Valve Unveils the Steam Machine: A Console-Like Revolution in PC Gaming

Valve yesterday introduced the Steam Machine – a home gaming mini-PC with SteamOS, conceptually resembling a console. The company did not disclose its price, possibly due to the rising costs of RAM and SSDs, which required the company to reconsider its plans. However, we do have a benchmark, as stated by Valve itself. Cover image If you want to create a PC with similar features and performance, it’s believed that the Steam Machine will be genuinely competitive in price and provide a truly good price-performance ratio. The availability mentioned by you is one of the reasons we consider the Steam Machine to be in high demand right now. Therefore, every time we made a decision about hardware or functionality, we thought about making it as accessible as possible. This gives us an understanding that Valve is targeting the segment of PCs with similar parameters, intending to compete on the low end of the market.

Some sources suggest the price could be around $800 or even $1,000, but in reality, if you look closely at the market, even $800 seems too high. Comparable PCs can be found for around $600, and they are usually slightly better. Yes, an adjustment for the rising cost of RAM is needed, but it’s quite likely that Valve will target a price point of $600 or even $500. At such a price, the new Steam Machine would be a very worthy proposal for gaming without claims to max settings and ray tracing.

To recall, the device’s configuration includes a six-core Zen 4 processor (presumably a 2xZen4 + 4xZen 4c configuration) and a video card similar in parameters to the mobile Radeon RX 7600M XT. This is far from the best the market offers, especially for 4K, as Valve mentions (albeit with FSR), but it’s worth remembering that the PC will run on SteamOS, which means slightly higher (10-20%) gaming performance compared to a similar PC on Windows.

Incidentally, we already have a brief understanding of the performance level, as Digital Foundry authors were allowed to play on the Steam Machine. First of all, the authors say the video card in Valve’s novelty offers performance somewhere between Radeon RX 6600 and RX 7600. This means roughly parity with the RTX 3060, taking memory volume into account. The authors also tested Cyberpunk 2077 and reported that at a resolution of 1440p (i.e., 4K when using FSR Quality), the PC delivers about 60 fps without ray tracing. This performance is indeed decent. The authors also compare it with consoles, stating that the Steam Machine falls between Xbox Series S and PS5 but is closer to the latter.