Wednesday, November 12th 2025

Valve Announces Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller

Nov 12th, 2025 12:41 Discuss (204 Comments)

Valve has finally put an end to the months-long rumor cycle about its next-generation hardware. Today, Valve has introduced three new additions to its hardware library with Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller. Starting with the more interesting hardware, we finally have a successor to the original Steam Machine more than a decade after the original was introduced. Also called the Steam Machine, this one brings more modern hardware optimized to co-exist with the SteamOS Linux build, and a powerful software stack to run any game. Available in 512 GB and 2 TB SSD models with microSD expansion, it pairs a semi-custom AMD Zen 4 processor with RDNA 3 graphics to achieve supposed 4K gaming at 60 FPS with ray tracing and FSR support. Being semi-custom GPU, it might be closer to AMD's RDNA 3.5, than the pure RDNA 3.

Bundled with a Steam Controller, the system features an integrated 2.4 GHz radio alongside Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth for wide peripheral compatibility. Video output options include DisplayPort 1.4 for up to 4K at 240 Hz and HDMI 2.0, complemented by Ethernet, USB-C 10 Gbps, and four USB-A ports. Running SteamOS with rapid suspend/resume and wake-on-controller functionality, it combines 16 GB DDR5 system memory with 8 GB GDDR6 VRAM, an internal power supply, and a customizable LED bar that reflects system status for a complete living room experience. Valve has packaged it as a small black box, which will blend in with any HTPC environment.

Next, we have Valve's Steam Frame—the second VR headset from the company. The Steam Frame is designed as a featherweight PC VR gaming headset with a modular architecture, weighting a mere 185 g by itself, and 440 g with included headstrap that includes facial interface, audio, and a rear battery. Inside there is a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor with 16 GB unified LPDDR5X RAM and up to 1 TB storage. This will help it stream Steam games via Wi-Fi 7 and an included low-latency adapter, using eye-tracking to drive foveated streaming that sharpens resolution precisely where you look.

There is a dual 2160x2160 pancake display pair that refreshes at 144 Hz across a 110-degree field. Four outward cameras and an IR illuminator maintain tracking in any environment, so that your VR experience becomes life-like. Integrated audio and a 21.6Wh battery complement the SteamOS experience with full suspend/resume, powering Steam Frame Controllers that feature magnetic TMR thumbsticks and capacitive finger sensing on 40-hour batteries, bridging traditional gamepad familiarity with VR immersion.

Last but not least, we have Valve Steam Controller. This controller works across Steam's whole ecosystem with three ways to connect. The pre-paired Steam Controller Puck is the main hookup, using a proprietary wireless signal that hits about 8 milliseconds of lag at 5 meters—more stable than Bluetooth—and lets you sync up to four controllers at once. You can also use regular Bluetooth or just plug in via USB. The rechargeable battery runs for 35+ hours and charges either through the Puck or a USB cable. For controls, you get magnetic TMR thumbsticks that are super responsive, capacitive grips that can trigger gyro or other commands, and four haptic motors that give really detailed feedback. There's also pressure-sensitive trackpads with a 6-axis IMU, four programmable grip buttons, and all the standard controls you expect. It works with Windows, Mac, Linux, handhelds, phones via Steam Link, and all Steam hardware. Every new hardware announced today will start shipping in early 2026.

Source: Valve

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204 Comments on Valve Announces Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller

#51

sephiroth117

dgianstefaniWhile I'm sure the price is great, it's a real shame these are based on last gen hardware.

The Controller looks amazing, but a RDNA 3.x based system is a damn shame, considering FSR 4 is RDNA 4+ (so far).

Same with the VR headset, last gen cores, but at least a lot more modern than the Nintendo Switch 2.

Odd comparison, the processing power and latency required to power a proper VR experience is really not similar to that required to power games on Switch 2, keep in mind that you have 2 really high-res display screens and that 30-60 fps in VR is really not going to be pleasant...so they have no choice but to use cutting edge SoC for it.

#52

theouto

Welp! The leaks were right, all of them, which is good news. This all looks very interesting, and it makes me wonder how much SteamOS 3 has progressed in terms of being a more general-use Linux Distro.

DrashHL3?

Considering that this leak was right, see you november 18th

#53

Onasi

theoutoWelp! The leaks were right, all of them, which is good news. This all looks very interesting, and it makes me wonder how much SteamOS 3 has progressed in terms of being a more general-use Linux Distro.

The desktop mode is absolutely fine, it’s just Plasma. It’s as usable as anything. The reason why Valve hasn’t yet released the proper standalone version for desktop is that NV and Intel are still dragging their feet on the driver front. Not much they can do there, though progress is being made.

#54

Space Lynx

Astronaut

CheeseballYou are all over-glazing upscaling technology. At the moment its only needed for unoptimized games on newer engines for higher FPS. If playing AAA titles is your main purpose for a small device like this, you might as well go with a separate PC with a stronger GPU (e.g. RX 9060 XT). At a possible sub-$600 this seems it will be successful, based off the popularity of the Steam Deck and the other handhelds, which can technically only use up to FSR 3.1 and XeSS itself.

Besides, this is with a 30W TDP 6C/12T CPU and a 110W TGP GPU. At most you would playing AAA titles at 4K60 or 1080p120 at high settings, which should be fine for most players.

I mean if steam machine comes in at $599... you can just build this 9060 xt rig for $85 more, and put steam OS on it, pcgamer article said valve employee said its fairly easy to get steamos working on all AMD systems now and even a 9070 xt.

so i meanm $85 more, why hinder yourself with last gen hardware... really doubt this comes in less than $599

#55

LastDudeALive

Space LynxI mean if steam machine comes in at $599... you can just build this 9060 xt rig for $85 more, and put steam OS on it, pcgamer article said valve employee said its fairly easy to get steamos working on all AMD systems now and even a 9070 xt.
so i meanm $85 more, why hinder yourself with last gen hardware... really doubt this comes in less than $599

An 8GB 9060 XT on PCIe 3.0? Dawg, even FSR 4 won't make up for the performance hit at that point.

#56

Cheeseball

Not a Potato

OnasiThe desktop mode is absolutely fine, it’s just Plasma. It’s as usable as anything. The reason why Valve hasn’t yet released the proper standalone version for desktop is that NV and Intel are still dragging their feet on the driver front. Not much they can do there, though progress is being made.

This is because Nouveau is still basic, but the proprietary NVIDIA (and Intel, at least for my B580) driver works fine. I believe Valve does NOT want to bundle the proprietary drivers with SteamOS, but you should be able to get it to work if one wishes to do the work. SteamOS is just a fork of Arch, which I run with both a AMD and NVIDIA card in the same system. nvidia-smi works better in Linux too for some reason.

#57

Space Lynx

Astronaut

LastDudeALiveAn 8GB 9060 XT on PCIe 3.0? Dawg, even FSR 4 won't make up for the performance hit at that point.

it was a quick build to prove a point, you can move things around to fix that and still come up with same price, you are missing the point

#58

Easy Rhino

Linux Advocate

Space LynxI mean if steam machine comes in at $599... you can just build this 9060 xt rig for $85 more, and put steam OS on it, pcgamer article said valve employee said its fairly easy to get steamos working on all AMD systems now and even a 9070 xt.

so i meanm $85 more, why hinder yourself with last gen hardware... really doubt this comes in less than $599

The difference is Valve is doing 30W TDP. That means this is meant to be a quite small boy that can push modern titles around 60 fps with upscaling. Sure if you want a big box sitting by your TV that makes too much noise and costs you triple in power costs then by all means build one yourself.

#59

Space Lynx

Astronaut

Easy RhinoThe difference is Valve is doing 30W TDP. That means this is meant to be a quite small boy that can push modern titles around 60 fps with upscaling. Sure if you want a big box sitting by your TV that makes too much noise and costs you triple in power costs then by all means build one yourself.

fsr is a blurry mess outside of fsr4, and i say that as an AMD fanboy. so to each their own i guess

#60

Cheeseball

Not a Potato

Space LynxI mean if steam machine comes in at $599... you can just build this 9060 xt rig for $85 more, and put steam OS on it, pcgamer article said valve employee said its fairly easy to get steamos working on all AMD systems now and even a 9070 xt.

so i meanm $85 more, why hinder yourself with last gen hardware... really doubt this comes in less than $599

Yeah, but go ahead and try to fit all that in a 6x6 square-inch cube without an external PSU. The smallest I can do is in a Jonsbo N10. None of the RX 9060 XTs are in low-profile format either unfortunately.

#61

Easy Rhino

Linux Advocate

Space Lynxfsr is a blurry mess outside of fsr4, and i say that as an AMD fanboy. so to each their own i guess

Do you want a giant box sucking 150 Watts of power and making a bunch of noise sitting by your TV while you game or do you want something quiet that sips power and is optimized ?

#62

dlgh7

Space LynxI mean if steam machine comes in at $599... you can just build this 9060 xt rig for $85 more, and put steam OS on it, pcgamer article said valve employee said its fairly easy to get steamos working on all AMD systems now and even a 9070 xt.

so i meanm $85 more, why hinder yourself with last gen hardware... really doubt this comes in less than $599

I think they can go lower then that. Just watched some videos. They don't even have any dedicated motherboard chips for IO. Just running straight through the CPU. Probably why port selection isn't super crazy. Last gen parts. Probably getting bulk order discounts. The 7600m was used in tons of the out of China external GPU docks. Probably over produced and can use them in this device. Old Wifi and Bluetooth standards. My guess would be slow Memory. Base Config only comes with a 512gb NVME. It sounds like nothing is over 4 or 5 phases. So not an elaborate setup with expensive parts for potential overclocking etc.

While it seems pretty neat if you are really looking at it for what it is, well it seems they cut every corner they could. It isn't an Apple product over engineered with every little detail and no expense spared. It seems like every expense was spared.

#63

LastDudeALive

Space Lynxit was a quick build to prove a point, you can move things around to fix that and still come up with same price, you are missing the point

The point is that this is a completely different market than a gaming PC. Same as the Steam Deck. The cost of an "alternative" build is irrelevant, because the alternative for the target market is not building their own PC, it's getting an Xbox/PS5. Against those, the hardware is competitive enough and the user experience of Steam games and SteamOS is a major advantage.

#64

Space Lynx

Astronaut

I guess all of that makes sense, but I can't even hear my 5080 running, and im sitting right next to it when i game. i get the power savings factor, but i still think FSR4 should have been included. and maybe it is... it did say RDNA 3.5, and the PS5 Pro has RDNA 3.5 and can do FSR4

i'm skeptical of the claims it can run any game at 4k 60 fps for 30 watts though, and if you want to play at 30 fps, just get a ps5 at that point

#65

dlgh7

Space LynxI guess all of that makes sense, but I can't even hear my 5080 running, and im sitting right next to it when i game. i get the power savings factor, but i still think FSR4 should have been included. and maybe it is... it did say RDNA 3.5, and the PS5 Pro has RDNA 3.5 and can do FSR4

i'm skeptical of the claims it can run any game at 4k 60 fps for 30 watts though, and if you want to play at 30 fps, just get a ps5 at that point

30 watts is CPU only. GPU is 100+ watts. they also said using FSR.

30 watts for the CPU isn't that low. Even the 65w Ryzen Chips I believe in the bios let you set them to like 45w I believe. Plus unlike all these other systems from like Minisforum that are 8 core 16 thread or 16 core 32 threads this is only a 6 core 12 thread CPU.

#66

Space Lynx

Astronaut

dlgh730 watts is CPU only. GPU is 100+ watts. they also said using FSR.

30 watts for the CPU isn't that low. Even the 65w Ryzen Chips I believe in the bios let you set them to like 45w I believe. Plus unlike all these other systems from like Minisforum that are 8 core 16 thread or 16 core 32 threads this is only a 6 core 12 thread CPU.

i misunderstood, i thought it was an APU rig, my bad

well that is kind of neat then, still wish it had FSR4 though, maybe it technically does they just haven't announced it yet? PS5 Pro technically has FSR4 support and it uses a similar 3.5 custom chip

#67

LastDudeALive

Space LynxPS5 Pro technically has FSR4 support and it uses a similar 3.5 custom chip

Technically, the "3.5" in the PS5 Pro is just the ray tracing. It doesn't have any tensor cores of RDNA 3 or 4. They modified the shader cores with extra instructions and expanded the WGP count, using the vector registers as the "RAM" for the upscaling.

www.tweaktown.com/news/102229/sony-explains-how-it-modified-ps5-pros-gpu-to-enable-pssr-neural-network-ai-upscaling/index.html

#68

Blue4130

Space LynxI guess all of that makes sense, but I can't even hear my 5080 running, and im sitting right next to it when i game. i get the power savings factor, but i still think FSR4 should have been included. and maybe it is... it did say RDNA 3.5, and the PS5 Pro has RDNA 3.5 and can do FSR4

i'm skeptical of the claims it can run any game at 4k 60 fps for 30 watts though, and if you want to play at 30 fps, just get a ps5 at that point

Now smoosh your PC down to something this size. That is the selling feature of this for me. As someone who travels frequesntly but hates handhelds, this thing look really cool. Easy to back in carry-on so I can game at the hotel.

#69

Easy Rhino

Linux Advocate

The benchmarks and thermals will be super interesting to see once it is released. Hopefully it is priced right because I would like to support the engineers and developers!

#70

Evrsr

I think the rumor on the Steam box was for a Radeon 7600, so this does match a very underpowered 7600 indeed.

#71

Sunlight91

Blue4130Now smoosh your PC down to something this size. That is the selling feature of this for me. As someone who travels frequesntly but hates handhelds, this thing look really cool. Easy to back in carry-on so I can game at the hotel.

You would be better off buying a laptop with a 5060.

The concept of the Steam Machine is good. Its a mini-pc with an entry graphics card. But the outdated tech holds it back.

#72

Darmok N Jalad

Hard to say on gaming, but those are good enough specs to be a good photo editor in a tidy workstation. The Mac Studio for non-Mac people.

I’m honestly a bit surprised it’s not just a modded strix halo. I’d think the BOM would be similar, but maybe not.

#73

Fatloader

Definitely looking forward to the Steam Frame, less sure about the Steam Machine or Steam controller. I probably will still buy the Steam Machine because the Deck has been very handy at times though. Having PCVR games run without having to hook up to a PC and foveated streaming for when I am will be nice. The Steam Deck can run the vast majority of games I own and the Frame is more powerful than the Deck from what I understand so the Frame might just end up being my next mobile PC.

#74

TheGeekn°72

windwhirlYes but the Steam Machine seems to run those CUs at more than double the clock of the RX 7400.

Now, performance doesn't necessarily scale nearly with mere clock raises, but I'm guessing the performance might come closer to a RX 7600 than the RX 7400 itself. Other than that however, Steam isn't giving us any more details, such as actual GDDR6 bandwidth, size and bandwidth of the Infinity Cache, etc., so until the units are out those details are unknown.

I noticed it a bit later : double the clock AND three times the wattage

LastDudeALiveSince this has no cables and a dedicated WiFi dongle with a dual-wavelength design to avoid interference, this seems like a fantastic upgrade if the price is reasonable.

Valve really went for the big brain move here, I have a Pico 4 Ultra on Wifi7, no cables, insanely low latency, works absolutely fantastic AND I'm routing it though : network card (10G)/switch/wifi access point then VR headset, this got a wifi 6E dongle stick, direct output from PC is probably gonna yield even better transmission performance

CheeseballBesides, this is with a 30W TDP 6C/12T CPU and a 110W TGP GPU. At most you would playing AAA titles at 4K60 or 1080p120 at high settings, which should be fine for most players.

you are not playing AAA titles 4K@60 on high settings on that hardware (besides *maybe* edge exception games like Rainbow 6 Siege and such)

Space LynxI mean if steam machine comes in at $599... you can just build this 9060 xt rig for $85 more, and put steam OS on it

pcpartpicker.com/list/Z4fXjn
B570 instead of 9060XT but I get more VRAM and Zen5 in a relatively decent 760$ build

Sunlight91But the outdated tech holds it back.

brother what

RDNA3 and Zen4 are quite literally LAST GEN, what do you even mean *outdated*???

#75

Blue4130

Sunlight91You would be better off buying a laptop with a 5060.

The concept of the Steam Machine is good. Its a mini-pc with an entry graphics card. But the outdated tech holds it back.

Nope, I don't agree that I would be better off with a laptop with a 5060. I have no need for the keyboard, battery or screen on a laptop. Also, they seem to start at $1000 USD. So if the steam machine comes in at under that, I am happy. Speculation seems to be that this will be a fair bit less than that.

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Valve Announces Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller

204 Comments on Valve Announces Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller

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204 Comments on Valve Announces Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and Steam Controller

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