I Gave My Steam Machine A Second Stick Of RAM Because Valve Couldn't

The Steam Machine came out in sub-optimal times not just when it comes to storage and RAM pricing, but also when it comes to its basic configuration out of the box. The PC uses DDR5 SODIMM memory, the kind normally found in laptops, but due to supply chain restrictions Valve were only able to ship the machine with a single 16 gig stick of memory instead of two 8 gig sticks. Basically no PC builder ships with a single stick of memory when two would suffice. Doing so has a significant cost in CPU-bound tasks, although for many games this is less impactful. In a rational market this would not be a problem, and upgrading to 32 or 64GB of RAM in an ideal configuration would be both cheap and simple. But we do not live in a rational market and that’s how it shipped, so I paid out the ass for a single stick of compatible memory to try to see how annoying it is to put in there and how much of a difference it actually made.