Nearly four years after the Steam Deck changed the world of portable gaming, Valve is getting ready to release SteamOS-powered hardware designed for the living room TV, or even as a desktop PC gaming replacement. The simply named Steam Machine and Steam Controller, both planned to ship in early 2026, are “optimized for gaming on Steam and designed for players to get even more out of their Steam Library,” Valve said in a press release.
A Steam Machine spec sheet shared by Valve lists a “semi-custom” six-core AMD Zen 4 CPU clocked at up to 4.8 Ghz alongside an AMD RDNA3 GPU with 28 compute units. The motherboard will include 16GB of DDR5 RAM and an additional 8GB of dedicated DDR6 VRAM for the GPU. The new hardware will come in two configurations with 512GB or 2TB of unspecified “SSD storage,” though Valve isn’t sharing pricing for either just yet.
Valve If you squint, you can make out a few ports on this unmarked black square. If you squint, you can make out a few ports on this unmarked black square. Valve A strip of LEDs adds a touch of color to the front face of the Steam Machine. A strip of LEDs adds a touch of color to the front face of the Steam Machine. Valve I'm a fan of the big fan. I'm a fan of the big fan. Valve A strip of LEDs adds a touch of color to the front face of the Steam Machine. I'm a fan of the big fan. Valve
Those chips and numbers suggest the Steam Machine will have roughly the same horsepower as a mid-range desktop gaming PC from a few years back. But Valve says its “Machine”—which it ranks as “over 6x more powerful than the Steam Deck”—is powerful enough to support ray-tracing and/or 4K, 60 fps gaming using FSR upscaling.
Externally, the Steam Machine is housed in a stark black cube measuring 160 mm (~6.30-inch) on each side, making it slightly larger than the old Nintendo GameCube (sans handle). The front of the Machine sports two USB-A ports, an SD card storage expansion slot, a power button, and a “customizable LED bar” that can change to reflect when the system is booting up, downloading updates, etc. A huge fan vent takes up most of the rear of the unit, alongside three additional USB ports (including one USB-C port) and HDMI 2.0 and DisplayPort 1.4 outputs.