Valve’s new Steam Machine is now out: PS5-level gaming starts at $1,049

Steam Machine precios oficiales

Valve’s new Steam Machine is out today, and the first round of testing paints a pretty clear picture: this living-room gaming PC performs in the same general range as Sony’s PlayStation 5, but it costs a whole lot more.

The base model starts at $1,049, and the 2TB version with a controller lands around $1,428. That’s a steep jump from a standard PS5 for gaming performance that reviewers say is, by and large, comparable to both the PlayStation 5 and Microsoft’s Xbox Series X.

Steam Download

In more demanding games, Valve’s Steam Machine can hold a steady 4K at 60 fps, though early tests suggest it often leans on AMD FSR rather than native rendering to get there. Benchmarks also point to better single-core performance than the PS5, while showing weaker multi-core results in some workloads, so the hardware does have a few legitimate technical strengths, just not a clear overall edge.

Where Valve’s Steam Machine may have a better shot at winning people over is in the day-to-day experience: its compact size, its quiet operation, and the SteamOS interface. Taken together, those things make PC gaming feel much closer to using a console, while still giving you access to the freedom of your Steam library. If you’re chasing the best value for frame rates and image quality, though, it’s hard to put Valve’s Steam Machine ahead of a PS5.

Still, if you’re deep into Steam and want a prebuilt, console-sized gaming PC for the living room that takes almost no setup, Valve’s Steam Machine is worth a look. That’s true even with PC hardware prices continuing to climb, and even with competition from Valve’s Steam Deck, Lenovo’s Legion Go S, and the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X.

Author: Jesús Bosque

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