Valve rattled the gaming industry in 2022 with the launch of the Steam Deck, letting you take your PC games anywhere with an easy-to-use operating system. Now, the company is taking its learnings from that device and bringing them to your living room in a new gaming PC, the Steam Machine.
Tom's Hardware visited Valve's offices in Bellevue, Washington to talk to the developers behind this new PC and get an early look at the hardware.
This is a system meant for living room play, armed with a new semi-custom AMD Zen 4 CPU and AMD RDNA 3 GPU, and it runs SteamOS just like the Steam Deck. In many ways, it's effectively a Steam-based console. Valve claims that this system is six times more powerful than the Steam Deck, though, so it should be a better couch experience than using the Steam Deck Dock and playing games at low resolution. The company suggests that the Steam Machine can play games in 4K and 60 frames per second, with the caveat that you'll have to rely on AMD's FSR upscaling.
The Steam Machine hardware
The PC measures 6.39 x 6.14 x 5.98 inches — almost a cube (without the computer's feet, it's 5.83 inches tall). Most of the computer is on the bottom of the box, with the majority of the space inside taken up by a substantial heatsink and fan. The front of the system features a customizable light bar that you can personalize to indicate system status, such as when it is booting up, downloading games, or updating.
Swipe to scroll horizontally CPU AMD 6-core Zen 4 x86, up to 4.8 GHz, 30W TDP GPU Semi-custom AMD RDNA3 28CU (8GB GDDR6, 2.45GHz max sustained clock, 110W TDP) RAM 16GB DDR5 SO-DIMMs Storage 512GB or 2TB models, microSD card slot sPower Supply 300 W, internal Dimensions (D x W x H) 6.39 x 6.14 x 5.98 inches / 162.4 x 156 x 152 mm Ports DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0, Ethernet (1Gbps), USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2, 2x USB Type-A Gen 3 (front), 2x USB Type-A Gen 2 (rear) Connectivity Wi-Fi 6E, dedicated Bluetooth antennae, integrated 2.4 GHz Steam Controller radio Controller Steam Controller (optional bundle) OS SteamOS
"It's mostly a heatsink, because we know that the living room environment is very challenging from a thermal standpoint, from an air flow standpoint," a Valve developer told Tom's Hardware. "So, to sort of make it as quiet as possible and as cool as possible, this is where we need to be."
The heatsink is truly massive. With the top and sides removed, the Steam Machine looks similar to a denser version of Noctua’s NH-P1 air cooler , with similar dimensions and denser fins, and a couple of heatpipes poking out of the edges. Hopefully, it proves nearly as quiet as that fanless cooler.
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)
The front of the Steam Machine is magnetic, which is designed for easy cleaning. The default is black, but Valve reps said the company will be releasing files for people with 3D printers to come up with their own designs. At their headquarters, Steam had a few custom options it designed, including a very classy woodgrain look and a Team Fortress 2 design.
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