this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
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I wonder how much it would've cost if we didn't have a dumb mother fucker in charge and greedy rich bastards weren't hoarding all the supplies
Let's pick Oct 2025 as our 'pre RAMpocalypse' time frame.
Data source: pangoly.com
(I removed BestBuy from the visuals because it is an extremely erratic dataset that basically bounces around the average of others, but makes the graph nearly unreadable)
16GB DDR5 Crucial RAM
Oct 2025: ~$50
Jun 2026: ~$275
2TB NVME M.2 Crucial SSD
Oct 2025: ~$140
Jun 2026: ~$300 (if you remove Adorama)
512GB NVME M.2 Kingston SSD
Oct 2025: ~$50
Jun 2026: ~$200
$275 - $50 = $225
$300 - $140 = $160
$225 + $160 = $385
Thus, the 2TB variant has an effective ~$385 upcharge due to the RAMpocalypse.
2TB variant MSRP is $1349, thus it would be ~$964 pre-RAMpocalypse, meaning that the RAMpocalypse % upcharge is ~39.9%
Do the same with the 512GB variant:
$275 - $50 = $225
$200 - $50 = $150
$225 + $150 = $375
$375 effective RAMpocalypse upcharge.
MSRP of 512GB variant is $1050, thus it would be ~$675 pre-RAMpocalypse, % upcharge of ~55.5%
Obviously this methodology is not perfectly correct, but I'd argue its quite reasonable 'napkin math'... you could maybe make a more exhaustive index of all prices of all brands of RAM/SSD in exact performance spec matches to be slightly more accurate, but yeah, roughly, the RAMpocalypse made the Steam Machine, about $380, or 40% to 55% more expensive than it otherwise would have been, depending on 2TB vs 512GB.
Also I guess we are here just assuming Valve is just selling these things basically at cost, neither subsidizing nor gouging the price, in all scenarios, which I am also confident is and always was basically the plan.
Also also, economist brain says:
~50% inflation in less than a year for pretty much an entire segment of the CPI is uh... pretty fucking bad, to use the 'formal' terminology.
speculation says 750ish. which really would have been perfect
https://steamdeckhq.com/news/valve-steam-machine-original-price/
Yeah, this was my guess as well in a pre-ram crisis era.
$750 is still about $250 too expensive for what it is and the performance it has.
Apparently Valve said to look at the Steam Deck price hike for a clue. So probably around $750 for the base model.
999 for 1 tb with controller.
*2TB, there's no 1TB model.
My guess would be like 600 or so for the base model.
LTT got a bit of a guess from Valve, the estimate is that the price was adjusted roughly in line with the recent Steam Deck increase.
Puts it about 850 or so for the base model if I'm estimating properly, but that is going from announcement to now, not all the way back to the beginning of all this mess.