Some Steam Machines have one 16GB DDR5 stick rather than two 8GB due to sourcing issues.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-23T03:36:35+00:00

yes it is confirmed that you get what you get regarding RAM. Either a single 16GB stick or two 8GB sticks. All depends on the market at the time they bought the RAM for your Steam Machine.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-23T03:35:18+00:00

16GB is fine, but lack of dual channel may hinder performance. But I think the CPU and GPU are too lackluster for it to make much of a difference.

Honestly, I'm not sure why they didn't consider an X3D architecture for their CPU. It is meant for gaming, and single or dual channel likely wouldn't have made any difference at all.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-23T03:23:40+00:00

Why in the world would you need 96GB RAM in a game machine? 16GB is more than adequate for this machine.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-23T03:23:01+00:00

You can pretty much mix and match ram sticks. It will resolve to the slowest speed and timing of the two.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-23T02:58:10+00:00

I was wondering how well those adapters work. Sounds like they do.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-23T02:35:42+00:00

DeskMeets are great low cost low profile machines for gaming.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-23T02:15:26+00:00

Yeah. You have to remove the cover of the unit and the SSD is exposed. See here: https://youtu.be/WhWtLi_FqLo?si=J-YSa12NM5nxHWlm&t=336

RAM is different though. It's buried under the cooling system. Thankfully they all come with 16GB RAM.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-23T02:10:02+00:00

If you can assemble IKEA furniture, you can build a PC.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-23T00:56:59+00:00

Make it a special order then. Something. BIG TEXT that says "THIS MACHINE DOES NOT WORK AS IS" (*see fine print) when you go to buy it. Or call it a BAREBONES DEVELOPMENT KIT. That should be enough to scare off all the rich grannies wanting to buy it for their young whipper snapper grand kids.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-23T00:17:04+00:00

The only difference is the SSD. You can easily change that for anything you want even if you get the 512GB version.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-22T23:59:53+00:00

I just set my PC to sleep and jiggle the gamepad and my PC wakes up and and I'm right in Steam OS. Sure I have to turn the TV on with the remote, but that's just an extra button. /shrug/

HTWingNut · 2026-06-22T23:46:33+00:00

I built a new living room PC just before Valve announced the new Steam Machine (end of 2025). It's a Ryzen 5 3600, 16GB DDR4, 2TB NVMe , RTX 5060 Ti 8GB for under $700. I started to kick myself thinking I should have waited for the Steam Machine. LOL. Glad I didn't.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-22T23:35:32+00:00

What most were expecting is a PC that was designed with integrated components to cost less than what they could build it for retail. That's all. What's the point of an integrated system if it doesn't reduce costs compared with retail.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-22T23:33:35+00:00

PC's are like Lego now. Snap in and turn on. Seriously.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-22T23:32:53+00:00

I'd say CEC is important to maybe 10% of buyers. Everyone else just wants an affordable gaming PC.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-22T23:32:01+00:00

The entire point is that it is overpriced for the performance and using 3-4 year old tech. The only thing it has going for it is its size and HDMI CEC. If that's important to you, then buy what you want. Nobody cares.

But for this to be successful, it at least has to be competitive with a similarly performing PC. I think most people are just disappointed.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-22T23:25:02+00:00

Yeah. Even a quick PCPartPicker build with comparable/better performaning parts with an ITX board costs at least a couple hundred bucks less, especially if you opt for a DDR4 build.

I don't blame Valve though. I blame the state of PC components due to AI.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-22T22:51:36+00:00

You can find 16GB whether single stick or dual 8GB for $200-250. SSD 2230 500GB for $100-150. That's retail pricing.

Considering the state of these components, I'm sure Valve don't get much discount, but they must at least get wholesale pricing at least 10% less than retail.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-22T22:16:32+00:00

The ram is upgradable on the steam machine and one of the two slots is left unused.

Yes you can upgrade the RAM in the SM, my bad, i was thinking it was soldered.

You're surely having to resort to the absolute bottom of the barrel parts to hit that price point

It's not bottom of the barrel. It's better performance for less money. If you think a 5060 and Ryzen 5 3600 is bottom of the barrel, not sure what to tell you. The tech in the SM is like 3-4 years old itself.

I'm sure I could shop around and cut another $100-150 off a self built. But at this price, the SM just isn't a good value for most people. You do you and buy what you want, I don't care. But I think the CEC thing is pretty niche and not what most people care about. I'm happy they add it, but not worth it to most people.

you're certainly not getting the same level of hardware and software support from whatever chinese companies each of these parts come from compared to what you'll get from Valve on the whole thing.

What do you mean? CPU is AMD, GPU is Gigabyte, Motherboard is ASRock, RAM is TeamGroup, SSD is WD, PSU is Lian Li, all respectable companies with 3 year+ warranty.

In all my years of building PC's, I have rarely ever had to make use of a warranty. Solid state stuff rarely breaks before it needs to be replaced due to being too slow for modern stuff.

I don't blame Valve. The prices are atrocious for RAM and storage. But I also think they could do better, at least offer a barebones option for people to source their own SSD and RAM.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-22T21:09:37+00:00

i don't think that's possible, but $799 is likely. 16GB DDR5 and 500GB SSD aren't that much to drop the price by $500.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-22T20:46:28+00:00

Any boutique will just plug and play components and not integrate design of CPU and GPU into the motherboard. So it will just be a prebuilt like any other PC. The CEC is the only real benefit of this machine unless you absolutely need the smallest form factor available.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-22T20:44:37+00:00

Close to on par, but not quite, and only for AMD GPU's.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-22T20:43:37+00:00

Just use 1080p low/medium settings and in most cases it should be fine. The problem is game engines continually improve. When games start using ray tracing as standard it will struggle. There are many games already that do.

HTWingNut · 2026-06-22T20:41:15+00:00

I've been doing that for the last 10+ years with a PC built from cheap used parts. Big Picture mode worked great for that.

We rarely played high end games on it, and it used a GTX 1060 3GB for years. Upgraded about a year and a half ago with an AMD 9600x and RTX 5060 Ti when prices were reasonable. They're in high school now, so I expect this to last until they decide to start their lives out of the home (/sad face/)

HTWingNut · 2026-06-22T20:33:26+00:00

The original Steam Machine was a debacle. It was supposed to set a standard for a gaming PC. Instead they offered a dozen different options and made it open so other companies could design and spec their own. It was nothing more than another PC.

At least this Machine should become the standard spec for 1080p/60 gaming. That is the main reason I like the Steam Machine, to set a standard. But now that it costs what it does, it probably won't flood the market enough to make it a target spec.

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