Valve's Steam Machine finally has a price, and it's a high one. But if you're handy with a screwdriver, you can roll your own for a lot less.

PCWorld examines MSI's $1,800 Claw 8 EX AI+ gaming handheld alongside Valve's $1,049 Steam Machine, highlighting escalating costs in PC gaming hardware. Rising component prices and console increases like Xbox Series X jumping to $799 signal affordability concerns for gaming enthusiasts. Testing shows DIY alternatives can save nearly $200 while matching performance, though high storage and memory costs remain challenging. I don't know about you, but I can't remember the last time it was so expensive to surf the cutting edge of PC hardware. I've been thinking about the ongoing pricepocalypse engulfing the computing industry all week, because here at PCWorld we've been testing the remarkably fast (and remarkably expensive) MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ in order to see how it stacks up against other handheld gaming PCs.

PCWorld reports that Valve's Steam Machine ships with a single 16GB DDR5-5600 SODIMM, leaving one memory slot empty and causing a 10% performance loss compared to dual-channel configurations. Users can upgrade to 32GB by adding another 16GB SODIMM for around $200, but the process requires complex disassembly as demonstrated in teardowns. The Steam Machine's high price combined with its single-stick RAM limitation makes it a questionable value proposition for gamers seeking optimal performance. Valve will sell you a Steam Machine starting today, at least if you signed up earlier this week and you have a little bit of luck. Early supplies are expected to be extremely limited, as Valve is dealing with the same hardware issues as the entire industry. It comes with just 16GB of RAM, which is a little light for a gaming desktop. But there's something you should know about it that isn't on the spec list. The Steam Machine is using semi-standard parts, at least for RAM and storage, including familiar SODIMM sticks that go into laptops.

PCWorld reports that Valve's SteamOS is now available in beta for Intel-based handhelds, starting with the MSI Claw, potentially challenging Microsoft's Windows dominance in PC gaming. Intel's new Arc G3 processors are debuting in handhelds from MSI, Acer, and OneXPlayer, aiming to compete with AMD in the portable gaming market. Early benchmarks show SteamOS performing slightly behind Windows 11 on Intel devices, but this expansion could establish SteamOS as the unofficial standard for PC gaming handhelds. The Steam Deck didn't invent the handheld gaming form factor, or even debut it for PC hardware, but it's certainly the iPhone equivalent for this particular moment. And the vast, vast majority of the Steam Deck-inspired market has been underpinned by AMD's integrated chips.

PCWorld examines whether VR gaming is declining, highlighting challenges from Meta's failed Metaverse push and lack of compelling new content. Rising AI-driven hardware costs are making Valve's upcoming Steam Frame headset potentially unaffordable, while Apple's Vision Pro lacks gaming presence. Only Valve remains committed to VR gaming among major companies, making the technology's future uncertain despite continued development efforts. Meta is looking a lot less meta lately, reportedly pivoting from the virtual reality Quest brand and the ghost of Oculus to double down on pervert glasses. After a decade of work, Sony's VR ambitions over on the PlayStation seem to have made little progress. And I've barely heard a mention of Samsung's Galaxy XR headset--allegedly the flagship launch device for Android XR--since it arrived six months ago. While the idea that Apple is abandoning its Vision Pro headset might be overblown--the company is still actively hiring for the division--Michael Simon over at Macworld tells me the platform has basically zero gaming presence for the hardware. Hope for renewed interest in VR gaming with a big injection of Cupertino branding power has evaporated. Is virtual reality gaming, to borrow a term from, cooked?

Valve's £85 Steam Controller divides gamers ahead of May launch Valve has announced its new Steam Controller will be available to order from 4 May, and will cost £85 in the UK and $99 in the US - prices that have raised eyebrows among some gamers. The second generation of the gamepad, it will be compatible with PCs and Valve's handheld console, the Steam Deck. It is also designed to work with the company's own upcoming gaming PC, the Steam Machine. The Steam Controller may be more expensive than the standard controllers from Nintendo, Xbox and PlayStation, but we do live in a time where companies including Sony and Microsoft are selling premium controllers for £150-£200, said Chris Scullion deputy editor of Video Games Chronicle. There has been a negative reaction from some gamers on social media though.

PCWorld reports that Valve's Steam Machine launch faces delays and increased costs due to industry-wide memory and storage shortages affecting component availability. RAM prices have surged significantly, potentially increasing PC costs by 20%, forcing Valve to consider subsidizing the device to remain competitive. The Steam Machine targets 4K/60FPS performance using AMD's FSR technology and will feature user-upgradeable SSD and RAM for flexibility. I had a feeling this was coming. While Valve has never confirmed the price of its hotly anticipated Steam Machine revival, the specs of the tiny, console-style PC indicated something cheaper than a full gaming desktop--and its exact price will be crucial to its success . But a bit of info hidden in a new FAQ page indicates that even Valve is sweating about the price as much as the rest of us are. "When we announced these products in November, we planned on being able to share specific pricing and launch dates by now," says the FAQ . "But the memory and storage shortages you've likely heard about across the industry have rapidly increased since then."

Supporting Go/No-Go decisions prior to launch requires assessing real-time telemetry data against redline limits established during the design qualification phase. Family data from ground testing or previous flights is commonly used to detect initiating failure modes and their timing; however, this approach relies heavily on engineering judgment and is more error-prone for new launch vehicles. To address these limitations, we utilize Long-Term Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks for supervised classification of time-series anomalies. Although, initial training labels derived from simulated anomaly data may be suboptimal due to variations in anomaly strength, anomaly settling times, and other factors. In this work, we propose a novel statistical detector based on the Mahalanobis distance and forward-backward detection fractions to adjust the supervised training labels. We demonstrate our method on digital twin simulations of a ground-stage propulsion system with 20.8 minutes of operation per trial and O(10^8) training timesteps. The statistical data relabeling improved precision and recall of the LSTM classifier by 7% and 22% respectively.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Valve has spent the last decade tunneling into Microsoft's vault. Now, the heist is on. Microsoft's big focus for Windows is AI integration . Meanwhile, Valve has been not-so-quietly pilfering the entire PC gaming ecosystem from Microsoft, turning the Linux-based SteamOS into a real competitor to Windows.

Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) has emerged as a minimally invasive treatment option for patients with severe aortic stenosis, a life-threatening cardiovascular condition. Multiple transcatheter heart valves (THV) have been approved for use in TAVR, but current guidelines regarding valve type prescription remain an active topic of debate. We propose a data-driven clinical support tool to identify the optimal valve type with the objective of minimizing the risk of permanent pacemaker implantation (PPI), a predominant postoperative complication. We synthesize a novel dataset that combines U.S. and Greek patient populations and integrates three distinct data sources (patient demographics, computed tomography scans, echocardiograms) while harmonizing differences in each country's record system. We introduce a leaf-level analysis to leverage population heterogeneity and avoid benchmarking against uncertain counterfactual risk estimates. The final prescriptive model shows a reduction in PPI rates of 26% and 16% compared with the current standard of care in our internal U.S. population and external Greek validation cohort, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this work represents the first unified, personalized prescription strategy for THV selection in TAVR.