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GamingTranscript
00:00Steam Machines are back for the first time since Valve teamed up with manufacturers like Alienware and Lenovo back in the 2010s.
00:06But while those original console PC hybrids failed because the software wasn't quite there yet and there's a lack of an appetite for it,
00:122022's Steam Deck has paved the way for the Steam Machines' return.
00:17This time around, instead of partnering with outside manufacturers,
00:20Valve is building and releasing a singular Steam Machine with the goal of being able to run all current PC games.
00:26Let's jump into some of the technical stuff.
00:28Valve is aiming for any game available on Steam to run at 4K with upscaling techniques such as FSR.
00:35The secret behind this is an AMD RDNA 3 GPU with power roughly equivalent to an RTX 4060 or RX 7600 mobile graphics card.
00:45Is that a lot?
00:47That might be disappointing to anyone looking to max out everything at high resolutions,
00:51but it should have plenty of power while still being relatively affordable, we assume.
00:56Now, Valve hasn't announced anything on price yet, so we spent a day at Valve playing around with it.
01:02And while we haven't had the chance to run the usual gamut of gaming benchmarks,
01:06it looks like the new Steam Machine might be a serious contender for your living room space.
01:10On the surface, the Steam Machine seems a lot like the old Steam Machine.
01:24They're both gaming PCs with a modest spec and meant to run games on Valve's own Linux-based SteamOS.
01:29But while the originals had trouble selling, mostly due to the high prices and a lack of Linux compatibility at the time,
01:35SteamOS has changed a lot over the last decade.
01:38The biggest part of that is Proton, Valve's compatibility layer that essentially translates Windows games to Linux,
01:44allowing you to play most of Steam's vast catalog of games on SteamOS, even if they don't officially support Linux.
01:51Anyone who's used a Steam Deck over the last few years will know that most games run seamlessly through SteamOS,
01:56sometimes even with performance that exceeds the equivalent Windows 11 machines,
02:01as we saw with the SteamOS version of the Lenovo Legion Go S.
02:04There are a few exceptions, notably some online multiplayer games with anti-cheat software
02:10that doesn't play nice with SteamOS, like Battlefield 6 and Destiny 2,
02:14but for the most part, if it's on Steam, it'll run on SteamOS.
02:17Valve let us play a variety of games on the new Steam Machine,
02:21and it ran everything from Cyberpunk 2077 to Silent Hill F to Metal Gear Solid Delta without any major issues.
02:28It just took some configuring to find the right graphics settings to balance performance.
02:32Of course, once we get the Steam Machine in the lab, we'll be able to run a wider variety of games
02:37to see just how flexible it is, but for the time being, it does seem like most games will run.
02:43Luckily, Valve is also taking the Steam Deck Verify program and duplicating it for the Steam Machine.
02:48Soon, there will be three different verification badges,
02:51one each for the Steam Deck, Steam Machine, and the Steam Frame, which is Valve's new VR headset.
02:56Because the hardware isn't actually out yet, we're not sure how widespread this will be,
02:59but if Deck Verified is anything to go off of, you can expect a concerted effort.
03:07Now, the Steam Machine might be a gaming PC, but it doesn't really look like one.
03:11It's a tiny black box with a slim RGB light bar across the front, mostly meant to indicate that it's on.
03:17And when I say it's tiny, I mean it.
03:19The PC is a cube that measures roughly 6-7 inches on each side,
03:24and appears less than half the size of an Xbox Series X.
03:27It's actually closer to the size of a GameCube.
03:30The front panel is magnetic, too, and can be swapped out to customize the way the console looks.
03:34When we were at Valve, we saw a number of custom designs already.
03:38Valve hasn't confirmed whether or not it will be selling alternative front panels,
03:41but it'll release the 3D printing files so you can make your own,
03:44and you can expect third parties to hop on as well.
03:46Because this is ostensibly a desktop PC, there's a wealth of ports.
03:50On the front, you got two USB-A ports right there, and a microSD slot if you want to expand your storage.
03:56And on the back, you get display port, HDMI 2.0, two extra USB-A ports, and a USB-C port, along with the power connector.
04:04And Valve did open up the Steam Machine itself, so we can get a brief look at its internals.
04:09A bulk of the space is taken up by a giant heatsink, which has an exhaust fan at the back that sucks air through the front and bottom of the device,
04:17and expels it through the rear to keep the device operating at a cool temperature.
04:21It's a bold design, especially considering that the Steam Machine's GPU is operating with a TDP of 110 to 130 watts.
04:28We'll have to wait and see how its thermals handle load when we get the system in for review early next year, though.
04:33The bottom of the Steam Machine houses the SSD, which will come in either a 512GB or 2TB NVMe 2230 drive, depending on which version you buy.
04:43You can replace it, and unlike the Steam Deck, the SSD slot has space for a full-sized NVMe 2280 drive, which are both more affordable and easier to find.
04:53Don't get too hopeful about upgrading the device beyond the storage, though.
04:56The rest of the components are soldered on and will not be upgradable.
05:00The new Steam Machine is one spec.
05:02That's a little disappointing, especially given Valve's history of letting its users do what they want with the hardware.
05:07However, this is how you get such a tight form factor like this.
05:11Given the Steam Machine's console-like qualities, it will likely appeal to most people who just want a plug-and-play gaming device.
05:17For them, I suspect the lack of upgradability will be a non-issue, at least until it starts showing its age years down the line.
05:24The Steam Machine will also be available with the new Steam Controller, or without one.
05:27Whether or not you get the Steam Machine bundled with the new controller, the system will have the controller's wireless receiver built in.
05:34So you don't have to worry about always having a USB port available, occupied by a little dongle.
05:38This new Steam Machine is powered by a custom chip made by AMD and Valve, with an RDNA 3 GPU and 28 compute units, and a TDP between 110 and 130 watts, which would place it roughly around a mobile RX 7600.
05:54And this is paired with a 6-core Zen 4 CPU, with a TDP of around 30 watts.
06:00But despite the modest specs, the Steam Machine seems to be a capable gaming PC.
06:05We played Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K with ultra-preset settings and FSR set to performance, and the action stayed playable.
06:12We even went into the settings menu and turned on ray tracing, and performance seemed to stay solid.
06:17Although we didn't have a frame counter up for Cyberpunk, I did get more granular with Metal Gear Solid Delta.
06:22It being an Unreal Engine 5 game, mileage will vary, but I found a good middle ground with 1440p, balanced FSR, and high-quality settings, and getting 60fps at times, and dipping to around the 40s at others.
06:34Things were slightly different with Silent Hill F, though.
06:37After a lengthy process of installing the shaders, something every game seems to need to do these days, it defaulted to ultra-settings at 4K with TSR, or Temporal Super Resolution, instead of AMD's FSR.
06:48At these settings, Silent Hill struggled, chugging along at what seemed to be 15-20fps, not exactly what I'd call playable.
06:55After adjusting the settings down to medium at 1440p with FSR enabled, things felt much better, but this just highlights that the Steam Machine is still a gaming PC at the end of the day, for better and worse.
07:07Tweaking settings to optimize performance is a time-honored tradition among PC gamers, but again, might be less appealing to people who just want a plug-and-play gaming experience.
07:15Valve says it intends for the Steam Machine to be able to play all current games at 4K with FSR upscaling, but there are going to be plenty of games, especially ones running on Unreal Engine 5, where you'll have to lower settings to get it running at a smooth frame rate.
07:29If anything, it has us eager to benchmark it to see exactly what it'll be capable of.
07:34The compromises you'll have to make on quality settings will vary between games, but it appears things will at least run.
07:40It's likely that over time, developers will be able to sense the Steam Machine's hardware and account for appropriate presets.
07:47After all, many games do that already with the Steam Deck, and hopefully the Steam Machine gets the same treatment.
07:52If it does, though, this thing could be a serious contender in the next generation of consoles, especially as the next Xbox looks increasingly PC-like.
08:00According to Valve, about 20% of its Steam Deck users use the official dock to connect their handheld to the TV.
08:10That might not seem like a lot, but given that Valve has shipped millions of Steam Decks, a first-generation product, mind you, 20% is not an insignificant number of people.
08:20However, there are limitations to running a Steam Deck on a TV.
08:23Chief among them is performance.
08:25While the Steam Deck is powerful enough for running PC games on its 800p display, it can't really handle higher resolutions very well, especially when you're connected to a 4K TV.
08:35The Steam Machine, then, is the answer.
08:38This is a living room gaming PC that should be able to play most games at 4K, assuming you're okay with upscaling from like 1080p or 1440p for more demanding stuff, which is increasingly common in the PC gaming space anyway.
08:49And while the Steam Machine will have to contend with similarly specced gaming PCs that can be upgraded, this isn't really intended for the do-it-yourself hardware enthusiast.
08:59Rather, this feels more like a PC for console gamers.
09:02You know, people who didn't play games on PC until the Steam Deck hit the market, or those who just want simplicity.
09:08It runs the same operating system and has the same library, only it'll be able to play games at much higher settings.
09:13Valve claims the Steam Machine is up to six times more powerful than the Steam Deck, so it should avoid situations like Baldur's Gate 3, where the second you load into Act 3 on the handheld, your frame rate slows to a crawl.
09:25So if the Steam Deck made you flirt with the idea of PC gaming, the Steam Machine looks like it'll be the next logical step for you, especially as games get increasingly more demanding.
09:34For everyone else who already has a gaming PC, at least Steam as a platform is evolving.
09:38It's impossible to talk about PC hardware in 2025 without bringing up price.
09:46Devices from the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X in October to the RTX 5080 back in January have all launched with significantly higher prices compared to what they would have been in previous years.
09:57Console pricing hasn't fared much better as the Switch 2 hits store shelves at $150 more than its predecessor, while the PS5 and Xbox Series X have both faced price hikes within the last year.
10:08Valve hasn't shared pricing for the Steam Machine yet, but they did tell us that it will be competitively priced with similarly specced gaming PCs.
10:17Keeping in mind that this is running a last generation GPU and processor, it could mean that pricing might end up being relatively reasonable, but we just won't know until Valve decides to share more, and we'll definitely cover that when the time comes.
10:29But the hope is that Valve keeps the Steam Machine under $1,000, hopefully, if it wants to compete with Xboxes and PlayStation Space in the living room, it'll have to.
10:38For more on what Valve has cooking up in the hardware space, be sure to check out our hands-on previews of the new Steam Controller and the Steam Frame VR headset.
10:47And for everything else in the world of games and tech, stick with IGN.
10:50You have to share more with IGN.
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