In November 2025, I made a post about Valve’s new hardware releases, the new Steam Machine, the Steam Controller and the new Steam Frame.
On April 2026, they announced the price and release of the Steam Controller (2), and not learning that scalpers exist, the thing essentially evaporated like water in a hot pan in the USA. Nice one Valve.
On Monday, 23 June 2026, Valve announced the price of the Steam Machine, and after seeing how terribly priced it is, I can’t recommend it at its current price and specs, and other things surrounding it.
A Not-Console Low-End Gaming PC
As much as Valve says it’s not on their own FAQ, the Steam Machine (2) is a console-like experience for a PC. One of the most annoying things about PC is the fact that you have to do things yourself. But with the Steam Machine, it’s all plug and play. Put the PC on a table, plug all the cables, turn on the TV or monitor, and press the power button. It’ll boot up and just work. No need to get anything installed, no need to get anything else put into it.
You know what else does that, exactly the same way? A game console.
I know, it’s a PC, but a PC can be a gaming-focused device, and the new Steam Machine is precisely that. It also has fixed hardware (like a console) and a small form factor (like a console), and can come with a controller for ease of use (like a console).
The big difference is what you can run on it. Xbox Series S|X, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch 2 consoles can’t run Windows (the full version of it anyway) or Linux, only the OS that the company making the console made. Valve took a similar but different approach with the Steam Machine, making Steam better as a whole to work better with the hardware but still keeping the whole idea of being a PC intact. Arguably a good approach, if I can be honest, but doesn’t stop it from being a console, Valve.
Oh, yeah, I need to mention that it’s low specced hardware. Even if the Zen 4-based CPU can carry itself out a bit, it’s still on the low end on what it could do. It’s not even with the AMD’s 3D Cache tech (the so called X3D CPUs), so it could run better if they wanted to. And worse still, a downclocked/downturned Radeon RX 7600 with only 8GB of VRAM! I pointed that out in my previous post and 12GB VRAM is absolutely the most desirable amount right now, with 8GB being essentially in bargain bin product range. And of course, 16GB of RAM. Sure, it’s Linux, the footprint if not as big as Windows 11, but even then, it’s not a lot.
The Worst System to Buy It
Another thing that makes me not recommend the Steam Machine is how you can buy it. Once again, I’ll just quote myself.
Make it available to retail channels and for more regions/countries. Scalpers will always exist, and the way to fight it is to make available for more retail channels, and for the price it was announced for, instead of closing the hand tighter. There’s no reason for this.
Instead of improving this, Valve decided that it’s random raffle time! Seriously. You guys make billions every year, and can’t make a contract with Walmart or Amazon to sell the thing? Let someone else handle the sale if you can’t change this absolute garbage of a system.
This makes the Steam Machine undesirable because you can’t get one. Even with the crappy price, people would be willing to stomach over it if you could pick one up easily at Walmart or something. But you can’t. And no matter what Valve does, scalpers will still exist.
Once upon a time, Gabe Newell said that piracy is a ‘service problem, not a money problem’. Maybe Valve should take those words to heart regarding selling hardware too.
Prices are Bad but Not the Worst
And of course, the act of spending the money is probably the worst thing of the lot. Low-end hardware, piss poor availability, high prices. The three horsemen of the ‘product never selling’ apocalypse.
By the way, here are the prices and configurations:
- Steam Machine (512gb): 1049 USD
- Steam Machine (512gb) + Steam Controller: 1128 USD
- Steam Machine (2TB): 1349 USD
- Steam Machine (2TB) + Steam Controller: 1428 USD
I even got the SSD sizes right…
For fun, I’m gonna check against the ‘competition’, the mini PCs that exist right now.
To quote myself again:
For the record, a Beelink SER9 Pro with Ryzen 7 255H (or something like that) is 710USD (on discount when I checked it) and a Beelink EQR6 with a Ryzen 5 6600U is 440USD. A 700 USD Steam Machine with its own dedicated GPU would be a killer price. Oh and a Beelink GTR9 Pro with that beefy Strix Halo APU costs 2800USD.
Time for updated prices:
The Beelink SER9 Pro with the Ryzen 7 255H (and integrated graphics) and 24GB for RAM (16GB for the system and 8GB for the graphics) is still 710 USD (still on discount), and comes with a 1TB SSD. The GPU on the Steam Machine runs circles around the integrated graphics of this Mini PC.
The Beelink EQR6 is now 404, and it was replaced with the EQR7, apparently. It comes with a Ryzen 7 7735HS or 7735U for 489 USD. Soldered 16GB of RAM and 500GB SSD. Once again, the Steam Machine’s GPU kills this one dead, essentially, but this one is much cheaper. Older tech though, so YMMV.
The beefy Beelink GTR9 Pro with Strix Halo APU now costs 4340 USD. That’s almost a 100% price increase! And it’s definitely in competition with the Steam Machine but it’s also very overkill. If you don’t know, the Strix Halo APU (CPU + GPU combo) in this Mini PC comes with 16 cores and 32 threads, 128GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD, as well the beefy integrated GPU called Radeon 8060S, which is arguably much faster than the one on the Steam Machine, but considering you’re paying almost 4 times more, it better be.
The least I speak about the PC gaming handhelds the better. Lenovo put the new Legion Go 2 for almost 2000 USD, and the MSI Claw 8 AI+ (gen 2) being over 1600 USD.
Closing Words
I mentioned before that I liked Valve’s idea for hardware but they still need to improve availability. Now that the thing is ‘up’, it’s not desirable in any way, especially because you can’t buy it properly.
Once the DRAM Crisis goes down, we might be able to get something priced more accordingly to that it’s supposed to be, but right now? I can’t really recommend it. I can’t really recommend buying a PC at all right now either, and the Steam Machine entered this list.