Valve has been working a lot of hardware behind closed doors for more than a decade, and the fruit of the company’s labor first came into the open with the very first Steam Machines. These were made by partners rather than Valve itself, but they ran SteamOS and served as a console-like interface for gamers to play their Steam games on. Back then, it was cumbersome to get Windows games running on them, and while you could install Windows on one, why would you not just buy a regular PC at that point?
As we all know now, the very first Steam Machines failed. Valve quietly removed references to them from its storefront, and acknowledged the poor sales. The company, through Pierre-Loup in 2018, stated its intention to commit to an open gaming platform, noting that player feedback was shaping the future of its efforts. The importance of Vulkan was highlighted, along with a mention of “other Linux initiatives”; likely a reference to Proton, which released four months later. Following years of Proton and SteamOS development, the company released the Steam Deck, correcting many of the past failings of Steam Machines.
Given the universal acclaim granted to the Steam Deck and the success that it’s seen, it was likely that Valve would take another stab at a Steam Machine, potentially created in-house like the Steam Deck. When Half-Life: Alyx released, accompanied by the interactive storybook Half-Life: Alyx – The Final Hours, we caught a glimpse at what a Valve-made Steam Machine could look like. This machine was rumored to be Now, thanks to YouTuber Bringus Studios (also known as Jon Bringus), we’ve got our first look at a similar device. And the future of SteamOS and potential Steam Machines suddenly turned very, very interesting, especially with Valve’s recent confirmation that it wants SteamOS on every device.
Valve has likely made many different versions of the Steam Machine
Or the “Steambox”, as the system model states
First and foremost, the device Bringus shows in his video is not the same hardware as the device that was spotted on a table in The Final Hours, though it clearly follows a similar design philosophy. It’s likely that it’s a newer iteration than the one shown here, as this one appears to have been made sometime in or just after 2017. It packs an AMD Ryzen 5 1400, an MSI RX 580 (with 8GB of vRAM), and a custom motherboard made specifically for this machine. The motherboard was identified as the MSI AB320M PRO-VD/S in software (which it doesn’t match), though it was also accompanied by a custom tag, MS-7B39, which Bringus discovered had schematics that were published online as the only references to it. Those schematics matched the board here.
With the hardware out of the way, there are a few interesting things to note here. It appears that Bringus found this particular computer on Reddit, as a user who shared pictures of it stated that they live close enough to Bellvue, where the Valve headquarters are located. Bringus then commented on the post, saying that he had sent a DM with some questions, and photos that he showed in the video matched those shared by the user. While it’s entirely possible that Bringus was a victim of some elaborate scam to trick him into believing this was a real Valve product, there are a number of details that make it unlikely.
The biggest piece of evidence suggesting this is the real deal and not an elaborate hoax is the fact that there are quite a few custom elements within this machine, most notably the motherboard itself. On top of that, there’s a GPU riser with 16 lanes for the GPU, and an additional separate lane for transferring data through the NVMe M2 slot that’s also on the riser. Both of these PCI slots are side-by-side on the motherboard.
There’s even more to that GPU riser, though. There’s an external mini DisplayPort on one end, and a full sized DisplayPort on the other end. The front USB panel consists of two USB-A ports and a type-C port, with the type-C port connecting to the mini DisplayPort inside of the case through an OCuLink cable. Plugging one end of a DisplayPort cable into the GPU, and plugging the other end into the full-size DisplayPort on the riser (which is mounted externally beside the GPU) enables the front USB-C port to be used as a display connector within Windows. It appears to be an implementation of VirtualLink, a standard that was once supported by many companies (including Valve) as a way to deliver power, video, and data over a single USB Type-C connection. Nvidia’s Founders Edition 2060, 2070, 2080, 2080 Ti all implemented a VirtualLink port, though it was dropped in later GPUs. This being a VirtualLink port is supported by the system identifying a VR Interface Adapter as being plugged in, though display output still worked when it was ejected.
That front USB panel hosts a USB 3 hub that connects to the motherboard, with the motherboard sporting a single USB-A port for its connection. There’s also a “Steam Controller” module somewhere inside, which allows wireless connection of a Steam Controller to the machine. Finally, the power button is represented by the halo ring, which lights up when your hand moves close to it. This appears to use an infra-red sensor to detect when your hands are close to it in order to light it up.
Bringus Studios was able to install SteamOS on it, but encountered problems likely caused by driver issues Polaris GPUs face on Linux, particularly with newer driver versions. Installing Bazzite instead worked, and he was able to test games to get a feel for what the experience would have been like. For starters, holding down the Steam button on the Steam Controller can turn on the machine from a fully powered off state, which some Steam Machines were capable of. Performance was surprisingly decent given the aging hardware, with games like Half-Life: Alyx, DOOM (2016), Prey, Red Dead Redemption: II, and Forza Horizon 4 all being completely playable.
Under Windows, this machine was identified as a “Valve Steambox”, and everything points to it being legitimate. Using Windows 11 proved impossible, as following an AMD graphics driver update, it was unable to boot back into Windows. He downgraded to Windows 10 to continue using it. It appears that it was at least used by Valve to test its VR headsets with VirtualLink, but given that this is a different model to the one that we saw in The Final Hours (given that the port arrangement on the front is different), it’s clear the company has been iterating on these machines internally. Plus, it’s all-AMD, which we know Valve is fond of.
Everything about this machine suggests that it’s the real deal, but there’s likely more to the story than just a computer making its way out of Valve HQ that happens to be an earlier edition of a Valve-made Steam Machine or Steambox, particularly when it comes to the future of Valve’s hardware.
We know Valve has been working on new hardware for a while now
“Fremont” might just be around the corner
Valve has been working on some new hardware dubbed “Fremont” for quite a while now, and we know that it’s likely a dedicated device with a HDMI-out directly attached to a GPU. This can be seen in a Steam Deck kernel update, where a commit titled “updating cec endpoint for fremont” changes the PCI address for referencing what is likely to be a GPU. This is because CEC is a HDMI feature, used for controlling devices over a HDMI connection. While some speculate that Valve intends to release Fremont alongside a potential Half-Life 3, considering the company tried to do that with the Valve Index and Half-Life: Alyx, there is no confirmation that Fremont is even a Steam Machine/Steambox iteration in the first place.
With that said, there’s a lot going on with Valve that we can say points to the possibility of a console-like device finally reaching the masses. The company has seen a huge amount of success with the Steam Deck, and given that this device proves that the company has at least two iterations internally (with the second being seen in The Final Hours), it seems possible that one of these devices could end up seeing a more widespread release. That’s especially the case seeing as we know there’s custom hardware being made for these things; while companies have many partners that will produce custom hardware, there’s not a lot of reason to keep producing new machines and iterating on them if there’s no intention of that going anywhere aside from internal development.
What’s more, it seems likely that Valve is focusing on a true console-like experience. Powering on the machine from the controller clearly points to that, and hardware like Fremont, capable of sending controls over HDMI, would tie in nicely to a console experience. Many games play just fine on the Steam Controller, and it would make sense that it would serve as the centerpiece of a Valve-made console. Plus, user upgradeable hardware doesn’t exactly look out of the question, and would seemingly go along with Valve’s philosophies. Finally, with so many huge titles playable on this particular machine that Bringus had (with its significantly weaker hardware than anything that would be released today), it seems like there would be no better time than now for Valve to pull the trigger.
The flip side, though, is that Valve is a very rich company. While it’s privately owned and thus, impossible to say with certainty how much it’s worth, industry experts estimated that Valve pulled in $6.5 billion in revenue in 2021, with documents unveiled in its ongoing anti-trust suit filed by Wolfire Games revealing an incredible level of efficiency and profitability per employee. Valve has the money to burn on projects like this that never see the light of day, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that these bespoke machines are developed internally for employees with zero intention to turn them into a consumer product.
Still, the Steam Deck’s success and ongoing leaks surrounding various Valve-made products would likely cause most to lean in the direction of this being one iteration of many that will eventually lead to a consumer release. After all, with the Steam Deck being the success that it is, and all of the leaks pointing towards something happening, it would be a surprise to not see the return of Steam Machines in the future.
