Hands-On with Steam Machine: Valve's New PC/Console Hybrid

Since the 2022 release of Steam Deck, and its growing maturity running native Windows games via Linux and SteamOS, we've wondered: could this successful handheld ecosystem one day lead to a satisfactory, console-like experience? Imagine it. The same stability and competent performance of Steam Deck, scaled up with more power to plug into whatever home screen we want, TV or otherwise, and deliver a more streamlined flavour of PC gaming than we've dealt with on Windows PCs as of late.

That's the apparent goal of the Steam Machine, a new Valve hardware initiative that looks to deliver competent and accessible PC gaming for the average living room (and, if it launches as soon as Valve has hinted, will beat MS to that punch). It's slated to launch in the relatively near future as a fixed-spec box manufactured and sold by Valve, and at first glance, its spec sheet suggests performance at some mid-way point between Xbox Series S and the standard PlayStation 5, perhaps skewing more closely to the Sony console, with a few caveats.

After a brief in-person demonstration of the system and its accompanying, updated Steam Controller (also available for sale separately), we're left quite impressed, and we think Valve has something here in terms of delivering (mostly) sufficient PC-gaming performance and further disrupting the Windows OS chokehold on gaming PCs. But we still have questions, not least of which is, how much is this system going to cost?

From many to one: Steam Machine's unified re-debut

We'll start by confirming that your memory does not deceive you. We've covered the concept of Steam Machines in the past, which launched at retail in 2015 as a line of 14 different gaming PCs made by 14 different OEMs, and they all only had a primitive version of SteamOS in common. AMD and Intel CPUs; Nvidia and AMD GPUs; and specs (and prices) at opposite extremes in every category imaginable. Their messy launch fizzled out, as native Linux games were required and they were few and far between.

Ten years later, Valve is reclaiming "Steam Machine" with a more focused vision. Valve's new Linux-based PC is now a single hardware spec as built into a square chassis (or, if you'd rather, a cube for games) with a massive heatsink, some wiggle room for swappable parts, and only two SKU options (either 512GB or 2TB of internal storage, as stored on M.2 2230 drives).

Digital Foundry's attention immediately turns towards the fixed spec to start, with thoughts on the design, aesthetics, controller and SteamOS experience to follow.

Steam Machine Specs

Valve has not given specific model numbers for its choice of CPU and GPU, instead describing each as "semi-custom."

CPU

AMD Zen 4 CPU clocked at "up to" 4.8GHz, 6 cores, 12 threads

Graphics Core

AMD RDNA 3 with 28 compute units up to 2.45GHz, 8 GB DDR6 VRAM

Power Draw

30W TDP (CPU), 110W TDP (GPU)

Memory

16GB DDR5 RAM

Storage

512GB or 2TB M.2 2230 storage

Output

DisplayPort 1.4, up to 4K/240Hz or 8K/120 Hz; HDMI "2.0," up to 4K/120 Hz

OS

SteamOS

Steam Machine supports M.2 storage replacements in both 2230 and 2280 form factors along with hot-swapping microSD cards used in other SteamOS devices. Additionally, Valve engineers confirm that select HDMI 2.1 features like HDR and AMD FreeSync are active, despite the official spec listing HDMI 2.0.

Since the AMD CPU and GPU in the above spec sheet are listed as "semi-custom," we must read between the lines to determine which existing parts they most closely resemble, seeing as neither is the debut of an entirely new AMD chipset line. Instead, based on a combination of prior leaks and Valve's official numbers, we suspect (but cannot yet confirm) that Steam Machine's CPU is derived from a Phoenix or Hawk Point APU with two cores disabled and its integrated GPU fused off.

GPU-wise, meanwhile, we direct our attention to the most comparable RDNA 3 GPU made by AMD: the Navi 33 processor, as found in the two-year-old RX 7600, with a cut-down in specs from 32 CUs to only 28. This GPU is likely operating on a 128-bit bus, as per official Navi 33 specs (again, unconfirmed as of this article's publication). TDP is also lower. The spec suggests 110W, while staff Valve spoke of a wider 110W-130W window. For reference, the fully enabled Navi 33 in the RX 7600 has a 165W TDP.

8GB of VRAM: the key concern with Steam Machine's spec

In comments about Steam Machine to Digital Foundry, Valve staffers repeatedly suggested a general performance target of 4K resolution and 60fps frame-rates, albeit with AMD's FSR engaged to resolve a 4K image from lower base pixel counts. On the CPU front, we believe the system's Zen 4 architecture at the stated clock speeds should clear the 60fps target on a wide range of software, despite its relatively low TDP and origins as a mobile- and laptop-minded chip.

Valve's chosen GPU for Steam Machine, on the other hand, leaves us less confident in that target, where the fully enabled RX 7600 is typically associated with 1080p to 1440p gaming, often requiring the use of upscaling on more demanding games. The decision to opt for 8GB of GDDR6 memory has been proven to be a limiting factor on many modern mainstream triple-A games and falls short of the maximum VRAM pools and memory bandwidth available on both Xbox Series X and base PS5. To accommodate 8GB on affected games, paring back settings (particularly texture quality) and steering clear of ray tracing is frequently required.

Valve engineers suggested that the system's 8GB VRAM amount was a matter of "affordability" - the same argument put forward by Nvidia and AMD for its recent 8GB GPU offerings - so we'd hope to see this reflected in favourable pricing, but MSRPs have yet to be revealed at the time of writing. Steam Machine comes with two available SKUs, based on 512GB and 2TB SSDs. Options for 8GB or 16GB of VRAM may have been a more meaningful choice for those looking for a more future-proof configuration.

Interestingly, Valve's philosophy about Steam Machine's specs boils down to their use of the Steam Hardware Survey as a guideline. "We picked a point where for most people on Steam, this would be actually an upgrade," one Valve engineer said. That mindset may work out when designing for affordability, but we worry it leaves users behind in the present and near future of PC gaming realities, between VRAM issues and RDNA 3's diminishing RT returns.

Factoring out the growing wave of triple-A titles that do present best with more VRAM, there is certainly an argument that 8GB will be fine for the vast majority of the current Steam library, but explicitly laying out a 4K 60fps FSR target for the hardware reminds us of similar claims made by console manufacturers in the past. It's a claim that can only fall short when games have so much scalability built in and where every title has its own level of baseline performance. We'd need to go hands-on, obviously, but experience of what this level of horsepower achieves based on our GPU reviews suggests that expectations should be tempered in this regard.

In good news for current and upcoming games, Valve confirms that developers will have access to an API that can help their games recognise Steam Machine hardware and automatically adjust in-game settings, just like the current Steam Deck API. Such tweaks would have to deploy rapidly across the massive Steam ecosystem of games to render our concerns moot. But, hey, it happened to a certain extent for Steam Deck.

The new Steam Controller, as tested on... two games

Of the titles available to play at Steam Machines' debut event, we opted for a game we know extremely well: Cyberpunk 2077. (No, we were not allowed to click through our testing unit and search for hidden builds of the highly rumoured Half-Life 3. Sorry to the Gordon Freeman faithful; Gaben did not provide.) We went through CP77's menus to set most options at relatively high values, with all ray tracing disabled, and reached an apparently steady 60fps performance level with FSR upscaling to 1440p resolution.

With the same settings and resolution, we then turned on RT sun shadows and RT reflections and saw CP77's frame-rates dip into a jittery 30fps range. (Oddly, Valve didn't connect our Steam Machine to a VRR-enabled display, which would have smoothed off the experience to a certain extent. Steam Machine is VRR-compatible, we've been told.)

Valve engineers have suggested that they're heads-down on refining the process of compiling RT acceleration structures on the driver level. Their goal is to have SteamOS's translation layer fully tap into the RT capabilities of Steam Machine's GPU by the time it launches. This information was offered outside of our CP77 demo, however, so it's unclear what kind of performance gains we might expect the next time we test CP77 on a Steam Machine, or whether we might really expect magic on the hardware's RT-strained RDNA 3 architecture.

Our gameplay test was conducted using the brand-new Steam Controller, which we have far fewer nitpicks about. This sleek, comfortable gamepad has been tuned to be a great pack-in with your Steam Machine, and it sports enough tweaks to make it a cool option, if not an obvious purchase for anyone already happy with their favorite DualShock, DualSense or Xbox Series gamepads on PC.

Unlike 2015's trackpad-centric Steam Controller, this one essentially mirrors what you'll find on a Steam Deck: joysticks, d-pad, face buttons, triggers, grip buttons and mouse-emulating trackpads. We also played Balatro using this gamepad and found that the trackpads indeed felt nice and allowed us to comfortably pick up and drop that game's selection of playing cards.

In one big change from Steam Deck, Valve is taking joystick lifespans seriously by upgrading the new Steam Controller's sticks to Tunneling Magnetoresistance (TMR) sensors, or as one Valve rep put it, a "next-gen Hall Effect sensor." Valve suggests that these both reduce power draw and work with a reduced "dead zone" size, thus increasing their default responsiveness, and should outlast most other joysticks on the market.

Additionally, Steam Controller comes with a new function called "Grip Sense," which is essentially an expansion of the capacitive sensor functionality on Steam Deck's joysticks. When this feature is enabled in a game like a first-person shooter, place your fingers on the Steam Controller's grip to turn on gyroscopic motion control. Then, when your hand feels like it's out of real-world alignment, take your fingers off the grip so you can disable gyro and reposition your hands. Then re-grip the controller to go back to motion control.

On a connectivity level, Steam Controller borrows from the Xbox Wireless Adapter concept and comes with its own "puck." This customised charging station doubles as a 2.4GHz receiver and can wirelessly connect to up to four Steam Controllers, as plugged to any PC via USB Type-A. (If you'd rather connect Steam Controller to an existing PC with Bluetooth, that works by default, as well.)

Valve builds that very wireless receiver directly into Steam Machine, so that its included Steam Controller will just work. In great news, the Steam Controller can wirelessly power on any synced Steam Machine with a press of its Steam button, or also wake the device from sleep, since Machine supports the same "freeze a game in sleep mode" feature as Steam Deck.

In our brief testing, the Steam Controller feels great. Its touchpads are canted compared to their Steam Deck equivalents, so they now land nicely against thumbs, and its joysticks have both a noticeable smoothness to full rotation and satisfying sensitivity when pressed subtly. The rebindable grip buttons feel a little firm, which will be a matter of taste, as far as whether a user prefers them being a bit firmer to press for the sake of fewer accidental taps.

A cube for your living room games

We didn't bring a ruler to measure the cuboid Steam Machine and are still awaiting exact measurements from Valve, but it resembles the size of an Xbox Series X, if its tower chassis had been chopped down to a cube. Meaning, maybe a bit bigger than 15 cm (5.9") on all sides.

In a very cute touch, Valve showed us replaceable Steam Machine covers, as enabled by magnetic mounts. We got to see a few options that looked great - and that Valve would not commit to necessarily making and selling to customers. That's is a shame, because these included a handsome wood-grain cover and a trippy, customisable e-ink display (that one they were firm on not making and selling). Valve will release 3D CAD files for the sake of users making their own.

Valve was generous enough to pop the hood on Steam Machine and show us a remarkable attribute: its gargantuan thermal module. This thing takes up a whopping 70 percent of the system's internal volume, and Valve reps say its copper heat pipe design was inspired by server thermal modules.

And to some extent, Steam Machine's cuboid shape was set in stone by the engineering decision to have one fan mechanism cool every component. As one hardware engineer put it: "It was not like, oh, we want to make a cube. It was really like, how can you cool all these things with a single fan in the smallest form factor possible?"

Clearly, heat dissipation and reduced noise are a priority for Valve's engineers, and they have designed Steam Machine with an expectation that it will land in closed-off living room entertainment centres, where airflow isn't guaranteed. "We have more CFD [Computational Fluid Dynamics] hours on this thing than an F1 team," another Valve rep joked. We look forward to testing how smoothly and quietly it functions.

Valve has confirmed that users will be able to manually upgrade Steam Machine's built-in storage, and the motherboard's M.2 slot supports both 2230 and 2280 form factors. Both of the system's SODIMM RAM modules are also user-replaceable, though these will be trickier to access, and we're not 100 percent sure that Valve won't eventually add any kind of warranty-voiding stickers to its motherboards on that front.

We confirm a few other things - but not price

FSR 4 support has not yet been formally announced for RDNA 3 GPUs, and Valve representatives had nothing to add to that beyond their own hopes that Steam Machine will indeed receive driver-level FSR 4 support from AMD. We sure hope so, especially after having tested the upcoming upscaling technology on RDNA 3 GPUs via a leaked build - and finding its improved fidelity being worth an added performance cost compared to FSR 3.

For a power-limited system like Steam Machine, built-in, wholly supported FSR 4, especially with Steam Machine-optimised settings, could go a long way towards making the system's fixed ecosystem more attractive. We do expect it to work at some point, bearing in mind that the same leaked FSR 4 build has already been modded into Steam Deck. But if this is to be a living room-friendly, console-like device, we really hope Valve goes to lengths to make sure features like FSR 4 don't force device owners to tinker endlessly.

Somewhat related: as it's done for Steam Deck, Valve is moving forward with a Steam Machine Verified tag for games sold via Steam. This tag will encompass compatibility with the Proton translation layer and formal support for the new Steam Controller, since Valve expects Machine owners to default to its included gamepad.

For those who plan to use Steam Machine as an all-in-one living room box, be warned. Your favourite streaming service will need to function on Linux web browsers. Valve has no plans to offer bespoke media-streaming app downloads via the default SteamOS interface, and as you can currently test on Steam Deck, some streaming services' DRM implementations block access to Linux-based browsers by default.

We still don't know what Steam Machine will cost, and that number will likely colour our future impressions and thoughts. $399 for this combination of specs would go down a lot more smoothly than prices that reach or exceed current-gen consoles with, at least on paper, seemingly superior specs. We don't envy Valve or, really, any gaming hardware manufacturer that has to reckon with rising component prices in 2025, and there's a chance that number will be higher than consumers and Valve alike won't love.

If the price gets quite high, then it will be up to Valve's own software engineering efforts and optimisations to earn that price tag. A good-enough Steam Machine that can contend with the biggest 8GB VRAM offenders, exceed Windows performance on like-for-like hardware and squeeze out competent RT performance in select games would certainly be dreamy - but it's a dream at this point, not a reality we can test.

For more on today's Steam Hardware blitz of news, be sure to check out our extensive report on the new Steam Frame VR system - and its incredible magic trick of translating x86 code to ARM64 architecture.