The Steam Machine is the talk of the town, largely because Valve’s bitesized PC-console hybrid is going to cost a small fortune. Even if you do have over $1,000 to drop on the device, you’ll still need to navigate a randomized reservation queue designed to stop scalpers.
In short, it’s going to be very expensive and rather difficult to get your hands on Valve’s latest hunk of video game hardware, but the company has a solution: build your own.
During a recent interview with The Verge, Valve programmer Pierre-Loup Griffais explained the company has been focused on improving SteamOS to bolster compatibility with desktop hardware.
SteamOS is a Linux-based (Proton compatible) operating system developed by Valve that has been optimized specifically for gaming. It provides full access to the Steam ecosystem and powers hardware such as the Steam Deck, Steam Machine, and Legion Go S.
Starting with the recent release of SteamOS 3.8.10, Valve had deployed a range of compatibility updates to allow users to cobble together their own Steam Machine “using whatever PC parts you want.”
Griffais explained the operating system is now more compatible with recent Intel and AMD platforms. He also confirmed Valve has a “growing team” working on Nvidia driver support for SteamOS and said the company is collaborating “very closely” with the tech giant.
Although Nvidia support might not arrive this year, it’s something Valve is working on in the background.
According to Griffais, Valve is committed to ensuring it’s possible (and relatively straightforward) to run SteamOS on most PC hardware—with the company focused on streamlining a rather finicky installation process (that has so far required the use of a Steam Deck recovery image) and delivering a winning user experience on console-like PC setups.
“If you have something that is similar to the use case of a Steam Machine, where you have a PC that’s gonna be plugged into a TV, and has a single hard drive that you’re not going to try and dual boot […] you can put SteamOS on there, and you’ll have an experience that is very similar to a Steam Deck docked or a Steam Machine, with some caveats [like a lack of HDMI-CEC support], of course,” said Griffais.
“[But] the core bits of the experience are there. The SteamOS graphics driver, the shader precompilation […] you can get at all of that with the SteamOS.”
Given RAM isn’t getting any cheaper, it might not be that much more affordable to engineer your own Steam Machine—but it’ll at least be an option if stock is in short supply.