Crucial 8GB DDR5 RAM, 5600MHz (or 5200MHz or 4800MHz) Laptop Memory, SODIMM 262-Pin, Compatible with 13th Gen Intel Core and AMD Ryzen 6000 - CT8G56C46S5

I don't think people truly appreciate the current state of the market or ram and storage atm. I would bet dollars to donuts that Valve originally targeted the $750 price tag. However, doing a quick search the cheapest 512GB nvme SSD with a brand name I recognize is currently $100 and looking at the price history, is up from roughly $40 last year. Looking at Ram, the cheapest 16GB module is currently $200, which, funnily enough, was also around $40 before the AI irrational market. Just with those 2 components alone, that's a ~$200, raw cost increase to the components (and ignores the 8GB of RAM in the custom GPU as well). While other components haven't been hit as hard, all components of computers have seen some kind of cost increase. The reality is that Valve has never targeted their hardware as loss leaders, unlike with consoles. They were aiming to leverage their engineering to hit a "close to console" price (originally rumored to be ~$750) without losing money and were probably going to pull it off before prices went nuts. Honestly, with the AI pricing recently, I would bet money their BOM nearly doubled in price during development and the fact that they kept the price within 30% or the original (rumored) goal impressive. It's not what anyone wants to hear, but the price is absolutely in line with current pricing and is prob in line with peoples hopes that Valve would list it at "near/no margin pricing".