Valve’s upcoming Steam Machine is incredibly exciting. Despite only being around as powerful as a base PS5, the upcoming SteamOS-powered living room PC will have the freedom of PC gaming, albeit with the well-known hindrances of Valve’s Linux-based operating system.

While Valve’s machine has already caused waves of hype, there is still one major missing piece of information for the machine: how much will it cost?

With console prices already rising and the cost of PC components skyrocketing—DDR5 RAM prices are insane right now—there is hope that Valve’s new machine will be a price-friendly introduction to the PC gaming market, especially since the company earns a hefty percentage from the sale of every game on Steam.

However, in a recent episode of Linus Tech Tips, host Linus Sebastian explained that the Steam Machine will be “priced like a PC”. According to the YouTuber, a Valve represenative didn’t confirm the exact price of the hardware, but said: “they expect it to be very competitively priced with a PC. It will be priced like a PC rather than a console”.

Sebastian explained that Valve will not be using the price percentage of games to subsidise the “upfront hardware purchase” on the device. The YouTuber explained that they understand the reasoning to be that Valve wants to “avoid stepping on the margin opportunities of their potential partners for Steam games and Steam software”. (Thanks, VGC.)

Additionally, in a recent episode of The WAN Show, Sebastian explained that Valve was not responsive when he expressed a desire for the device to be around $500.

“When I said I’m disappointed it isn’t going to follow a console pricing model, where its subsided by the fact that manufacturer is going to be taking 30% of every game sold on it over the lifespan of this thing, because I feel that would be a more meaningful product, they asked what I meant by console price and I said $500,” the YouTuber said. “Nobody said anything, but the energy in the room wasn’t great.”

As for why Valve has yet to announce a proper price for the Steam Machine, Sebastian says Valve pointed to the “rapidly evolving market conditions” that have occurred over the past few years. As we mentioned earlier, right now DDR5 RAM prices are skyrocketing, and every Steam Machine has 15GB of DDR5 SODIMM RAM inside it.

While the device’s “semi-custom” AMD RDNA 3 GPU and “semi-custom” AMD Zen 4 CPU may help to keep costs down a little instead of using pre-built parts, there is a massive demand on PC parts right now to fulfil big tech’s AI focus, which leaves consumers paying higher fees than usual.

Multiple sources have attempted to price match the Steam Machine with as-close-to components to the real device, but prices don’t come up favourably. For a device around as powerful as a base PS5, gamers may still be paying $600 or above for Valve’s hardware. You just have to ask yourself: are the benefits of PC gaming (and the limitations of SteamOS) worth the jump in cost?

Nevertheless, the price for the Steam Machine should be ironed out when the device releases sometime in Q1 2026. Additionally, Valve has been known to deliver steep discounts on its Steam Deck handhelds when market conditions allow so, while the device may be expensive on launch, it should (hopefully) get cheaper over time.