The Steam Machine Will Save PC Gaming

We’re living in the RAMpocalypse, and the reaper has come for us all. This is the single worst time to be interested in PC gaming – hell, tech in general – thanks to unfettered capitalism chewing its way through the world’s memory and storage production capacity in search of an untenable AI future no one wants or can seem to find actual use cases for. Trying to buy or build a gaming PC right now sucks, all thanks to “AI First” companies like Google and Microslop hoarding literally all the RAM and storage their venture-capital funded fever dream can get, meaning us consumers are stuck paying double, triple, quadruple, or more for the same sticks of RAM and SSDs we could have had for pennies last year. The lack of supply of DRAM and NAND flash is the limiting factor, meaning companies like Corsair and GSKILL are just straight up being charged more for the same chips they’ve been using the whole time, and that cost gets passed on to us as the end consumers. But there might just be a tiny, distant glimmer of light – Valve’s Steam Machine. I’m cautiously hopeful that this has the chance to make some fundamental shifts to the PC gaming industry that have been coming for a long time, but now that we’re truly under the hammer, this might be the perfect time to give the whole industry a push in a better direction. Maybe. Let’s get into it.

First, what actually is the Steam Machine? Well, it’s a gaming PC. It’s a gaming PC that isn’t actually out yet, although rumours suggest it’ll be out any day now. It’s also a pretty mid-tier gaming PC. With just six Zen 4 (last gen) cores, twelve threads, and a 28 compute unit GPU, this won’t be setting performance records, but there are some interesting things to note even with the specs alone. The GPU has basically the same spec as the RX 7400 – RDNA3 architecture, 28 compute units, 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM, but the TDP is a lot higher here. The RX 7400’s TDP is a measly 55 watts, while the Steam Machine’s GPU can drink 110 watts – which to be clear doesn’t mean the Steam Machine will have double the performance of a 7400 as you start running into diminishing returns real fast when pumping more power through the same silicon, but essentially we can expect a healthy increase over the 7400 – which TechPowerUp suggests is about RTX 2070 levels of performance. I’d hope we could expect RX 7600 or 7600 levels of performance at least, which should mean we’re good for 1080p and 1440p gaming, and as Valve are quick to point out, once you add some upscaling tech, namely FSR, we should see 4K60 gaming too. One thing to note though is the 16GB of RAM, and either a 512GB or 2TB SSD. In 2026 that might be simultaneously plenty, and nowhere near enough.

Of course the true not-so-secret weapon Valve has up their sleeve here is SteamOS, their Arch (btw) based Linux distro that does a whole lot of heavy lifting helping to push gamers away from Microslop’s vulturous hands. SteamOS, in combination with Proton, their compatibility layer that makes games built for Windows run on Linux, is a bit of a silver bullet. Linux, and SteamOS in particular, is really good at running on lower end hardware, and running remarkably well, without bloat, and without enormous overhead. This helps cut the RAM requirements down, and the horsepower needed to still have a great experience playing games. There’s also the immediate user experience. SteamOS’s big benefit is in its game mode. Anyone who has used a Steam Deck will know that the experience is a near flawless console style, and to bring that to a gaming PC that’s meant to live next to (or in place of) consoles, that’s a big deal. The “10 foot UI” means it’s easy to navigate with a controller from ten feet away, just like the more conventional consoles. SteamOS also has instant suspend and resume, which makes pausing your game and coming back to it after the kids have gone to bed seamless. Plus, of course, this is still a PC. Switch to desktop mode and you’ll get a full-bore PC you can do anything you want on. Use it to MAKE games, videos, do homework, or just chill with, it’s all available. Oh, and the “Steam Machine Verified” program means more and more games are straight compatible and will run well on the Steam Machine hardware.

Of course, the Steam Machine faces some massive hurdles, with the biggest one being sticker shock. While we don’t yet know exactly how much the Steam Machine is going to set us back, we know it isn’t going to be console-like pricing – which itself has taken a rocket ride up with the PS5 Pro being near $700 MSRP now – and more like mid-tier gaming PC. Most people are predicting around $1000, which if we’re talking 2024 prices would be inconceivably high, but by 2026 standards… It’s kinda par for the course. Still, $1000 for 16GB of RAM, a 6 core CPU, a pretty mid GPU and 8GB of VRAM is a rough pill to swallow. Equally that 8GB of VRAM can quite easily be seen as a longevity limitation. Some games, especially at 4K, are easily chewing through 8GB of VRAM, and that’s today. Looking to the future, that might be a limitation. Realistically though, through optimisations, FSR and hardware standardisation, there’s at least a chance it’ll live longer than other similar hardware.

There’s also the ghost of 2014, and the last time Valve tried to launch a “Steam Machine”. For those that weren’t around back then, Valve attempted, although never really followed through, to sell gaming PCs through vendors like Zotac and Alienware with a Linux based “SteamOS” operating system. They even launched a Steam Controller alongside it! There are a few big differences between that and the upcoming Steam Machine though, namely Proton and building their own hardware. Proton is the single biggest reason any Linux gaming works these days, it’s the magic sauce that lets Windows games run on Linux, and save for some anti-cheat solutions getting in the way, thousands of games now work flawlessly on Linux which never could have before. Also, Valve being the one to make their own hardware gives them a significant advantage over just getting existing companies to slap together some existing small form factor components.

It’s clear that Valve has learned an awful lot from the failure of the OG Steam Machine, and through creating the Steam Deck they’ve also evolved their ecosystem and product development abilities greatly. I mean just look at the difference between the original Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED circuit boards – it’s the same chip and all the same functionality, but the OLED version is greatly simplified yet it’s more efficient. That sort of improvement must carry over to the Steam Machine, and especially thanks to working with AMD to make semi-custom silicon for the CPU and GPU, they have a unique bit of hardware no one else has. That’s pretty sweet! There’s also the pretty key benefit that the Steam Machine is one hardware spec, meaning developers who want to optimise for this specific hardware will have a much easier time making the Steam Machine play better than the millions of combinations of hardware other small form factor PCs can have. It’s kind of the console effect, and something we’ve seen to a degree with the Steam Deck and the very similar other Ryzen Z1 handhelds. 

This sort of standardisation also helps push the entire market in a better direction. Using the Steam Deck as the prime example, while there absolutely were handheld gaming PCs before the Steam Deck, the Deck exploded the market’s popularity, and brought with it an absolute swarm of similar handhelds – the ROG Ally, Lenovo Legion Go, MSI Claw and so many more – and even pushed Intel to only this year announce a handheld-specific chip that’s making waves. If the Steam Deck can push the entire tech industry to make better and better handheld gaming PCs, I don’t see why the Steam Machine can’t do the same for the console-like desktop form factor. I wouldn’t be overly surprised to see AMD release a Ryzen branded chip with pretty damn similar specs to the Steam Machine in six months, and have someone like Asus jump on that to make the Ally XL or something. 

The final point I want to make is a comparison to the consoles – PlayStations and Xboxs – which is that while this is aiming to be a console-like experience, it’s still a PC. If you want to only ever use this for gaming on your TV, awesome. Go for it. But with just a couple button presses, this becomes a regular desktop PC. Then you can install Blender, Godot, Davinci Resolve, GIMP, and any office suite of your choice and use it like the decently powerful little desktop computer it is. Make stuff with it. Do work on it. Do whatever you want with it. It’s a fully fledged computer! It’s also entirely yours – including your games library. The magic of using a PC for your gaming needs is that the games aren’t locked to the machine nor brand. You absolutely can play any game you own on these things, and if this breaks, or in a couple years when there’s, I dunno, an Asus or Lenovo machine you like the look of better and want more horse power, you can swap to that and all your games come with you. On Steam or not. That doesn’t happen on console. You can also play non-PC games. One of the most common experiences with the Steam Deck is using EmuDeck to install all the game emulators, and some of the most fun I’ve had on my Deck has been playing Switch and PS2 games. Again, that’s not a feature consoles offer. Oh, and the hardware is also clearly yours too, with no clearer indication of that than the fact that the Steam Machine has user-replaceable storage AND RAM, so if the 16GB of system memory isn’t working for you, stick two 16GB SODIMMs in instead. If the 512GB or 2TB SSD options aren’t enough for you, stick an 8TB M.2 in instead. It’s yours. 

Of course all of this is theoretical. Until the Steam Machine launches – which FCC filings suggest will be literally any day now – we won’t know how it actually holds up, and it’ll take time to see if the Steam Machine will bring the same monumental shift in the industry that the Steam Deck did. Of course, the Steam Machine isn’t going to fix the global RAM crisis, nor does it look to be sold as a loss-leader like the consoles are, but the shift to Linux (and away from Microslop), a focus on efficient gaming, and what should still be a relatively affordable living room gaming PC I hope will help push the industry in a better, more hopeful direction. Only time will tell if the Steam Machine will save PC gaming, but I sure hope it does.