Valve Was Forced Into Making A Weird Hardware Decision With Steam Machine
Valve's Steam Machine is finally launching next week, but the journey to this point hasn't been easy. The living-room PC has found itself at the center of an ongoing RAM crisis—one that has forced Valve to turn every Steam Machine into a little bit of a memory lottery if you do happen to get one.
Regardless of which Steam Machine you decide to purchase, each one will ship with 16GB of RAM. However, you can choose between two configurations: either two sticks of 8GB each, or a single 16GB stick. If you're familiar with PC gaming, you'll likely see the issue. A single stick of RAM will limit those Steam Machines to single-channel memory speeds, which can have a negative impact on gaming performance.
The lottery was discussed between Gamer's Nexus and a pair of Valve engineers, who were quick to reassure prospective buyers that the difference in performance was negligible. The difference is entirely down to supply issues, with Valve forced to use whatever memory it was able to procure. Suppliers forced the company to take what stock it had, at whatever price it was selling it at, or "never hear from them again."
It's a grim reflection of the state of the PC industry, but also creates some differentiation between Steam Machines that you won't be able to discern at checkout. The only upside to getting stuck with a single stick is that you have a free slot ready for an upgrade, which might have been an advantage if not for the price you'd need to pay for it.
There haven't been extensive tests yet showing whether or not the different SKUs impact gaming performance in a meaningful way (Gamer's Nexus says it plans to conduct its own tests in the future), but given how tricky it's going to be to get a Steam Machine with Valve's new preorder system, you won't really have a choice but to accept what you get.
