I linked both prebuilt and do it yourself builds. Neither resulted in a comparable machine to the PS5 for $600.
Again, I think you are missing how much the price of components has increased.
16GB of DDR5 alone costs approximately $200 [1]. I challenge you to find a new case, motherboard, NVMe SSD, and PSU for the remaining $100 in the budget after $200 for ram and after your assumed $300 for a GPU.
Where can you get a new gaming "beast of a machine" for $600? In the past you could build a reasonable gaming machine for $600 but parts are drastically more expensive today.
If you go to microcenter and look for gaming PCs, their cheapest option is $800 [1]. PC Part Picker's entry level build is $780 [2].
The only option I found with these constraints is this computer from Walmart with a GPU released in 2017 and a CPU released in 2013 [3] (This is not a recommendation for this listing. Please don't buy it).
When buying a gaming console, I imagine folks think more about the upfront cost ($600 for PS5 vs $1,050 for steam machine) as opposed to the total cost of ownership.
The steam machine may be cheaper in the long run once you consider:
* Playing PlayStation games online costs $11/month.
* PlayStation games tend to be more expensive than steam games.
The US spent $2 Trillion dollars on Medicare and Medicaid in 2024 [1][2]. If the US spent this money as efficiently as Japan (or UK [3], ...) it could pay for Healthcare for every single resident with this $2 Trillion dollars.
1) Creatine is safe, "creatine supplementation is safe across a range of doses, durations, and populations according to human trials".
2) Stomach issues are a commonly reported side effect, "Gastrointestinal issues were the most frequently reported side effect... Most notably, gastrointestinal distress is a commonly reported side effect, and those supplementing with creatine may need to divide the dose into smaller boluses to alleviate it; however, it is worth noting that this side effect was not persistent"
3) It is not clear if the side effects are caused by creatine, many of the issues can be explained by baseline issues rather than caused by creatine, "No consistent or clinically meaningful dose-dependent increases in side-effect reporting were observed across models; even at higher doses and prolonged durations, reporting remained low and largely comparable to placebo at the study level"
> Creatine mono-hydrate which mostly comes from China and "creapure", which is a patented formula known for its purity.
Creapure sells Creatine Monohydrate not a proprietary form of creatine [1]. The higher end in creatine is Creatine HCL which is more expensive but more water soliable, easier on the stomach, and requires a smaller dose.
In terms of creatine manufactured in the Western World:
* CON-CRĒT manufactures creatine in the US, they produce Creatine HCL.
* Creapure manufactures creatine in Germany. They produce Creatine Monohydrate.
There are also a variety of brands that import creatine and run various tests to ensure quality.
> I still haven't heard a solid explanation of how taxing loans as "income" is going to work.
The idea is that taking a secured loan out using an asset as collateral would be a taxable event for that asset.
That is to say, if you buy a house for $400,000 and it appreciates to be worth $850,000 then take a home equity loan out against the house, you would owe capital gains on the $450,000 appreciation.
With the current $250,000 capital gains exclusion for primary residence, this would result in ~$30,000 of capital gains tax.
> The caps at both poles consist primarily of water ice. Frozen carbon dioxide accumulates as a comparatively thin layer about one meter thick on the north cap in the northern winter, while the south cap has a permanent dry ice cover about 8 m thick.
Maybe a dumb question, why do electric cars have issues with water?
My understanding was that ICE cars have trouble because water get's drawn into the engine. Water in the engine causes it to stall. And the engine must have air in flow and out flow.
An electric car doesn't need air in the same way (no oxygen to ignite with gasoline, no air to compress and expand).
Shouldn't electric cars to much better at driving through water?
Again, I think you are missing how much the price of components has increased.
16GB of DDR5 alone costs approximately $200 [1]. I challenge you to find a new case, motherboard, NVMe SSD, and PSU for the remaining $100 in the budget after $200 for ram and after your assumed $300 for a GPU.
[1] https://pcpartpicker.com/products/memory/#b=ddr5&Z=16384001,...