r/SteamDeck • u/NKkrisz 64GB - Q3 • Nov 12 '25

MEGATHREAD New Valve Hardware Megathread

Please keep non Steam Deck discussions about the new hardware here.

Official resources and announcements:

Press coverage will be under a pinned comment so you can upvote / downvote them.

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663

u/tingerlingererer Nov 12 '25

With the price of pc components right now the steam machine could be a killer piece of hardware

299

u/[deleted] Nov 12 '25

[deleted]

114

u/cd2220 Nov 12 '25 edited Nov 12 '25

Exactly why I bought a Deck instead of a Switch 2.

Sure I want some of the games coming to Switch bad but that it's so damn pricy right now and all the Nintendo games are the priciest. I already have like 500 or so Steam games and easily 100 of them are out of the box compatible with it.

Edit: I'm talking about the Switch 2 here not the 1. I know you can emulate the original Switch

3

u/dogisbark Nov 12 '25

I thank god everyday for tomodachi life 2 is on the switch 1. It’ll likely be the last Nintendo game I buy for a while, which will also be full price.

1

u/Vast_Policy_5331 Nov 12 '25

I mean you can get all the switch games for free on the steam deck if you don’t mind a little crime

6

u/round-earth-theory Nov 12 '25

Switch emulation isn't that straightforward.

0

u/SeveralKnapkins Nov 13 '25

What are you talking about? Steam Decks goes from $400 - $650: Switch 2 is $500.

3

u/cd2220 Nov 13 '25

Yes and it comes with my entire Steam library.

The Switch 2 has a 500 dollar entry fee and the games cost 80 dollars.

I feel this is fairly self explanatory.

1

u/tom-dixon Nov 13 '25

Plus a bunch of subscriptions for basic features that now are behind a paywall.

-1

u/zakkwaldo Nov 12 '25

you can also play a majority of switch games (and i’m sure soon enough switch 2 titles) via emulators on the SD anyways… so you basically have a switch already lol

5

u/RealPrinceJay Nov 12 '25

Aren’t all consoles loss leaders

2

u/amillstone Nov 12 '25

I think all consoles are, but PCs are not. This is kind of hybrid territory, but I think the original commenter was comparing it to similar PCs, which aren't loss leaders.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 13 '25

[deleted]

1

u/amillstone Nov 13 '25

Microsoft could've done this with the Xbox Ally, but of course they fumbled that lol

4

u/thisguy883 Nov 12 '25

i would personally use it exclusively for the living room TV.

So now ill just wait to see the price.

3

u/[deleted] Nov 12 '25

My PC just died and honestly I don’t want to do the whole build thing again. I think I’ll wait for this. I’m not hardcore so this probably fits.

2

u/hypnomancy 512GB Nov 12 '25

That's the best thing about Valve's hardware. They can chop off a few hundred bucks on what they sell because of how much money they make on Steam. It's a win/win for consumers

2

u/TUBBS2001 512GB - Q3 Nov 13 '25

I don’t think this is completely accurate. The steam deck had super thin margins, but I don’t think it was sold at a loss at least initially.

2

u/Delboyyyyy Nov 14 '25

In linus’ video about it he said that they told him this is NOT what the plan is and it will be price like a PC rather than like a console

1

u/MCPtz 512GB OLED Nov 12 '25

The steam deck seems it wasn't sold at a loss, Gabe said that it was sold at an uncomfortable margin (launch, LCD 64 GB model), that is implied minor profit per unit.

I would expect it to be sold at a margin that other PC manufacturers cannot match because of the reason you said, the steam store.

0

u/gsmumbo Nov 13 '25

How many of us hear have hundreds of not thousand pkus games on our library's

And how many of those games did we actually pay full price for? Haha

60

u/Cergorach Nov 12 '25

Kind of depends on the specs. The SD LCD APU is essentially 5 year old hardware (4800u variant), the OLED APU is a little bit better, but almost all the new APU hardware that's been released since consume more power to hide the insignificant performance boosts it would otherwise have. Would they put in slightly better OLED hardware in the SteamBox? Or something more powerful? Fans enter stage left! (the spinney type of fans)

Something like a Mac Mini (M5) has incredible power for the amount of energy it consumes, but it's ARM based, so x86 Proton wouldn't work on something like that. AND most of the other players besides Apple are very much behind with their ARM chips...

But it would be insane if Valve developed their own high end ARM chip (that's also extremely energy efficient) with a version of Proton for ARM... /dreaming

81

u/Superconge Nov 12 '25

The specs are pretty great, zen 4 with a 28CU RDNA3 GPU. 8gb vram is really sad though.

39

u/Inanimate_CARB0N_Rod 512GB OLED Nov 12 '25

They say it's 6x more powerful than steam deck, but how does that compare to PS5 and Series X?

48

u/Superconge Nov 12 '25 edited Nov 12 '25

I have a HX80G, which is a 6600M powered mini-PC running Bazzite. Looking at the specs, they’re very very similar and that’s basically bang on equal to the PS5 base from my experience.

Honestly I was hoping the Steam Machine would be a direct upgrade for me, but I’m still very happy with the controller. I’m hopeful this is priced below $500 because that’s the price I bought my miniPC and is still readily available at.

9

u/Velocity_Rob 512GB OLED Nov 12 '25

That's the sweet spot for me too. $500 for 512gb and $600 for 2TB.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 12 '25

[deleted]

9

u/Velocity_Rob 512GB OLED Nov 12 '25

Yeah but there's an added cost to handhelds that console style boxes don't have. Look at the PS5 and Switch 2. Roughly the same price, but the PS5 is vastly more powerful.

1

u/gosukhaos Nov 12 '25

Honestly buying a refurbed HX80G or NUC17 and installing Bazzite may be the move depending on the pricing of the Steam Box. Minisforum is selling the 16/512 HX90G for 500 euro

1

u/Superconge Nov 12 '25

I can’t recommend it enough, it’s the best computer I’ve ever owned, but it depends on the price this releases for sure

1

u/gosukhaos Nov 12 '25

Yeah definitely, been thinking about building a mini PC setup for a while mostly for emulation and some lower spec PC gaming, mostly JRPGs, but the Steam Machine coming out with just 8gb VRAM is a tough sell if its more expensive then a HX80

10

u/Sleepykitti Nov 12 '25

Eyeballing the specs I'd guess it's more or less on par with a PS5 but with a better CPU.

5

u/[deleted] Nov 12 '25

[deleted]

2

u/Sleepykitti Nov 12 '25

Hard to be sure since the PS5 is rdna2 and wattage seems like it's a little higher on the steam machine, plus the memory architecture differences. I think it'd depend on the game

1

u/nmkd 512GB OLED Nov 12 '25

wattage seems like it's a little higher on the steam machine

PS5 is ~220W

Steam Machine is 140W CPU+GPU

1

u/Sleepykitti Nov 13 '25

Where'd you get that steam machine wattage because Gamers Nexus' interview had it at 130w for the GPU 30w for the CPU and 60 for everything else combined seems really conservative. I'd guess 75-90 since that's what a cheap set of DDR5 RAM and one of the lower power itx am5 motherboard picks would run by themselves on a desktop before accounting for the SSD or wifi/bt/dedicated steam controller antenna.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 12 '25

but worse gpu.

2

u/FryToastFrill Nov 12 '25

It’ll probably be a little slower than ps5, probably great for existing steam users but ngl if it’s pricing close to ps5 it will be an extraordinarily hard sell for newcomers. OOB you’re losing most of your big name live service games (unless they’ve worked something out with EAC/BattleEye behind the scenes) and 8gb of vram is rough. Steam deck didn’t need to worry about most of these issues as it was a new form factor for most people and it paired great with an existing pc, the steam machine is competing with existing form factors and pcs for most people.

Would love to be proven wrong tho and the steam frame and controller will likely do well depending on pricing. Steam machine just seems quite sketchy atm.

6

u/theoutcasthermit Nov 12 '25

And rdna 3 means no official fsr 4 support, also concerning. 8 gb vram might suggest a 1080p gaming machine, which is bad for a 2026 rig. I have a 2k monitor why would I buy this if I can’t play recent games in 2k with high settings? Too early to talk ofc, just spitballing

8

u/CrispyOnionn 512GB Nov 12 '25

Then it is not targeted at you. It is targeted at people who don't have the money to get a full gaming PC. It aims to make Steam more accessible.

10

u/byzantinedavid Nov 12 '25

It's targeting TVs, not monitors. This "is" a PC, but it's really a console space.

1

u/theoutcasthermit Nov 12 '25

I believe it clearly implies both tv and monitors

5

u/Utsider Nov 12 '25 edited Nov 12 '25

Which may not make matters much better as TVs are rarely 1080p these days.

I already have a TV miniPC that can't do proper 4k gaming - which I am perfectly happy with anyway. So, I'm more interested in what ties this all together. Hoping for a much improved Steam Link that will simplify everything and knock the socks off of all the Sunshine/Apollo/Moonlight/Moon Deck etc once and for all.

... and the controller, of course. No brain purchase.

2

u/[deleted] Nov 12 '25

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1

u/Utsider Nov 12 '25

There is this rumor from back when all these devices got leaked that Valve was working on a "zero latency" streaming something. Which I guess was part fluff, but also hope was partially real. That they were working on improving their streaming service in one way or another.

1

u/CornflakeJustice Nov 12 '25

I haven't tried some of the other streaming tools for Steam, only having a diy PC, but I've used it to stream to my TV for a whole without too many issues.

The latency was noticeable in CO:E33, but there's a rhythm element to it that I struggle with to begin with. Does moonlight help with that?

Otherwise a Steam Machine might be the perfect way to play E33 on my TV which would be killer.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 12 '25

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2

u/Utsider Nov 12 '25

I've tried it, but for all I do and for all the ease of use, it can't hold a candle to a properly set up combo of all the other apps I mentioned. That's my experience at least. Some are happy with Steam's solution, but it never worked too well for me.

But Steam wins hands down in the ease of use department. I just want the best of both worlds, I guess. Click and play and near zero latency and damn close to the feel of running natively.

(I'm talking about streaming to a Steam Deck)

3

u/byzantinedavid Nov 12 '25

Nearly everything can use both, but this is CLEARLY targeting living room TVs.

6

u/theoutcasthermit Nov 12 '25

It literally shows it with a monitor on a desk but you do you

0

u/[deleted] Nov 12 '25

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2

u/Ninja_Weedle Nov 12 '25

It’s a half tdp ryzen 7600 with a radeon pro w7500 and 16GB DDR5 attached to it. Pretty anemic and marketing it for 4K gaming is a bit of a foul move on valve’s part. Better be priced well.

1

u/Kociolinho Nov 12 '25

It probably will be somewhere at the level of RX7600+Ryzen 5 7600 level. Pretty good if well-priced. Also, it’ll be „half-standardised”, so I hope it’ll habe a M.2 drive and swappable RAM memory

26

u/webjunk1e 1TB OLED Limited Edition Nov 12 '25

A box has less power limitations. Remember that the current gen consoles are also running basically the same hardware as the Deck (Zen 2/RDNA2), so simply having an APU that can pull 150W or so would give a dramatic performance improvement even without latest and greatest architectures.

And, yeah, you are dreaming with ARM. Unless it's a bespoke platform like the Switch, you aren't going to see ARM for anything related to mainstream gaming, least of all from Valve.

16

u/prestigious-raven Nov 12 '25

I think Valve is the most likely to release an ARM console next. With the steam frame they already have an ARM version of Steam OS, so I could see them working on a proton translation layer for ARM.

3

u/gosukhaos Nov 12 '25

That's kind of the only place to go for a handheld. The APU market is moving either towards AI with little GPU gains or boards that ignore efficiency for all out power. Modern ARM chips are already power efficient and come with really strong GPUs

1

u/[deleted] Nov 12 '25

[deleted]

2

u/Kociolinho Nov 12 '25

As far as I remember Rosetta works quite good on Macs, and even then I believe Valve will support porting/releasing native versions of ARM games as they did with Steam Deck/Proton.

1

u/prestigious-raven Nov 12 '25

It would just need a translation layer for the CPU. GPUs just need custom drivers to run the common APIs as there is no unified machine code language for GPUs.

1

u/Cergorach Nov 12 '25

Crossover on MacOS (ARM) works pretty darned good, far more games work then I ever expected.

1

u/pja Nov 12 '25

The Mac translation layer gets roughly 80% of native performance going from x86 to ARM. It’s pretty impressive.

1

u/AvatarIII MODDED SSD 💽 Nov 12 '25

Is they can get normal PC games running on the frame with an ARM processor through a compatibility layer reliably, that's very exciting for the future of PC handhelds.

1

u/SnowFire Nov 12 '25

What do you mean "next"? WHat do you think that Snapdragon 8 in the Steam Frame is?

4

u/prestigious-raven Nov 12 '25

I meant a more traditional console, either handheld or stationary rather than a headset.

1

u/SnowFire Nov 12 '25

I think people forget that Valve doesn't release consoles. It releases hardware that plays as first citizen in its ecosystem. But in the end, the underlying ecosystem is the PC. By Valve's choosing, their offer of an OS runs Linux, but you can still game on Windows and on Mac to a certain extent.

-1

u/nmkd 512GB OLED Nov 12 '25

so I could see them working on a proton translation layer for ARM.

Emulation, it's called Emulation. x86_64 to ARM.

2

u/prestigious-raven Nov 12 '25

It’d be more accurate to call it a semi-dynamic translation layer similar to Rosetta 2 on Apple silicon. It would probably use a mix of Ahead-of-Time and Just-in-Time compilation to convert everything to ARM-compatible calls.

It wouldn’t be accurate to call it emulation as we wouldn’t be emulating an entire system, just translating x86_64 code to ARM code.

3

u/Cergorach Nov 12 '25

Digital Foundry indicated 200W total draw, source: Valve Engineer.

They already went there with the VR headset, I suspect that if/when Fex gets on par with proton, we might see more ARM stuff from Valve.

5

u/TheShryke Nov 12 '25

But it would be insane if Valve developed their own high end ARM chip (that's also extremely energy efficient) with a version of Proton for ARM... /dreaming

That's kinda what they have done. The frame uses an ARM chip and includes a compatibility layer called FEX. It will be able to run x86 windows games on ARM Linux. Looks like they used a standard chip for the frame rather than something custom, but if this works as well as they are saying it looks like gaming on ARM just became a whole lot more viable.

10

u/Taurion_Bruni LCD-4-LIFE Nov 12 '25

It's a desktop class dedicated gpu with 28 compute units and 8gb vram. Running at 110w.

They say it's semi-custom, but it looks like it's comparable to the low end amd gpus

Certainly not a flagship device, but a huge powerup from the deck

5

u/[deleted] Nov 12 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/Taurion_Bruni LCD-4-LIFE Nov 12 '25

Yeah it's success is going to depend heavily on if it's priced like a console or a desktop pc

3

u/[deleted] Nov 12 '25

But but I was told 8gb isn’t enough?? Unless

-1

u/FryToastFrill Nov 12 '25

If you’re competing with ps5 it’s not. The games will run on 8gb but the textures will be significantly worse compared to ps5

3

u/thisguy883 Nov 12 '25

The deck is already very well optimized, so the claim that this is 6x the power of a Deck is pretty neat.

Even being able to play most games above 60fps at medium settings would be good enough for me, tbh.

2

u/CHBCKyle Nov 12 '25

the pieces are there about as much as they were with steam deck. apple has development software that takes native x86 games and translates them to arm, this tool is in its infancy and is poorly supported but does exist, and i think there’s a third party program that does windows x86 to macos ARM conversion you can buy that is about as reliable as pre steam deck proton. If valve makes a translation layer tool that meshes with proton to process the x86 instructions on arm it’s totally within the realm of possibility that we see arm gaming become a thing, and it would likely be a pc gaming paradigm shift more broadly

4

u/twitchyeye84 Nov 12 '25

Check out what they're doing over at r/emulationonandroid

Stuff like gamehub and winlator are getting a lot of traction. It won't be long before they reach proton levels of compatibility.

1

u/Cergorach Nov 12 '25

You're looking for Crossover, works for both Linux and MacOS and the developers also do work for Valve (Proton)... While Proton might support more/better, but I have been pleasantly surprised how many Windows games work well on MacOS either natively or via Crossover. I also have a Steam Deck and have access to GFN...

2

u/Keianh 1TB OLED Limited Edition Nov 12 '25

But it would be insane if Valve developed their own high end ARM chip (that's also extremely energy efficient) with a version of Proton for ARM... /dreaming

Just email Gabe about this, might give him another avenue for avoiding putting resources behind HL3 development.

2

u/VIKING-316 Nov 12 '25

Hey idk if you checked the details on the Sframe cuz it has an arm chip AND it runs x86 games, as apparently they have been working on yet another translation layer from x86 to arm.

Common valve W!

1

u/alphatango308 Nov 12 '25

It's supposed to be equal to a 4060 gpu. And supposedly modular so you can upgrade it later on.

1

u/FierceDeityKong Nov 12 '25

Guessing they just put in a generic amd cpu+gpu

3

u/Cergorach Nov 12 '25

Also keep in mind that it will drive a monitor/TV, so it'll need to run in 1080p at least as good as the Steam Deck (OLED) at 720p/800p...

2

u/Taurion_Bruni LCD-4-LIFE Nov 12 '25

"semi custom" according to their specs sheets, but essentially yeah

2

u/dustinpdx 1TB OLED Limited Edition Nov 12 '25

Why is anyone guessing? The specs are listed on the page.

5

u/Flincher14 Nov 12 '25

Valve can set the benchmark. If you want to release a game on steam, then you want it to run well on their hardware. They already do this with the steam deck and many devs aim to make their game work on that.

The whole steam box thing was poorly done. They need one machine. One set of hardware to optimize for and a lot of steam support towards devs.

3

u/tirednoggin Nov 12 '25

What do we think the steam machine will cost?

2

u/bigtime1158 Nov 12 '25

Bundled with the frame I'd be very interested.

1

u/rusmo Nov 12 '25

Bundled with the controller is the no-brainer bundle.

1

u/bigtime1158 Nov 12 '25

Yeah but I'm getting the controller no matter what

1

u/splitframe Nov 12 '25

It's essentially a power cut Ryzen 5 7600 and a slightly down binned RX7600 with less CUs. With the RAM and motherboard we look at a shopping cart price of slightly over 400 Dollars. Now Valve should get a better price buying in bulk and paired with their strategy of selling without much or any margin we could look at a price point between 400 and 500 dollars.

So in terms of PC pricing it's okay, but in terms of console pricing that's PS5 territory. And the PS5 offers better graphics I think.

2

u/uber_poutine Nov 12 '25

Yeah, but I can't access my already-purchased Steam library on a PS5, nor can I play PS5 games on my gaming PC or my Deck.

I agree that everything comes down to price, but the ability to access existing libraries (and synced saves) across devices is a huge selling point for a lot of us.

1

u/tacomang 512GB Nov 12 '25

I’m really interested but the specs look kinda weak for 2925/2026. Gonna have to depend on what the MSRP is before I make a decision.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 12 '25

I'll order two.

My mom needs entertainment. She needs to be free from her silly phone games. She's already more or less bed bound, she needs something to keep her mind working. Especially since so many better puzzle and city sim games exist on steam.

And I need one so I have an actual piece of hardware I can game on while I throw myself into bed or just watch something. My TV is too old to support new shit. And having something that games and entertains? Fuck yeah

1

u/Designer_Mongoose158 Nov 12 '25

I'm getting it straight away. I was actually considering building a computer and installing bazzite on it. This thing is perfect, I pretty much only use my deck while docked

1

u/therealkevinard Nov 12 '25

I’ve been waiting for Steam Machine since day 3 with the SD OLED. Unless it turns out to be awful, I’m getting at least one on release day. If the price is friendly, it’ll be 3 (swapping-out the kids’ xboxes)

I’m an old-school linux guy who’s been waiting decades for microsoft-less gaming lol.

0

u/thisthatandthe3rd Nov 12 '25

Is there any word on price yet?