Valve’s Steam Machine finally has a price and a timeline, and both landed on June 22, 2026. Valve starts inviting reservation holders to buy the compact SteamOS console the week of June 29, 2026, and the base model is priced at $1,049.
That’s a long way from the $449 the original 2015 Steam Machine started at, and Valve has said plainly that the price is higher than it wanted to charge. If you’ve been waiting since the November 2025 reveal to find out what this thing costs and when it shows up, here’s what actually matters now.
What the Steam Machine Is, in Plain Terms
The Steam Machine is a small black cube that plays your Steam library on a TV, and it works as a desktop PC when you want it to. It runs SteamOS, the same Linux-based system behind the Steam Deck, so everything is built around a controller from the second you power it on. Valve designed it and sells it directly, which means one fixed spec instead of the scattered third-party lineup that sank the 2015 version.
It arrived as part of a three-device push alongside the Steam Frame headset and a new Steam Controller, all announced November 12, 2025. This is the piece aimed straight at the spot under your TV that a PlayStation 5 or an Xbox holds today.
The Price Is the Real Headline
Price is the part that’s going to define this launch. The base configuration with 512GB of storage and no controller is $1,049, while the fully loaded 2TB model bundled with a Steam Controller runs $1,428. Here’s the full lineup:
Price: $1,049 / £879 (512GB, no controller) | $1,128 / £938 (512GB with Steam Controller) | $1,349 / £1,149 (2TB, no controller) | $1,428 / £1,208 (2TB with Steam Controller)
Where to Buy: Steam
Valve has tied the number to the global memory and storage shortage, pointing to RAM, SSD, and VRAM prices that all climbed hard after the November reveal. The same crunch pushed Valve to raise Steam Deck prices by more than 40 percent earlier in 2026, so a Steam Machine landing above early estimates fits the pattern.
That backdrop matters for buyers. It means the $1,049 sticker mostly reflects 2026’s hardware costs rather than a permanent Valve markup. That’s cold comfort if you’re the one paying it today, but it does hint that pricing could ease if the component market settles.
What’s Inside the Box
On paper, the hardware lands between a current console and a midrange gaming PC. Valve worked with AMD on a semi-custom chip rather than off-the-shelf parts, and the whole system fits in a cube with the power supply built in, so there’s no external brick to hide.
Here’s how the spec sheet Valve published breaks down. At the heart of the system is a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 CPU with 6 cores and 12 threads that clocks up to 4.8 GHz at a 30W draw, paired with a semi-custom AMD RDNA3 GPU running 28 compute units at a 2.45 GHz sustained clock and 110W. Memory comes in at 16GB of DDR5 alongside 8GB of GDDR6 video memory, and storage is either 512GB or 2TB on an NVMe SSD that you can expand with microSD.
For display, Valve includes DisplayPort 1.4 that pushes up to 4K at 240Hz and HDMI 2.0 that handles up to 4K at 120Hz, with one USB-C and four USB-A ports for everything else. Connectivity covers 2×2 Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and Gigabit Ethernet, and the Steam Controller adapter is built right in. Power runs through an internal supply rated for 110 to 240V AC, so there’s no external brick, and the whole thing runs SteamOS.
What That Hardware Actually Gets You
Valve’s headline claim is that the Steam Machine is roughly six times more graphically powerful than the Steam Deck. Its performance target is 4K at 60 frames per second with FSR upscaling doing the heavy lifting rather than native rendering, and hitting that number generally means leaving ray tracing off. Valve has since softened its own product page from a flat 4K 60 promise to a more cautious ‘up to 4K’ claim that still leans on FSR.
Read that as the ceiling, not the floor. The 28-CU RDNA3 GPU is midrange silicon, so the most demanding 2026 titles at a locked 4K 60 will lean on upscaling rather than brute force, and that’s worth remembering before you treat six-times-a-Deck as a flagship number.
How to Actually Get One
Valve isn’t running a normal on-sale-at-midnight launch. It opened a reservation list and will use a randomized draw to decide who buys first, which the company says is meant to be fairer and to take the wind out of scalpers.
To make the first wave, you needed to join the list before June 25, 2026 at 10 a.m. Pacific. Valve then closed the list, ran a one-time randomization, and emailed everyone that same day to say whether they landed in the reservation queue or on the waitlist. If you’re in the queue, a unit is reserved in your name, and Valve starts sending the actual purchase invitations the week of June 29, working through the queue in random order across the rest of 2026. Once your purchase email arrives, you get 72 hours to complete the order before Valve cancels it and moves to the next person in line.
There’s also an eligibility catch. You need a Steam account in good standing that made at least one purchase before April 27, 2026, and reservations are capped at one per household.
If you missed the reservation window, you aren’t locked out for good. You’re simply waiting behind the first randomized batch, and the reservation queue is expected to run through the rest of 2026, so stock stays tight well past launch.
Where Things Stand
The Steam Machine shows up as the clearest test yet of whether SteamOS can grow from a handheld hit into a TV platform. The pitch is strong: your existing Steam library, a real desktop underneath, and none of the storefront walls a console puts around you. The catch is the price, because $1,049 asks buyers to treat this as a compact gaming PC, not a $449 console alternative.
The next thing to watch is what happens right after June 29, when the first owners report back on real-world performance, heat, and noise. If Valve keeps units flowing and real-world performance holds up outside its own demos, the price stops being the whole story.
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(as of June 26, 2026 18:48 GMT -05:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)
