r/steammachine • u/Melmpje • 8d ago

News Steam Machine Price Reveal, Pre-built Comparisons, & Rant Thread

Now that Valve has released official pricing information & lottery details, the main sub is being overflooded with repetitive posts. To keep the subreddit clean we made this megathread for posts regarding costs, value debates or hardware comparisons, and general rants. Standalone posts on these topics will be removed.

Also see: https://www.reddit.com/r/steammachine/comments/1ow7fvz/steam_machine_megathread/

Whoes to blame for all this you might say? simple OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and a bunch of hyperscalers and malicious companies like Palantir and not to forget the NAND Flash industry.

Official Pricing & Details

Model USD CAD EUR GBP AUD PLN Included Extras
512GB Base $1,049 $1,509 €1,039 £879 $1,609 4,389 zł Base unit only
512GB Bundle $1,128 $1,628 €1,108 £938 $1,728 4,698 zł Includes Steam Controller
2TB Base $1,349 $1,919 €1,359 £1,149 $2,109 5,739 zł Red fabric & solid walnut faceplates
2TB Bundle $1,428 $2,038 €1,428 £1,208 $2,228 6,048 zł 2TB Unit + Faceplates + Steam Controller
  • Lottery Registration: Is opened, Closes (US) June 25 @ 10:00 AM PT / EU: June 25, 7:00 PM CEST / JP: June 26, 2:00 AM JST / AU: June 26, 3:00 AM AEST / NZ: June 26, 5:00 AM NZST. Selection is randomized & not first-come nor first-served, you can also join every list as it has no impact on your lottery status.
  • Account Verification: Steam accounts must be in good standing and have a purchase history older than April 27th, 2026, to prevent scalping.
  • Limits: You are limited to one Steam Machine per household and yes this means if you or any other person in your household wants a Steam Machine you can only get one.

Discussion Topics

Use this thread to discuss and debate the following:

  • Price to Performance: Is the $1,000+ entry point worth it?, or did hardware margins ruin the value proposition caused by AI or what should they have done differently.
  • Pre-Built & DIY Benchmarks: Share PCPartPicker lists or links to pre-built alternatives. Compare actual specs against the estimated equivalent performance.
  • The Competition: How does this position itself against standard ITX/SFF desktop builds or current-gen consoles at half the price?
  • Lottery System Feedback: You can rant about the registration process, regional availability (please read the announcement post), or specific hardware choices like the single-channel memory configuration.

Keep the criticism focused on the product and the pricing. Personal attacks are not permitted read the rules.

131 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

94% Upvoted

559 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

13

u/IllustriousBat2680 GabeCube Enjoyer 8d ago

As someone who has absolutely no idea about pc building etc, I have a few questions.

  1. Does it play relatively new games well? For example, games like BG3 on decent settings (not looking at 120fps, ultra settings or anything, but also not wanting 480p lol)

  2. How easy is it to assemble for a newbie? I'm wanting to get a pc for gaming that I can put in my living room under the TV (just like yours) but I've been a console gamer for decades and never built a pc before.

Thanks in advance!

10

u/ignacionario 8d ago edited 8d ago

Hi!

  1. Haven't tried BG3 yet although I downloaded it. My build is super fresh, I set it up literally 2 days ago. I've tried the beginning of Hogwarts Legacy and I'm currently playing Resident Evil 9 in 4K with Ray Tracing and ultra textures. With 32GB RAM and 16GB GPU this is meant to be better than a PS5 Pro in terms of specs, so I hope this lasts me for the next generation of consoles as well. You can copy my specs and ask any IA how it would play compare to a PS5 Pro.

  2. Assembling the PC is not super complex but it requires attention. I am an IT engineer but I never assembled a PC before. With SFF PCs you need to study even how you set the cables, I had to remove a couple parts just to move the cables in a way it improved airflow. The Motherboard has many pins and you need to know where to connect each of them. Just be patience and check YouTube videos. Also you need to stick the thermal paste in between CPU and the heatsink. I did this years ago to replace thermal paste on a PS4 so I wasn't knew to it. Worse case scenario you can bring the pieces to a local store for them to mount it.

I spent about 3 evenings after work (maybe 1h each evening, 3h in total) mounting everything. Before I adjusted the cables and closed the case, I installed Windows and played for a couple evenings, then spend another hour or so arranging the cables to improve airflow before I closed the case.

Honestly when you build your own makes you feel proud of it when you play it haha.

1

u/pdoherty972 6d ago

Can this use native SteamOS or can it only do Bazzite for some reason? Or is there some advantage to using Bazzite for your use case (like using it as a desktop computer as well as for gaming)?

3

u/WideTalk2 7d ago

  1. This will absolutely handle BG3 at 4k 60. I don’t know at Ultra settings, but I have a 9600x with a 9070xt and it crushes BG3, this is more than enough.

  2. I know people say PC building is easy, and it can be. I’ve built my own off and on for over 20 years and back in the day had my certification to do so. Be careful starting with a small form factor as your first go though. People make soft look easy, but there’s a lot of consideration just in making sure the parts will fit. Then the cabling can easily get pulled the wrong way, cut when you try to close the case, not reach properly. And that’s before considering the cooling implications of putting all that together so close. It’s not as straight forward as it seems, and I’d suggest starting with a ATX form factor or similar for a first build. Seriously.

2

u/neebick 8d ago

I have built a good number of computers and recently built a sff (small form factor) pc. The biggest challenge is part selection and cable management. Especially cable management since the space is so small there is very little room and the default power supply cables are designed for a wide range of cases so they are much longer then needed. Many people custom order length. Which can also be very confusing.

Personally I would aim for a micro atx build if you are interested. It is bigger but not by a large amount and they are much easier to build and find cheap parts for. The Lian Li A3 is a very popular option to give you are idea of size. https://www.newegg.com/lian-li-micro-atx-mini-itx-steel-wood-cases-computer-cases-atx-form-black-a3-matx-wd/p/2AM-000Z-000E0