image editing and such. So the 9950X3D is more of a hybrid CPU, whose primary value is that it is both good for gaming, but also for heavy video/image editing, etc. If money is no object, I would still get the 9800X3D, so you don't have any hassle, and then save your money for a CPU upgrade later on. Rumor has it that the next generation of AMD CPUs may see much reduced memory latency due to a much better connection between the compute-chiplet(s) and the IO-chiplet. And each compute chiplet is rumored to go to 12 cores.

If the only heavy thing with the PC you do is gaming, then neither of the 9950X or 9950X3D are the best choice. You are better off with the 9800X3D.