Price above all will ultimately determine the success of the Steam Machine, and I can’t help worry that current market trends will greatly impact the system’s affordability. As such, I’ve come to believe Valve would do well to offer a barebones version of its colloquial GabeCube.
In the wake of the Steam Machine’s announcement, I put together a roughly Steam Machine PC equivalent system via PCPartPicker for just over £700. Less than a week later, the total price of those same components has risen to just shy of £765 at the time of writing. The main culprits of this cost increase were the RAM and GPU, which respectively grew £31.05 and £34.36 more expensive.
If you’ve read any PC hardware headlines lately, you’ll no doubt be aware that both NAND and DRAM prices are growing exponentially higher by the day. In fact, the situation is so dire, recent rumours suggest we could see entry-level GPUs disappear from store shelves owing to rising costs and shrinking profit margins.
Valve will have undoubtedly negotiated a bulk purchase of all the Steam Machine’s components well in advance of the system’s launch, naturally below consumer rates. This will temper the blow of these dramatic price increases for a time, but the question then becomes how long the company can maintain initial pricing while hitting targeted profitability or losses on hardware.
A barebones system would sidestep these considerations as far as the costs of storage and memory are concerned. Of course, the Steam Machine’s RDNA 3 GPU will likely grow more expensive to manufacture on account of its VRAM. Still, that’s one problem in place of three.
I’m personally fortunate enough to have a spare kit of SODIMM DDR5 RAM and an NVMe SSD sitting in the cupboard, and I’m sure other PC builders do too. All Valve would need to supply in order to make this DIY approach viable is a system image, something the company already does for those swapping out storage on a Steam Deck.
Coming back to my PCPartPicker build, removing memory and storage from the parts list brings down the total cost of my pseudo Steam Machine to £595, a welcome £175 (22%) lower than the all-inclusive spec. We’re still several months away from Valve’s ‘Early 2026’ launch window, when we’ll meet the Steam Frame and new Stream Controller too, and I’m confident RAM and GPU prices will only continue going upwards in that time.
Of course, the prospect of a barebones Steam Machine relies on Valve’s willingness to design the system with modularity in mind. Thankfully, this seems to be the case, following in the footsteps of Steam Deck and then some.
I hold some sympathy for Valve and other hardware manufacturers, as this is far from the ideal market to launch any NAND or DRAM-dependent components, let alone whole systems. However, I feel far more for consumers simply seeking to acquire a gaming device, be it PC or console, at a relatively affordable cost.
Here’s hoping component costs don’t knock the wind out of the Steam Machine’s sails before the system makes port. Regardless, I’ll be keeping my boney fingers crossed for a stripped down SKU of Valve’s system, if only to make this companion cube of a PC as affordable as possible.
You can expect plenty more coverage from me on the Steam Machine, so make sure you’re following the Club386 Google News feed for future updates.
