So, what if you decide to get a Steam Deck equivalent PC rather than buying Valve’s portable device?
Since its announcement, many PC gamers love to get their hands on Steam’s new portable gaming device, Steam Deck. As Valve claims, Steam Deck is a portable PC rather than a gaming console.
The most significant advantage of Steam Deck is the fact that it is a portable PC, and it’s only as big as a Nintendo Switch. However, if you would want to mostly use your Steam Deck on its dock and connect it to a larger displayer, then you might be curious to find out how much it costs to get a Steam Deck equivalent gaming PC.
Steam Deck Equivalent PC With the Official Pricing
Regarding that Steam Deck is supposed to launch in Q2 2022 if we assume that the shortage in hardware availability will be resolved until early 2022, you will probably be able to buy Nvidia or AMD graphics cards at the official price. So, in that case, here is what would you get with $650:
Steam Deck Equivalent PC With the Real-Time Pricing
Unfortunately, you cannot get a GTX 1660 for $220 at the current market. When considering the real prices in the market, the best option would probably be a GTX 1050 Ti or a GTX 1650, both having a similar price range of $280 to $350.
That being said, we could probably use RX 550 as the AMD equivalent of GTX 1050 Ti as our main GPU in this PC set, which is available at the affordable price of $230 at the moment.
While you would think an AMD Ryzen equivalent for i3-10100 would be more affordable, the market is actually vice versa. So, we still stick to Intel.
Is Steam Deck Worth the Price?
At the current state of the hardware market, yes, it is absolutely worth the price. Currently, the best PC gaming you could get for $650 is an AMD RX 550 powered system that doesn’t have any significant advantage against Steam Deck.
However, if the hardware shortage resolves and if Nvidia releases new pieces of GTX 1660 or GTX 1650, you could get a more powerful PC than Steam Deck.
Currently, there’sno exact release datefor Steam Deck, but its lower capacity versions are set to arrive in Q1 2022, with the 512 GB version slated for Q2 2022.
