Valve's Steam Machine gets competition in the "Stim Machine", a cheeky French PC box that's already reportedly been re-named

A oui challenger arrives

Watch out, Steam Machine! One who would claim your throne comes forth from the sun-kissed streets of France. He might have your number, once he's figured out what he's comfortable being called. He's the PC Box from French tech sellers LDLC, and he was originally dubbed the Stim Machine because no parody can be too on the nose.

Seriously, the Stim Machine. There's no way they've called it that, I thought as I dug up the listing for it on LDLC's site only to be a bit confused that it seemed to be called LDLC PC Box (or PC Box Kit) there. French site Journal Du Geek quickly filled in the gaps for me. They report that LDLC quietly pulled the Stim Machine moniker a couple of days after releasing the box, scrubbing references to that name from the listing as they re-christened the device, probably because they determined they'd been a bit too cheeky.

If you're wondering how LDLC's Box stacks up to Valve's new games cube, the answer is that it seems something of a scruffier big brother that might not be as ideal a bit of kit to fit seamlessly into your living room, but does have more powerful innards. The PC Box is bigger, while it packs a Ryzen 5 8400F processor and Radeon RX 9060 XT graphics card. That's compared to the Steam Machine's Zen 4 and RDNA 3. The 9060's the major differentiator, and should offer you more frames per second than you can shake a stick at. The PC Box also requires you to set up SteamOS on it yourself, unlike Valve's Machine.

As our hardware guru and Steam Machine reviewer James put it after glancing over the PC Box's specs: "This should mulch the Steam Machine on performance, though it also shows how sharply priorities can shift when you're looking at living room PCs specifically. It's almost certainly a lot louder, and for something I'd be putting in front of my sofa, it's still too big and ugly. The Steam Machine looks like it could blend into any Scandi cabinet; the Stim Machine looks like it should be on the work desk of a heavily ennuied photocopier sales manager."

As for price, unsurprisingly given the ongoing memory crisis, they're both wallet-busters. LDLC's box starts at €999.99 as a kit or €1039.99 pre-assembled. The Steam Machine's 512GB model is €1039 sans Steam controller, which is £879 and $1049, while the 2TB model costs €1359, which is £1149 and $1349.

Personally, I think I'd hang on to that vast wad of change and pray that prices somehow return to more reasonable points before the heat death of our universe arrives, however unlikely that might seem.