commanderValve says it's still looking for "a bunch of RAM" during GDC 2026 talk, but new hardware remains on track
They probably should do this, just to get the thing sold. Normal users may not have any ddr5 ram laying around or machines they can strip it from, but there’s a subset of geeky users who do. My friend is looking for an upgrade from his aging gaming laptop, and I’m trying to help him plan out what the buy next, it would be great if I could just recommend the steam machine but I have no idea when it’ll actually ship and how much it’ll cost.
Remember that laptops typically have a different form factor for RAM than desktop PCs, so if valve goes for DIMM, an old laptop might not be useful for that.
Is the steam machine a normal ATX design? I have their original Steam Machine made by Dell, the Alienware Alpha, and it was a custom laptop motherboard with laptop sized DIMM slots.
Its VRAM (8GB) is soldered and not upgradeable. Its main memory (16GB) uses SODIMM but accessing those slots seems to require removing the heatsink which means anyone who does so should be ready to replace the thermal paste as well. That’s a lot to expect from the people who buy this thing considering it’s largely intended for people who don’t already use a custom desktop build.
Even if they do want to sell it without the SODIMM slots populated to avoid supply issues there, they can’t avoid the supply issues on the VRAM side.