> and I don't really want to build a $1000 minimum computer with crazy LEDs that takes up a ton of space with a monitor at this point in my life.
The beauty of a PC is you can build whatever you want. It doesn't need to be large, and doesn't need to have LEDs. There are plenty of small form factor cases on the market with the same footprint as this one.
The Steam Machine is smaller than any case that would be considered mainstream in the small form factor community, at least to my knowledge. The FormD T1 is around 10L for example, and would look almost comically large compared to the Steam Machine.
And enthusiast cases like this are often quite expensive and not easy to get. Then you need to think about thermals, and find hardware that actually fits.
You can approach it form another angle and treat it more like a NUC and get a SoC but then you're probably not going to get close in terms of gaming performance.
So long story short: I disagree that it would be straight forward to build something like this on your own, at the same price point.
This is a fairly low spec device. You can comfortably fit all the hardware, case, PSU, cooling etc. in a $600-700 budget. If you want to go small form factor then it'll cost a bit extra, but not that much extra.
Not a PC gaming expert though and I don't have infinite resources to spend on figuring out how many millimeters of space each specific case has and how long a GPU is =)
But I've seen enough horror stories where someone bought a GPU or a heatsink that was like 5mm too big and didn't fit in the case without a hammer.
The beauty of a PC is you can build whatever you want. It doesn't need to be large, and doesn't need to have LEDs. There are plenty of small form factor cases on the market with the same footprint as this one.