Earlier this week, Valve finally revealed just how powerful its long-awaited Steam Machine is, and the reaction has been less than positive. You're looking at just over $1,000 for just the 512GB model, while the 2TB model will set you back just over $1,400. That's a lot of money, and over the past week there's been talk of people installing their own Steam Machines that are cheaper and more powerful.
It didn't take long for the official dealers to get in on the action, and that's exactly what happened in France. First reported by Eurogamer, French hardware retailer LDLC recently announced their Steam Machine knock-off, which is called the Stim Machine. In several places they boast that the kit has the same price but more performance.
We are already getting more powerful steam engines
Although it appears to have already been renamed, presumably to avoid any potential legal issues from Valve, the set can be found on the official LDLC website. You can either buy the kit and build it yourself, or buy it pre-made for a bit more, but either way it still comes in at about the same price as the Steam Machine, albeit with a few differences.
The differences are of course in the CPU and GPU. It's already been noted that the Stim Machine is much more powerful than the Steam Machine, rocking a 6-core AMD Ryzen 5 8400F CPU and an AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT GPU, both steps up on Valve's hardware. The Stim Machine chassis is a bit bigger as a result, but I'm sure many would rather have a bigger box than less power.
The only downside to the Stim Machine is that it will probably get a little warm since it has more powerful components and doesn't connect to the TV as smoothly as the Steam Machine. Even then, I'd suffer from having to manually turn on the TV if it meant I could run games like Black Myth Wukong and Cyberpunk 2077, which is something the Steam Machine struggles to do.
It's not a great look for Valve and I'm really struggling to imagine who the Steam Machine was built for in the first place. Maybe Valve didn't want to sell the system at a loss, but if it was going to be a big success, I should probably eat the cost.
- Mark
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Valve
- Original MSRP (USD)
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$1,049 (512GB) / $1,349 (2TB) – Driverless
- Operating system
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SteamOS 3 (based on the architecture)
- Processor
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Semi-custom AMD Zen 4 6C / 12T up to 4.8GHz, 30W TDP
- Resolution
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Up to 4K @ 240 Hz or 8K @ 60 Hz
- Original release date
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2026
