Reservations for Valve Corporation’s new living room PC, the Steam Machine, are being sold on eBay at scalper prices.
The Steam Machine is already being sold at scalper prices on eBay, despite currently being in the reservation phase. Those with confirmed reservations are asking buyers to pay around twice the original price of the relevant model.The 512GB variant is being sold for around 2,000 US Dollars and the 2TB model is selling for around 2,600 US Dollars, nearly double of the intended 1,050 and 1,350 US Dollar price tag, respectively. The Steam Controller is included in some cases, making those offers a little less ridiculous.
Value for money is an important consideration, and we urge our readers to exercise patience and avoid unreasonable offers on new gaming hardware. Content creator Gamers Nexus recently conducted a performance and pricing analysis of the Steam Machine, showing that consumers willing to build a DIY gaming PC can assemble a system with slightly better specifications for less money. He compared the 1,050 US Dollar 512GB configuration against a DIY desktop build using commercially available retail components that closely match the Steam Machine’s hardware on paper.
The Steam Machine contains a 6-core Zen 4 CPU, 28 RDNA 3 compute units, 16GB DDR5 system memory, 8GB GDDR6 VRAM, and an up to 2TB SSD. Given the semi-custom nature of the hardware, making one-to-one comparisons difficult. The DIY configuration outlined by the Gamers Nexus includes a Ryzen 5 7400F processor, Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE V2 cooler, Gigabyte A620I AX motherboard, 16GB of DDR5-5600 memory, a 512GB NVMe SSD, Radeon RX 7600 graphics card, Cooler Master Q300L V3 case, and a 300W-class power supply equivalent. The content creator pointed out that the Steam Machine’s aggressive power limits result in lower real-world performance than the retail desktop components used in the comparison.
The Steam Machine is officially set to launch on June 29, 2026.
