Valve recently announced the Steam Machine, and like pretty much everyone else, I was instantly excited. It sounds like the perfect “console killer”. But once the hype settled a bit, I had a very obvious realization: I already use Linux for gaming … so what’s actually stopping me from building my own Steam Machine right now?
With all the speculation around pricing, and memory prices shooting up again for absolutely no good reason, waiting until 2026 for Valve’s box to drop didn’t feel worth it. Instead of sitting around in limbo, I decided to take matters into my own hands. And honestly, you can too.
The Steam Machine’s hardware is not as simple as you think
It’s not just “off-the-shelf” PC parts
Considering the weird Frankenstein that the Steam Machine is, it’s basically a blend between a console and a PC. The easiest way to explain it is that you’re getting PC-class hardware wrapped in a console-like experience thanks to SteamOS. I’ll get into the software side later, but first I want to clear up a common misconception I keep seeing floating around online.
A lot of people assume the Steam Machine is built from off-the-shelf PC components, and that’s not true. But not for the reasons you might think. According to the specs, it’s using custom AMD silicon, so you’d imagine it’s some sort of hyper-specialized console-style chip. In reality, it’s more of a semi-custom mobile chip, not totally bespoke but not something you can buy on Newegg either.
If you look at AMD’s lineup, the closest match to what Valve is shipping is actually the Ryzen 5 7540U, which is a CPU mainly only used in laptops and a few mini-PCs. It has the same number of cores, same architecture, same TDP, and only a tiny 0.1Ghz difference in boost clocks. In other words, it’s basically the same chip.
The GPU follows the same pattern. The closest equivalent is the Radeon RX 7600M, which is again a mobile chip. Though it runs at a slightly lower TDP—by around 20W—all the other specs match up really closely.
And that’s exactly why the “off the shelf PC components” argument doesn’t hold up. They aren’t desktop parts at all. They’re mobile chips, the kind you’ll only find through OEM channels.
Now, I wouldn’t worry about the Steam Machine using mobile chips or assume that makes it weak. By the time this thing actually ships, Valve will have squeezed every drop of performance out of it. We’ve already seen what they can do with the Steam Deck, a device that performs way better than its specs suggest — and the same level of tuning will absolutely apply here.
But still, I went digging to see what the closest desktop equivalents were, and later realized you don’t need to build a clone of Valve’s hardware.
You don’t have to copy Valve’s exact build
Build something faster, or cheaper
The closest desktop-based build I could put together that resembles the Steam Machine is in the table below. I’ve only included the CPU, GPU, and memory since the rest of the internals are still somewhat of a mystery, but this should get you in the right ballpark. But as you’ll see later, building your own Steam Machine with these exact specs doesn’t even matter, anyway.
|
CPU |
AMD Ryzen 5 8400F |
|
GPU |
AMD Radeon RX 6600 |
|
Memory |
16GB DDR5 SO-DIMM |
Now after looking at those components and realizing you’d have to spend real money in this economy, where RAM prices have literally more than doubled recently and GPUs are still kind of out of reach—what if I told you that you might already have a “Steam Machine” sitting somewhere in your house?
You don’t need to go out and buy an entirely new PC. You can repurpose almost anything you own and get the same software experience just by hooking it up to your TV with a controller. That could mean building a super-cheap sub-$300 SteamOS box for older titles, or going all-in with a $2000 monster that completely outperforms Valve’s hardware in every possible way.
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Heck, you can even turn your old laptop into a Steam Machine. As long as you have a machine that can boot a fairly modern Linux distro, it can become a Steam Machine.
Of course, it’s not as simple as slapping SteamOS on any machine and calling it a day. I’ll get into the hardware-compatibility quirks later, but you will lose out on some nice quality-of-life features, like HDMI-CEC, which lets your TV control your PC (and vice versa) using the controller, just like a console.
The real magic is in the software, not the hardware
Anything is better than Windows at this point
When you think about it, the whole “Steam Machine” idea isn’t special because of the hardware. It’s SteamOS that turns it into a proper-living-room console. You just can’t get the same couch-friendly experience on Windows, no matter how hard you try.
And that’s the best part. You can install SteamOS on your own hardware, and get almost the exact same experience, with only a few exceptions.
While Valve does offer a SteamOS recovery image you can flash like any other Linux distro, it’s not universally compatible. Right now, SteamOS mostly works on AMD hardware. I actually installed it on my ROG Ally (yes, Valve actually optimized SteamOS for it), and it’s been pretty much flawless.
But if you’re on Nvidia or Intel hardware, things get a bit trickier. You can’t install SteamOS cleanly on those systems. But you still have options.
There are several Linux distros like CachyOS or Bazzite, that include the exact same SteamOS interface and are built to work across a much wider range of hardware. After testing a bunch of them, I really can’t tell the difference, because it’s literally the same Steam Big Picture Mode session running on top of a different base distro.
At the end of the day, it really is that simple: install a Linux distro on any device you have, and you basically have your own Steam Machine. The only thing that changes is the hardware. Meanwhile, the entire console-like flow comes from the software.
So … is this the “PC 2” everyone joked about?
The funny thing about SteamOS is that you’re not boxed into the usual console limitations at all. If you want the couch experience, grab a controller, and you’re set. But if you ever need to, you can just plug in a keyboard and mouse, and you’re right back in a full desktop session, free to install whatever apps you want and use the machine however you normally would.
That’s what makes this whole setup so good. It’s genuinely the best of both worlds. I get a proper console-like experience when I’m on the TV, and with a quick swap of peripherals, I’m back to a regular PC workflow without losing anything. Nothing is locked down, nothing gets in your way, and you can do it all on hardware you already own.
