Steam Machine and Steam Frame Delays Are the Latest Product of the RAM Crisis

Why It Matters

The delay highlights how AI‑driven component scarcity can disrupt hardware roadmaps, potentially reshaping the PC gaming and VR markets. It forces manufacturers to rethink pricing strategies and performance optimization for consumer confidence.

Key Takeaways

• RAM shortage delays Valve's Steam Machine launch
• Storage price spikes affect Steam Frame timeline
• Valve targets first half 2024 release, no dates
• Memory management updates aim to improve performance
• DIY Steam Machines show GPU RAM limits

Pulse Analysis

The global surge in artificial‑intelligence workloads has strained memory supply chains, pushing DRAM and NAND prices to multi‑year highs. Chip manufacturers are prioritising data‑center demand, leaving consumer‑grade components scarce and expensive. Valve’s Steam Machine and Steam Frame, announced amid optimism, now sit at the mercy of these market dynamics, forcing the company to defer concrete pricing and shipping schedules while monitoring component volatility.

For gamers and VR enthusiasts, the postponement translates into uncertainty around cost‑effective, high‑performance hardware. Valve’s promise to price the Steam Machine like a comparable gaming PC suggests future retail prices will mirror broader PC component trends, potentially eroding its value proposition. Early DIY Steam Machines built from AMD parts have revealed performance shortfalls, especially on GPUs with limited VRAM, underscoring the need for Valve’s announced memory‑management and upscaling enhancements. These software improvements could benefit both official and community‑built systems, narrowing the performance gap with Windows‑based rigs.

Looking ahead, Valve must balance component scarcity with consumer expectations. Strategic sourcing, modular design, or staggered feature rollouts could mitigate supply shocks, while transparent communication may preserve brand trust. If the memory crunch eases, Valve could capitalize on a revived interest in SteamOS‑centric devices, positioning the Steam Machine and Frame as affordable alternatives to traditional gaming PCs and high‑end VR headsets. Conversely, prolonged shortages risk ceding market share to competitors that can deliver stable pricing and timely releases.

Steam Machine and Steam Frame delays are the latest product of the RAM crisis

Andrew Cunningham · Senior Technology Reporter, Ars Technica

When Valve announced its Steam Machine desktop PC and Steam Frame VR headset in mid‑November of last year, it declined to announce pricing or availability information for either device. That was partly because RAM and storage prices had already begun to climb due to shortages caused by the AI industry’s insatiable need for memory. Those price spikes have only gotten worse since then, and they’re beginning to trickle down to GPUs and other devices that use memory chips.

This week, Valve has officially announced that it’s still not ready to make an official announcement about when the Machine or Frame will be available or what they’ll cost.

Valve says it still plans to launch both devices (as well as the new Steam Controller) “in the first half of the year,” but that uncertainty around RAM and storage prices means that Valve “[has] work to do to land on concrete pricing and launch dates we can confidently announce, being mindful of how quickly the circumstances around both of these things can change.”

“When we announced these products in November, we planned on being able to share specific pricing and launch dates by now,” Valve’s blog post reads. “But the memory and storage shortages you’ve likely heard about across the industry have rapidly increased since then. The limited availability and growing prices of these critical components mean we must revisit our exact shipping schedule and pricing (especially around Steam Machine and Steam Frame).”

Valve has been consistent in saying that it expects the Steam Machine to be priced like a comparably specced gaming PC. For better or worse, we can probably expect the pricing to go up and down as pricing for PC components goes up and down.

For impatient SteamOS enthusiasts, we’ve had some success with homemade (or at least home‑bought) Steam Machines made from the same commodity AMD hardware that Valve and other PC builders are using for the Steam Deck and its small army of clones. We did find some issues with running current SteamOS versions on dedicated GPUs—both that games often ran slower than they did on Windows, and that GPUs with 8 GB of graphics RAM did even worse.

Valve told us that it was working on memory‑management improvements for the Steam Machine launch that should address some of the problems we found. Today’s blog post also mentions that Valve is working on “investigating improved upscaling” and “optimizing ray tracing performance in the driver” to help improve performance on the Steam Machine—when that work is done, it should benefit self‑built Steam Machines with similar hardware, too.