I've just finished reviewing the Steam Machine, Valve's TV-friendly gaming PC for the masses. I think that was the initial idea, at least. Unfortunately, Valve's magic box has, thanks to the RAMpocalypse, ended up with a price tag that simply doesn't add up. For those who haven't heard, the base-level, 512 GB, non-Steam Controller-including Steam Machine retails for $1,049. Add a controller into the mix, and it comes in at $1,128. Back when we first took a whirl at predicting Steam Machine pricing, our average guess was around $525 for the base model. Oh, how wrong we were. To be fair to myself, Valve, and my hardware team colleagues, this was back in November of last year. The pre-RAMpocalypse times, as we now call them. Before the AI server market swallowed memory module manufacturing capacity, and consumer electronics began to climb rapidly in price. We adjusted our guesses more recently, and actually came kind of close, for the most part. Still, the final pricing has me all hot and bothered, even if it's not far off what we eventually predicted. Because the Steam Machine, thanks to some lower-spec internal components now sold for high prices, represents poor value—and I feel like it deserves more than that. And I haven't even got to the 2 TB model I reviewed yet, which is $1,349 without a controller, and a wallet-trembling $1,428 with one. That's a huge sum of money for a machine that struggles against budget gaming PCs, some of which come from the previous generation.

Gaming benchmarks

Here's a breakdown of how the Steam Machine performed in various gaming benchmarks, compared to other high-end and mid-range gaming PCs:

  • Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (1440p Ultra): The Steam Machine achieved an average of 21 FPS with a 1% low of 17 FPS. In contrast, the AtomMan G1 Pro with an RTX 5060 and AMD Ryzen 9 8945HX delivered 44 FPS and a 1% low of 38 FPS.
  • Cyberpunk 2077 (1440p RT Medium): The Steam Machine averaged 16 FPS with a 1% low of 12 FPS. The AtomMan G1 Pro outperformed it with 32 FPS and a 1% low of 26 FPS.
  • Cyberpunk 2077 (Quality upscaling, 1440p RT Medium): The Steam Machine averaged 28 FPS with a 1% low of 20 FPS. The AtomMan G1 Pro hit 86 FPS and a 1% low of 69 FPS.
  • Baldur's Gate 3 (1440p Ultra): The Steam Machine averaged 46 FPS with a 1% low of 26 FPS. The AtomMan G1 Pro achieved 59 FPS and a 1% low of 42 FPS.
  • Black Myth: Wukong (1440p Very High): The Steam Machine averaged 20 FPS with a 1% low of 16 FPS. The AtomMan G1 Pro delivered 26 FPS and a 1% low of 20 FPS.
  • Black Myth: Wukong (Quality upscaling, 1440p Very High): The Steam Machine averaged 31 FPS with a 1% low of 26 FPS. The AtomMan G1 Pro hit 37 FPS and a 1% low of 33 FPS.
  • Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition (1440p Ultra): The Steam Machine averaged 45 FPS with a 1% low of 30 FPS. The AtomMan G1 Pro delivered 52 FPS and a 1% low of 36 FPS.

These results highlight just how much the Steam Machine falls short when compared to other high-end and mid-range PCs, especially when it comes to performance in more demanding games.

User Experience and Setup Challenges

It's not like the Steam Machine makes up for its shortcomings with a completely smooth user experience, either. At the time of writing, it feels a little half-baked. I still found myself hunting through the settings menus to configure it properly on my home TV. I still had to enable certain features manually to get the best performance. While Valve has a reputation for creating intuitive and user-friendly interfaces, the Steam Machine doesn't quite live up to that standard. The setup process was more complicated than I expected, and the lack of clear instructions or intuitive settings made the experience frustrating. This is especially disappointing given the high price point and the fact that it's meant to be a plug-and-play solution for gaming on the big screen.