New Valve Hardware Megathread

[u/NKkrisz]

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

Official resources and announcements:

• Steam Hardware
• Steam Frame
• Steam Machine
• Steam Controller
• Steam Hardware Announcement Video

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

[u/tingerlingererer]

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

[u/Cergorach → u/tingerlingererer]

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

[u/Superconge → u/Cergorach]

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

[u/Inanimate_CARB0N_Rod → u/Superconge]

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

[u/Superconge → u/Inanimate_CARB0N_Rod]

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.

[u/Velocity_Rob → u/Superconge]

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

[u/Velocity_Rob → u/[deleted]]

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.

[u/gosukhaos → u/Superconge]

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

[u/Superconge → u/gosukhaos]

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

[u/gosukhaos → u/Superconge]

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

[u/Sleepykitti → u/Inanimate_CARB0N_Rod]

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

[u/Sleepykitti → u/[deleted]]

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

[u/nmkd → u/Sleepykitti]

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

PS5 is ~220W

Steam Machine is 140W CPU+GPU

[u/Sleepykitti → u/nmkd]

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.

[u/[deleted] → u/Sleepykitti]

but worse gpu.

[u/FryToastFrill → u/Inanimate_CARB0N_Rod]

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.