One YouTuber has worked out how much the Steam Machine will cost – and it's not that bad
Linus Sebastian believes his Steam Machine price prediction will be off by $60 at most
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🤔 YouTuber Linus Sebastian, of Linus Tech Tips, has worked out how much the Steam Machine might cost by building his own system
💰 With a spec sheet as close to the Steam Machine as possible, his own PC cost around $900
🤞 Despite this, his official prediction for the Steam Machine is $700, owing to Valve’s own margins
🎮 Valve had previously said the Steam Machine’s price would be “in line with the current PC market”
One YouTuber has worked out how much Valve’s upcoming Steam Machine could cost by building a PC of his own.
In a recent YouTube video entitled ‘The Steam Machine Won’t Cost What You Think’, Linus Tech Tips’ Linus Sebastian took the liberty of building a similarly-specced system to Valve’s Steam Machine to provide some inkling of what it’ll cost.
In the video, he attempts to get as close to the specs of the Steam Machine by using an AMD Ryzen 5 8400F processor (and downclocking it to fit an efficient 30W TDP) and AMD’s two generations old RX 6600 budget GPU to match the performance of Valve’s machine.
This is paired with 16GB of Crucial Classic DDR5-5600 CL46 RAM and a 500GB Kingston NV3 SSD on an AsRock B650M-HM.2+ motherboard, with the system being powered by a Seasonic GX-550 550W power supply unit. Oh, and he also bundles a GameSir Cyclone 2 wireless controller, as the Steam Machine will come with a Steam Controller in the box. Linus also assumes a $50 price tag for a case, as he used an open-air test bench instead.
The resulting price tag that Linus and his team came up with is intriguing, especially given that they supply two prices of the built system. Using historical lows for all the components would work out to a price of $602 – quite reasonable – although using the prices today, it inflates all the way towards $900.
With this in mind, Linus goes on to note that a price of $699.99 for the actual Steam Machine isn’t out of the question – that’s his ‘official’ prediction, and he’s confident he’ll only be $60 off at most. As much as his industry sources note that there is a small ten percent margin for PC parts, elements such as Valve’s direct-to-consumer sales model work in their favor for lowering prices somewhat.
Valve had stated to Linus that it wanted its hardware business to be “sustainable”, and he predicts the Steam Machine’s price tag would be above its cost price, providing a good margin. Plus it helps the machine offer a strong value proposition against custom-built systems of a similar stature, especially with nice-to-haves such as a four-controller capable wireless antenna, and the clever Steam Controller itself.
Valve has previously said that the Steam Machine’s price would be in line with similarly-specced PCs and ‘in line with the current PC market’. Hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat said in a previous interview that Valve wanted to make the machine affordable, but powerful enough that the system could handle every game in a user’s Steam library – the idea is for it to play any game at 4K/60fps with the help of upscaling if needed.
With this, they looked to the Steam Hardware Survey as a baseline for the kind of system most folks are using. The machine is based on the specs that 70 percent of Steam users already have.
We think the price for the unit may sit between $600 and $800 for a similarly-specced system, as Valve has said, although with external shocks such as the RAM shortage and potential tariff implications, it could be even higher.
Up next: Steam Machine just put the PS5 and Xbox on notice – if Valve nails one more thing
Reece Bithrey is a journalist with bylines for Trusted Reviews, Digital Foundry, PC Gamer, TechRadar and more. He also has his own blog, UNTITLED, and graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in International History and Politics in 2023.