Valve's New Steam Machine Aims to Topple Consoles

• Valve has officially revealed the new Steam Machine, a compact living-room gaming PC targeting an early 2026 release.
• Boasting six times the power of a Steam Deck, its performance is designed to compete with or even exceed the PS5 Pro.
• The console runs Valve’s Linux-based SteamOS, offering a streamlined, pick-up-and-play experience for PC games on your TV.
• Its design crams immense power into a 6-inch cube, featuring an advanced cooling system and customizable faceplates.

A New Challenger Enters the Living Room

A decade after its first attempt, Valve is re-entering the console race with the new Steam Machine, a powerful and compact device engineered to bring the seamless PC gaming experience to your television. The company aims to directly challenge the dominance of Xbox and PlayStation by leveraging the best aspects of its successful Steam Deck handheld in a stationary, far more powerful form factor.

The core promise of the Steam Machine is to eliminate the friction often associated with PC gaming. It runs Valve’s Linux-based SteamOS with the Proton compatibility layer, allowing it to play Windows games without the overhead of the Windows operating system. According to Valve hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat, the system is designed to keep all software, games, and cloud saves updated quietly in the background, ensuring "the games are always ready for you to play."

PS5-Pro Power in a Tiny Box

Despite its small 6-inch cube design—roughly half the size of a PS5—the Steam Machine packs a serious punch. It is powered by two AMD chips: a six-core Zen 4 CPU and a semi-custom RDNA 3 "Navi 33" discrete GPU with 8GB of GDDR6 memory, complemented by 16GB of DDR5 RAM. Valve claims this hardware delivers six times the power of a Steam Deck and positions it to rival the performance of the PS5 Pro.

During a hands-on demonstration, the Steam Machine ran a demanding Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark at a smooth 65fps on a 4K TV (upscaled from 1080p with FSR 3.0) with medium settings and ray tracing enabled, showcasing its capability to handle modern, graphically intensive titles.

Engineered for Cool and Quiet Performance

To fit this level of power into such a small chassis, Valve’s engineers designed the entire system around its cooling solution. The device features a whisper-quiet 120mm fan and a massive heatsink that uses embedded heat pipes to manage temperatures efficiently. This intricate internal layout leaves almost no wasted space, sandwiching the motherboard, a custom internal power supply, and four dedicated antennas for Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth, and the new Steam Controller.

Aesthetically, the Steam Machine offers a degree of personalization. The plain black front panel is magnetic and can be swapped out. Valve showcased wood and Team Fortress 2-themed panels and has announced it will release CAD files for users to 3D print their own custom designs.

More Than a Console, But at What Cost?

Beyond gaming, the Steam Machine is a fully capable desktop PC. It includes a host of ports—HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.4, four USB-A, one 10Gbps USB-C, and Gigabit Ethernet—allowing for multi-monitor setups and various peripherals. It will also be sold with a redesigned, more traditional Steam Controller.

The biggest remaining question is the price. Valve has not finalized a number but stated that its "pricing is comparable to a PC with similar specs." This suggests it will be more expensive than a traditional console, with speculation placing it in the $800+ range. Valve is betting that for many, the access to decades of PC games combined with a true pick-up-and-play console experience will be a price worth paying.