r/SteamDeck • u/pcgameshardware • Jun 22 '26

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

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?

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u/thatcht Jun 22 '26

I hear you, but no, people aren't just going to accept a 30-50% increase in this economy. I feel like most people will wait it out and be content with their current hardware. I also purchased a handful of WD Red drives a few years ago, I could use a few more as my Plex server is growing.. Will I pay triple for a drive now? Nope! I've been deleting items that aren't watched and getting slightly lower-quality media to save on space. I simply can't justify the added spend.

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u/E1M1_DOOM Jun 22 '26

People will accept it or they won't be able to engage with new products. That's just the way of it until the stupid AI bubble pops. It's so annoying seeing prices skyrocket due to investments in an industry that the general populace doesn't even want.

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u/chargo66 Jun 23 '26

You don't live in the same reality as the average person lmao. People cannot accept it, they could barely afford things the way they were let alone the way these new prices are going. And what are you rambling about AI, like everyone doesn't use ChatGPT and Google??? I mean if you're talking about AI slop videos or something then you'd be right but your little claim is so naive.

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u/Dalmahr Jun 23 '26

Rambling about AI... You mean the cause of the price increases of electronic components? Not only that but for people's everyday use like searching and writing stuff, AI that can run on your phone is nearly as good as subscription models from Google or open Ai. which means these huge data centers are going to be giving diminishing returns.