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Steam Machine reviews may be underway as two new Geekbench listings surface
(www.notebookcheck.net)
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this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2026
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PC Master Race
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The Steam Machine won’t be super well received specifically because of how expensive RAM and other components have gotten
Maybe they'll add in a sku with no ram or ssd to draw the line in the sand on what they actually wanted to sell for. That'd also allow customers to potentially recycle older parts like laptop dimms and older m.2 drives
Not sure what a sku is but I think I understand the rest of it and yeah that sounds like it’d be really good. If they just had ram ports as well so you can modify it n stuff. Maybe even scrap a gaming laptop for ram to add to the steam machine.
I’m confident they won’t pull a Nintendo and software lock the hardware meaning you can probably upgrade it if you have the means and knowhow
And sku (read: skew) are variants of a product with slight variations. There's already 4 sku's announced for the Steam Machine: 2 different storage capacities with and without a packaged steam controller.
The Steam Machine is already supposed to use the same SODIMMs you'd find in a laptop to keep it upgradeable for the user
SKU is stock keeping unit. So not really about variant pf a product but every unique sellable items should have it's own SKU so you don't accidentally sell 5 of things with one color while only have 3 in stock.
That....sounds like a variant?
Yes it is a variant but also it's more general than that. If you sold the same item with a different number of pcs in a pack (even if just a plastic packing), it also gets SKU. In general you can't break SKU into smaller units without making a different SKU.
So if you sell socks in 1, 3, and 5 pairs, all get their own SKU even if every pair of socks in the bundle are the same kind. That means if someone wants to order 1 pcs but you only have SKU for 3 in your system, they can't. Even if the item is there physically. Not unless you remove the SKU of the 3 bundle and add 3 of the 1 (which requires the buyer to communicate it and the seller to jump a bunch of hoops on their system)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_keeping_unit
Mhhh. Aight.
From my viewpoint I already denomintaed it out as a single unit under the awareness of every other change becoming a new SKU.
But others might not know. So at least they'll know now (thumbs up)
It will quickly sell out despite being like $1500.
I dream of an alternate timeline where the Steam Machine is $600 and sells close to PS5 units, people flock to it, companies are forced to release every game on Linux, anti-cheat is user-space only, and gaming & streaming hardware gets 1st class support. Then content creators want creative software, people donate to GIMP, Krista, Inkscape, etc. Canva releases official support, and it keeps on Rollin' n' Rollin'.
And we were so close, until AI happened
It's not all bad. I just compiled ocarina of time on my Linux pc and ran it natively at 144fps using keyboard controls.
Let's ban closed source firmware and drivers while we're at it.
Gods that's a beautiful tech dream :)
And that branch only forked a couple years ago 🙃
Well yeah, it will probably sell out fast, but I meant its price will probably be the main issue
I would like to see a barebones option for like 500-600 but I doubt that will happen.
It’s called the steam deck + dock and it costs $800 at least.
I've had a deck since the beginning and absolutely love it. Though I gave up docking it a long time ago. I find it struggles to run a lot of stuff at 1080p that it plays fine at 800p. 2D and older 3D games play fine docked but I just got out of the habit of even trying to push it past native resolution.
I agree with you. I was playing Hades earlier and it’s very pixelated on the TV… Oh well. Maybe I’ll get the steam machine and will sell the Deck. Well shall see.
What would barebones be exactly?
Just no ram and no storage.
barebones means youre on your own to procure ram and storage (though theyd pay for gpu ram) it gives value to people who already have the ram/atorage in hand and price the devices minus the ram/storage cost as if it were before memory prices skyrocketed (minus gpu ram) as the cost of the rest of the components wouldnt have had the same price hike
No GPU, storage or RAM.
I don't think that would work, it has a custom GPU. I would take a no or low storage version to save some money, I some extra SSDs laying around. But RAM prices are insane right now and I bet Valve can get a better deal than I can.
Not sure what you expect them to do?
They don't seem to expect them to do anything (besides release a device to mediocre reception). They're just stating their predictions.
Yep