Friday, November 28th 2025

Valve Steam Machine May Cost Less Than Anticipated

Nov 28th, 2025 16:03 Discuss (118 Comments)

Valve recently sparked concern among gamers when it revealed that the Steam Machine would be priced similarly to a competitive gaming PC, with ensuing speculation resulting in up to $1,000 prices being thrown around. Likely in response to many of these concerns, Linus Tech Tips on YouTube took it upon himself to build a gaming PC with similar specifications and performance to the upcoming Steam Machine in an attempt to estimate the price of the new living room console. The build itself consists of an AMD Ryzen 8400F, an ASRock B650M motherboard, 16 GB of Crucial DDR5-5600 memory, a Kingston 500 GB SSD, a Seasonic 550 W PSU, and an ASRock AMD Radeon RX 6600 GPU. Taking the build's cost at face value, at the time the PC was built, and with the lowest available prices, the Steam Machine will launch at somewhere around $910, with the possibility of bringing the price down by cutting certain features.

However, Valve is not a regular consumer, and economies of scale play a big role in pricing when you start talking about devices that are expected to sell hundreds of thousands or millions of units. Valve also previously said that the pricing for the entry-level Steam Deck was "painful," suggesting that it had employed very aggressive pricing for that device. At Valve's scale, it seems likely that the specific components that the YouTuber used in the build would come to around $700-750, but when accounting for the semi-custom nature of the Steam Machine and adjusting for the potential savings that Valve gets from its direct-to-consumer model, it seems like the Steam Machine cost as little as $600-650 in hardware. Accounting for Valve's assumed profit of around 10% and taking into account Valve's comments to Linus about its hardware business aiming for sustainability, the official pricing guess comes out to $699.99. This price estimate isn't incredibly reliable, since it doesn't account for the current DRAM shortage that has resulted in prices skyrocketing across the board, which will certainly affect Valve when the Steam Machine launches, and it assumes Valve will sell the Steam Machine at a high profit margin.

Source: Linus Tech Tips on YouTube

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118 Comments on Valve Steam Machine May Cost Less Than Anticipated

#101

dgianstefani

TPU Proofreader

AusWolfHow is it cut down? Which parts of it have been cut compared to regular Zen 4? Enlighten me.

Through silicon vias, another architectural component related to cache. Consider yourself enlightened.

#102

AusWolf

dgianstefaniThrough silicon vias, another architectural component related to cache. Consider yourself enlightened.

And that makes the core have less cache? Or how is this relevant to the conversation?

#103

dgianstefani

TPU Proofreader

AusWolfAnd that makes the core have less cache? Or how is this relevant to the conversation?

AMD have made a helpful slide outlining the difference in cache.

I sure hope you can take away it's meaning without further confusion.

Chips and Cheese have a nicely summarized overview that might help you to understand.

A smaller L3 will result in a lower hitrate, which in turn creates more memory traffic. Servers already have less memory bandwidth per core than client CPUs do. Bergamo pushes core counts even higher but uses the same 768-bit DDR5 memory configuration as Genoa. To really shine, Bergamo will need programs that don’t suffer a lot of misses with a 16 MB L3. In the other direction, lower clock speeds should lower per-core bandwidth demands because there’s less compute power to feed.

#104

AusWolf

dgianstefaniAMD have made a helpful slide outlining the difference in cache.

I sure hope you can take away it's meaning without further confusion.

That's the CCD. The topic here is the core. You can equip a CCD with as much or as little L3 cache as you like, demonstrated by the 8700G, 7700(X) and 7800X3D, all containing only Zen 4 (no Zen 4c) cores and 16, 32 and 96 MB cache respectively.

Now please tell me what functional component does a Zen 4c core have less of compared to Zen 4. Or do you have trouble defining what a core is?

In other words, please compare the 8600G and the 8500G.

#105

dgianstefani

TPU Proofreader

AusWolfThat's the CCD. The topic here is the core. You can equip a CCD with as much or as little L3 cache as you like, demonstrated by the 8700G, 7700(X) and 7800X3D, all containing only Zen 4 (no Zen 4c) cores and 16, 32 and 96 MB cache respectively.

Now please tell me what functional component does a Zen 4c core have less of compared to Zen 4. Or do you have trouble defining what a core is?

You can try moving the goalposts as if it's possible to have a core in isolation without the rest of the chip being present. The fact is that Zen 4c cores have less cache, because the chips they are on have less cache, something even AMD clearly states in their own slides "L2 cache/core, L3 cache/core", yet apparently you know better. Zen 4c cores are cut down to reduce area cost, this is done in a way that preserves compatibility with instruction sets compared to full fat Zen 4 cores, but they are slower due to having more cache misses, lower per core IF/RAM budget, and higher latency due to these factors combined with only being able to run at lower operating frequencies. All of these cuts to capabilities and die area result in a cheaper chip, something Valve is taking advantage of.

AusWolfIn other words, please compare the 8600G and the 8500G.

Off topic.

#106

AusWolf

dgianstefaniYou can try moving the goalposts as if it's possible to have a core in isolation without the rest of the chip being present. The fact is that Zen 4c cores have less cache, because the chips they are on have less cache, something even AMD clearly states in their own slides "L2 cache/core, L3 cache/core", yet apparently you know better. Zen 4c cores are cut down to reduce area cost, this is done in a way that preserves compatibility with instruction sets compared to full fat Zen 4 cores, but they are slower due to having more cache misses, lower per core IF/RAM budget, and higher latency due to these factors combined with only being able to run at lower operating frequencies. All of these cuts to capabilities and die area result in a cheaper chip, something Valve is taking advantage of.

Off topic.

The goalpost hasn't moved anywhere. If the statement by which "Zen 4c has less cache" is true, then the 8500G has less cache than the 8600G, as it contains 2 Zen 4 and 4 Zen 4c compared to just 6 Zen 4 cores. But that's not the case. How strange. ;)

#107

dgianstefani

TPU Proofreader

AusWolfThe goalpost hasn't moved anywhere. If the statement by which "Zen 4c has less cache" is true, then the 8500G has less cache than the 8600G, as it contains 2 Zen 4 and 4 Zen 4c compared to just 6 Zen 4 cores. But that's not the case. How strange. ;)

So go and buy a Zen 4c CPU AusWolf. I'm sure it won't have less cache than your current Zen 4 CPU. ;) :laugh:

Valve is happy to sell you one paired with some other slow hardware, likely for more than it's worth.

#108

AusWolf

dgianstefaniSo go and buy a Zen 4c CPU AusWolf. I'm sure it won't have less cache than your current Zen 4 chip. ;) :laugh:

You're comparing Phoenix (2) against Raphael, not Zen 4 against Zen 4c. So who's moving the goalpost now? ;)

Edit: With that logic, the 8700G, or even the 7950X has less cache than my 7950X3D, so that means that Zen 4 has less cache than um... Zen 4? :laugh:

#109

AstroLabs

cst1992I'm still not sure what this article is saying. The price estimate for the Machine, would it be $700 or higher?

Linus TT said 650 to 700 max. So along those lines.

#110

TheGeekn°72

dgianstefaniSo go and buy a Zen 4c CPU AusWolf. I'm sure it won't have less cache than your current Zen 4 CPU. ;) :laugh:

Valve is happy to sell you one paired with some other slow hardware, likely for more than it's worth.

I'd like to point out that the CPU used in the LTT video was a 8400F, which would be "lore accurate" so to speak as to matching the GabeCube's specs as close as possible... it looks like they paid retail price (160$ current lowest says the graph) on this socketable SKU and totalled 900$ ish on the whole build so it's looking very likely to me that Linus' guess would be correct since it's probably the same dies on BGA substrate that are going to be mass assembled for much less than that on a unitary basis, also likely the same for the GPU die... if it ends up higher than 700 by a lot, the blame will likely go to the RAM and SSD, even wholesale, DDR5 SODIMM prices (yes, even the low amount kits) have exploded and I reckon NVMes got a slight bump up too

#111

doc7000

I see so the chiplet has the same amount of L3 cache just the Zen4C chiplet has more cores, so as stated it is a mistake to call the Zen4c a cut down version of the Zen4. Like how the Ryzen 1500X had 16MB of L3 cache and the 1400 only had 8MB of cache despite them both being Zen.

#112

AusWolf

doc7000I see so the chiplet has the same amount of L3 cache just the Zen4C chiplet has more cores, so as stated it is a mistake to call the Zen4c a cut down version of the Zen4. Like how the Ryzen 1500X had 16MB of L3 cache and the 1400 only had 8MB of cache despite them both being Zen.

Pretty much. :)

Imagine this:
The Zen 4 core has a front-end, an execution engine, and L1 and L2 caches.
The Zen4c core is a shrunk (spatially condensed) form of Zen 4 that runs on lower frequencies because of its higher density, but is identical to Zen 4 in its components.
The L3 cache is a separate entity outside of the Zen 4 or Zen 4c cores that all cores on the CPU or CCD share. No Zen 4 or Zen 4c core has any L3 cache on its own.

This is a Phoenix 2 (R5 8500G) block diagram to help you visualise it:

Note that the L3 cache is separate from both Zen 4 and Zen 4c cores, and is accessible in its entirety to either or all of them.

Here is a Zen 4 core:

Note that it doesn't have any L3 cache. Like I said, the L3 belongs to the CPU or CCD as a whole, not to the individual cores.
The Zen 4c core has exactly the same components shrunk to a smaller area with less "space" between them.

#113

doc7000

I feel like the bigger problem is that Intel did their big little core layout and after that too many people were waiting for AMD to do the same. Except AMD did not do the same and this is where the confusion I believe is coming from. People want to make Zen 4 and Zen 4c the analog to the P core and E core of Intel cpus.

#114

AusWolf

doc7000I feel like the bigger problem is that Intel did their big little core layout and after that too many people were waiting for AMD to do the same. Except AMD did not do the same and this is where the confusion I believe is coming from. People want to make Zen 4 and Zen 4c the analog to the P core and E core of Intel cpus.

Exactly.

Intel P and E cores are built on different architectures with different instruction sets. That's why they require special (software) scheduling. You can't run every instruction on every core.

Meanwhile, Zen 4 and Zen 4c are the same architecture with the same instruction set, just 4c comes in a condensed form and lower clock speed.

#115

Atomofvoid

The fact that it's DDR5 is mind blowing... A console better than my PC for 300 less... I'l make sure to save up for this.

#116

Atomofvoid

cst1992I'm still not sure what this article is saying. The price estimate for the Machine, would it be $700 or higher?

It could be around 600 to 650

#117

dgianstefani

TPU Proofreader

AtomofvoidIt could be around 600 to 650

Doubt.jpg

#118

Shonk

Lower clock speed and lower ipc due to less cache compared to a desktop part
the ipc is only identical if everything fits in the cache
which is doesnt alot of the time
hence why x3d is so much faster than a standard zen4 part
the same goes from a zen4c to zen4

also P cores and E cores of intel any instruction set that the e core doesnt do was disabled on the p cores
so yes they are 100% able to operate on both e and p cores

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Valve Steam Machine May Cost Less Than Anticipated

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