{"id":379332,"date":"2025-11-14T22:39:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T22:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/379332\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T22:39:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T22:39:09","slug":"how-much-will-the-steam-machine-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/379332\/","title":{"rendered":"How Much Will The Steam Machine Cost?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Valve announced a new Steam Machine<\/a> this week, and while I think it\u2019s going to have a major impact on the next generation of gaming hardware \u2013 however PC-like that looks \u2013 there\u2019s still one big question mark looming over the little game cube. How much will it cost? The price is seemingly the one thing Valve didn\u2019t reveal when it announced its new system, but it did give us some hints. <\/p>\n

Namely, the Steam Machine is equipped with the equivalent of a mobile Radeon RX 7600, albeit with a much higher TDP (thermal design power). When I was in Bellevue looking at the Steam Machine a couple of weeks ago, I was told that while there wasn\u2019t a price, it would be similar to a \u201csimilarly specced gaming PC.<\/a>\u201d <\/p>\n

And there is reason to believe that Valve wants to keep the pricing reasonable. When I asked Valve Hardware Engineer Yazan Aldehayyat about the pricing goals, he told me that \u201c[Affordability] is just something we thought about every time we made a hardware decision, a feature decision, is to make sure we keep it as approachable, as affordable as possible.\u201d While that alone doesn\u2019t mean the Steam Machine is going to be affordable it does fall in line with how the company approached Steam Deck<\/a> pricing \u2013 which is still the most affordable handheld gaming PC<\/a> ever launched. <\/p>\n

“An Equivalent PC\u201d<\/p>\n

If the Steam Machine is going to be competitive with gaming PCs with similar performance and specs, what does that mean? Well, there\u2019s a lot to unpack here. The Steam Machine is equipped with a 6-core Zen 4 CPU and a RDNA 3 GPU with 28 Compute Units. In terms of desktop hardware, that would make it roughly equivalent to an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X and a Radeon RX 7600M \u2013 both of which are pretty affordable, at least compared with other components. <\/p>\n

I went ahead and priced out an equivalent PC on PCPartPicker<\/a>, and ended up with a build that costs about $913 at the time of writing. That seems like a lot, but it\u2019s actually an imperfect comparison due to the size constraints of the Steam Machine, which is essentially a 6-inch cube. That\u2019s less of a desktop PC chassis and more of a mini gaming PC<\/a>, most of which use mobile-class hardware to fit into a small chassis \u2013 and the Steam Machine is no different. <\/p>\n

You see, the Radeon RX 7600 for desktop<\/a> has 32 Compute Units with a 165W TDP, which is a bit more powerful than the 28 CU GPU found in the Steam Machine \u2013 and it also has a higher default power level. The 7600M, however, is built on the same graphics architecture as Valve\u2019s custom-made chip, and has the same 28 CUs, but usually operates at a much lower 90W TDP. So, the Steam Machine is running on what\u2019s essentially an overclocked laptop chip. How much would an equivalent gaming laptop<\/a> cost? Well, right now there basically aren\u2019t any, so it\u2019s perhaps better to look at laptops with a 6-core processor, 16GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060. <\/p>\n

Right now, you can find something like the MSI Thin B13VF,<\/a> with a Core i5-13420H, 16GB of RAM, an RTX 4060<\/a> and 512GB of RAM for around $780. That almost exactly lines up with the Steam Machine\u2019s actual specs \u2013 and that\u2019s with a monitor stapled onto it. <\/p>\n

Realistically, the Steam Machine is probably going to land somewhere between the laptop and the desktop in terms of what it\u2019s capable of, due to the greater amount of electricity being pumped into it. There is a third class of computers that already occupies this middle ground: mini PCs and NUCs.<\/p>\n

Steam Machine Preview \u2013 Photos\"\"The NUC Problem<\/p>\n

Intel initially came out with the NUC (Next Unit of Computing) back in 2013. These were essentially tiny barebones PCs with laptop chips that asked you to bring your own SSD and RAM. Intel doesn\u2019t make them anymore, and has since essentially sold the concept off to Asus, which now makes gaming NUCs \u2013 I even reviewed one last year.<\/a> But it\u2019s expensive. <\/p>\n

The Asus ROG NUC I reviewed last year actually starts off with specs very similar to the Steam Machine. It started with an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor, a mobile-class RTX 4060 and 16GB of RAM. It even came in a chassis that\u2019s not much larger than the Steam Machine, even if it was more of a rectangle. The problem was the price: The ROG NUC started at $1,629. I\u2019m pretty sure that if the Steam Machine launched early next year with that kind of price tag it\u2019d be dead on arrival. <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, that kind of high price comes with the mini gaming PC territory. We just reviewed the GMKTec Evo-X2<\/a>, which doesn\u2019t carry the same kind of name recognition as Asus ROG. That mini PC costs $1,499 to start, though, and it\u2019s equipped with \u2013 admittedly powerful \u2013 integrated graphics and 64GB of RAM. <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think the Steam Machine is going to cost as much as one of these mini PCs, largely because most mini PCs are marketed to professionals that just need a tiny little PC on their desk to power through creative or AI workloads. And even if the cost of engineering these powerful components into such a tiny box would raise the price tag a bit, Valve has a secret weapon that most PC manufacturers don\u2019t \u2013 it owns Steam. <\/p>\n

\"null\"<\/a>Steam Is Everything<\/p>\n

Because SteamOS basically railroads you into Steam the second you load the operating system up, and barely \u2013 if ever \u2013 requires you to go to the actual desktop, most Steam Machine users will primarily be buying and playing games on Steam. Don\u2019t forget that Epic tried to make Epic Games Store exclusives a thing because of Valve\u2019s<\/a> high margin on software sales. If the Steam Machine sells a lot of units, Valve can essentially subsidize the cost of the hardware through all the cash it\u2019ll make from you buying games. <\/p>\n

After all, this is essentially what console-makers have always done in the past. Console hardware is so affordable because every game that\u2019s sold for those platforms earns Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo a bit of cash. The only real difference is that you can just wipe SteamOS off of the Steam Machine and install Windows, which probably affects the math a little bit. I just don\u2019t know by how much. <\/p>\n

And speaking of Windows, that\u2019s another reason why Valve may be willing to shave down its profit margin \u2013 to stave off the oncoming threat of Xbox. Steam is currently by far the most popular digital game store on PC, but Microsoft and its PC-like next-gen Xbox<\/a> is looking to lure more gamers over to the Microsoft Store and its \u201cPlay Anywhere\u201d promises. More games sold on the Microsoft Store means fewer games sold on Steam, which means less money for Valve. But by planting a flag with the Steam Machine, Valve keeps those PC gamers in the Steam ecosystem and that sweet 30% cut on software sales rolling in.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly what Valve did with the Steam Deck though. Gabe Newell famously told us<\/a> that hitting its $400 price was \u201cpainful\u201d but \u201ccritical.\u201d However painful it was, it worked, and now \u201cSteam Deck\u201d is practically synonymous with handheld PC gaming. <\/p>\n

Ultimately, no one will actually know how much the Steam Machine will cost until Valve shares the price. My initial gut feeling was somewhere around $1,000 when I heard that it\u2019d be priced similarly to the same class of hardware. But realistically it\u2019ll likely be around $700-800, depending on how much tariffs get worked into the equation \u2013 maybe $600 if Valve is willing to get really aggressive. While I know a lot of people are hoping that it stays below $500, I just don\u2019t see it happening. I\u2019d love to be proven wrong, though. <\/p>\n

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra<\/a><\/p>\n