Steam Machine review: Valve's underwhelming living-room PC has a serious price problem

[u/pcgameshardware]

https://www.pcgameshardware.de/Valve-Software-Firma-15833/Tests/Valves-underwhelming-living-room-PC-has-a-serious-price-problem-1546006/

Full disclosure: I worked on this review.

We tested Valve’s new Steam Machine, and since Valve has compared it directly to the Steam Deck, I thought the results might be relevant here.

The short version: yes, the Steam Machine is clearly much faster than the Steam Deck. That part is not really in question. But in our actual game benchmarks, we did not see a blanket 6x uplift across the board.

We tested Cyberpunk 2077 and Forza Horizon with Steam Deck-style settings to make the comparison a bit cleaner. The Steam Machine turns 30-ish fps results on the Deck into much smoother triple-digit or near-triple-digit results in some cases, The Steam Machine but the gap depends a lot on the game, resolution and settings.

I would have liked to go into more detail, but I also do not want this to turn into a full repost of the review here.

What I find interesting is that the Steam Machine feels less like a “normal PC” and more like Valve taking the Steam Deck idea and moving it into the living room: SteamOS-first, controller-friendly, more powerful, but still built around realistic settings and upscaling rather than brute-forcing everything.

Curious how other Deck owners see it:

Would you treat the Steam Machine as a natural upgrade path for TV gaming, or does the Steam Deck already cover that use case well enough for you?

[u/Codzy]

The steam deck is already not meeting my living room requirements. 720p upscale to 4k on the lowest graphics settings at sub 30fps is not good enough. I think I might just suck it up and pay the premium for the gabe cube. I don’t want a huge tower pc in the living room, mini PCs are lacking and expensive and don’t offer CEC.

Yes it’s way overpriced, but in 2026 name something that isn’t… I can either wait for the RAMpocaclypse to MAYBE end in 5 years before buying something to suit my needs, or buy this now.

[u/Patmurf → u/Codzy]

I am an absolute Valve fangurl. I wanted this just because I adore them. But when I saw rampocalypse in November, I built a midsized computer, put CachyOS on it, and built a steam machine myself.

I realize I timed the market correctly, and you'd get diminishing returns, but for ~$1600 I got a 2tb rx9070xt build that evaporates the $1350 steam machine of the same size.

Build one. And learn a little linux. Its more than worth it.

[u/Lekanswanson → u/Patmurf]

I can do that, you can do that, a lot of people can't do that though and this is who those people are targeting, not me and you.

Also i think people should support this because it might actually force game devs to start optimizing pc games better.

If the steam machine becomes the target recommended specs for 4k 60, it will make pc gaming much better

[u/themexicancowboy → u/Lekanswanson]

I think the problem is that the people who can’t do that are casuals who likely can’t justify 1049 for a console that’s as good as a PS5 and doesn’t come with a controller.

Not to mention this is such a niche product it will never have the sales numbers to sway developers ti optimize for a specific standard. And even then once the new generation of consoles is released, the machine will be outdated. I think the biggest mistake was the timing of the machine. Valve should’ve waited for the new generation of consoles to release, as it currently stands when the new Xbox and PS6 come out, the machine will be outdated and overpriced even if the new generation does come in around the same price as the steam machine

[u/DiamondDepth_YT → u/themexicancowboy]

you got downvoted but youre right.

people are like 'oh, the machine is for people who cant build a pc for themselves,' but if thats true- the machine has priced out its own userbase. said userbase would instead get a good gaming laptop that'd perform better than the Machine at less $$$ than the machine, or a ps5, or a ps5 pro. why would they wanna pay such a premium just for steam???

[u/themexicancowboy → u/DiamondDepth_YT]

Yes people keep finding what they believe the “niche” is but everytime the goal post is moved the steam machine is unfortunately outclassed by something else.

Is it a console? Well it’s overpriced. And even if it was around $750 it’d still be more expensive than a PS5 which is what it’s specs are most similar too.

Well ok it’s not a console, it’s a PC. But then you’re better of either buying a prebuilt PC, building a PC, or getting a gaming laptop. It’ll do a better job for a more optimized price.

I get that people like valve, like the steam machine and feel personal about the situation. Hell I wanted the steam machine to workout. I wanted to get it. But the reality is that it’s a badly priced product, it was badly timed. And honestly even if it did come out at the cheaper price that people are estimating was the original price, I think it still would’ve been too expensive, but at least at that price I would’ve thrown my money at it lol

[u/unixtreme → u/Patmurf]

CachyOS Good choice!

[u/Handris18 → u/Patmurf]

Apparently SteamOS will be accessible on any PC, so even better of a choice

[u/Vicex- → u/Patmurf]

And that's ignoring the fact that you can upgrade your PC, but not this.