5 Things You Need to Know Before Buying a Steam Engine

Valve’s Steam Machine is the company’s latest major hardware launch since the Steam Deck handheld in 2022. There are plenty of caveats to Valve’s small-sized PC, much like the Deck, but its price has changed the entire conversation around it. Valve has made it clear that it has no way of reducing the price of the PC, which starts at $1,049 for 512GB of storage and no controller. The company is at the mercy of the RAM and SSD pricing crisis caused by high demand for AI data centers.

The Steam Machine could have been a solid entry-level PC for many people. In benchmark testing, the system falls short of big-budget PCs, and its performance is comparable to PCs with low-end graphics cards like the Nvidia RTX 5050. If the Steam Machine had been sold at the originally planned price of $750, it would have been a much easier pill to swallow. Today, it’s a system that you almost have to be briefed on before getting started.

This doesn’t include the fact that it comes with SteamOS, a Linux distribution built on Arch Linux. This is its own kettle of fish, and something you’ll need to keep in mind depending on what games you like. It’s also only PC at the end of the day, so that comes with its own learning curve if you’ve never set foot in the world of PC gaming before.

There are no two ways about it, but the steam engine is too expensive. Will it ever go down? Who knows, because all gaming hardware has faced multiple price hikes over the past couple of years. Between Trump’s tariffs and AI data centers hoovering up all the RAM and NAND needed for storage, gaming hardware prices have inevitably skyrocketed through 2025 and 2026. This is the first time near the end of a hardware generation where consoles and other hardware are more expensive than at the beginning.

Is it recommended to get started at the starting price of $1,049? Absolutely not. If you’re still considering going, whether out of curiosity or for whatever reason, just know that yes, the price is exorbitant.

The Steam Machine could be an impressive feat that could have seriously undermined Windows’ monopoly on PC gaming systems. However, considering the state of the tech and gaming industries after the chip shortage and rising prices, it seems far from having that impact. It should be an entry-level machine, one that anyone could get into without having to buy PC parts or being scared off by the prices of some entry-level machines sold on Amazon. Instead, it’s another casualty of the AI ​​pricing crisis.

Linux is fantastic and the work Valve has done in collaboration with other developers to bring gaming and easier usability to the operating system is incredible. That said, this is still a Linux PC, and with that you’ll have to prepare for a few limitations, like some games not running properly or titles from other storefronts requiring you to jump through a few hoops to run them.

If you like online games, be aware that some may not work. Linux does not support kernel-level anti-cheat, even with the Proton translation layer in place. Proton simulates a Windows environment for each installed game, as if providing a new computer for each game. However, it is impossible to integrate core Windows kernel features, so there is nothing to connect to. As such, games like “Fortnite,” “Marathon,” “Destiny 2,” “Call of Duty,” and “League of Legends” absolutely won’t work. That said, it’s just one PC, so if you want to install and dual boot Windows on it, you’re more than welcome.

If you have games on the Epic Store or another launcher, you’ll need to go through custom launchers that do the heavy lifting for you. Lutris, Heroic Launcher and NonSteamLaunchers will install specialized programs that connect to your account from GOG, Epic, etc., so you can run almost anything you acquired from these stores.

Valve’s original vision for the Steam Machine appears to mirror that of the Steam Deck. Equip it with the latest mid-to-low-end hardware, then sell it for a relatively affordable price. Obviously this can’t happen now and you’ll have to be careful with the hardware inside. This appears to have had an impact on the RAM, now replaced by a single 16GB module, rather than a dual 16GB channel spread across two 8GB modules, which will slow down performance.

Inside is a custom AMD chipset, but it’s neither the latest nor the best. Built on Zen 4 and a GPU on RDNA 3 (AMD is currently on Zen 5 and RDNA 4), it doesn’t provide much power. Choosing which games to play becomes a situation: will you be the guinea pig or will you wait for performance analyzes from experts? Some auto-tuning detectors do a decent job, but you’ll need to anticipate hardware shortcomings and be prepared to tinker with graphics options – be prepared to use some scaling.

The Steam Machine’s portable predecessor, the Steam Deck, is already outdated in terms of hardware and performance. However, it always surprises users when a new big-budget game arrives. “Pragmata” and “Resident Evil: Requiem,” for example, run pretty well on the device. The same story will likely happen with the Steam Machine. Meanwhile, playing your huge backlog of older games or exploring Steam sales of smaller titles will be a great way to maximize the enjoyment of the Steam machine.

One thing a lot of people learn when buying Steam games for the Deck is that Valve’s verified system is garbage. It is poorly managed, with several games listed as fully functional despite their poor performance. Vocal users online have talked about it countless times, either through Steam forums or on Reddit. With Valve’s verified system now also integrating steam machines, it’s unclear if it will improve.

What you should check out is ProtonDB, a third-party website that gathers performance reports and DIY tips from users running Linux. It is much more reliable and useful than Valve’s official system and includes a dedicated Steam Deck filter for each game. In some cases, games listed by Valve as “Unsupported”, such as the “Shenmue I & II” collection, work just fine on Linux if you follow the suggested tweaks on ProtonDB. Please be aware that it may take a few hours for reports to be accepted and published for newly launched games.

If you buy a game and you’re not sure if it will work (maybe Valve hasn’t even tested it themselves), you need to check out ProtonDB. Not only will this save you money if something doesn’t work, but it could also help you troubleshoot a myriad of issues for more difficult titles. Just be aware that if the game isn’t available on Steam, it won’t be listed through ProtonDB.

SteamOS 3.8 is virtually ready to run on any machine. Several users have reported using the operating system daily, and even Valve has said that now is the time to consider building your own Steam Machine if you want. Of course, with prices all over the place, it might be best to check out budget PC options under $1,000 or, if you’re willing to push the boat out, gaming PCs under $1,500.

One option for playing older or smaller, less hardware-intensive titles is to purchase an AMD BC 250 motherboard. These are actually old PS5 chips that didn’t make it and were repurposed as crypto miners. When they were banned in China, many devices became available at relatively low prices, which have since increased slightly with their popularity.

Digital Foundry has put together a guide for creating a Steam Machine-like computer that will support SteamOS out of the box. For simplicity, we don’t recommend the Nvidia version unless you plan to use a distro with better Nvidia support, like CachyOS, Bazzite, or general purpose distros like Fedora. Currently, Nvidia’s support on SteamOS is weak to non-existent.