Yeah, I think (sadly) this kills the Steam Machine in the short term if the competition is current consoles.

At least until the supply contracts Sony & Microsoft have signed come up for renewal, at which point they’re going to be getting the short end of the RAM stick too.

In the short term the RAM shortage is going to kill homebrew PC building & small PC builders stone dead - prebuilts from the larger suppliers will be able to outcompete them on price so much that it simply won’t make any sense to buy from anyone except HP, Dell etc etc. Again, this applies only until the supply contracts those big PC firms have signed run out, or possibly only until their suppliers find they can’t source DDR5 ram chips for love nor money, because the fabs are only making HBM chips & so they have to break the contracts themselves.

It’s going to get bumpy.