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Steam Machine and Steam Frame shipping "this summer", Valve now rolling out verification systems
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this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2026
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Steam Hardware
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A place to discuss and support all Steam Hardware, including Steam Deck, Steam Machine, Steam Frame, and SteamOS in general.
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I wonder if they're going to have a sku for the Frame with drastically reduced ram that's required to be tethered to a host PC and not run anything on its own until upgraded.
Being a standalone unit is nice, but I wasn't planning on using it that way, and being able to save money by reducing ram would be nice
This would be smart. Like it would have been a bonus for me but it’s not worth the premium on ram right now.
The Frame is an embedded mobile device with space constraints, it's going to have soldered ram and storage. At least it has a Micro SD card slot so you don't have to necessarily pay for the biggest SSD.
if you reduce its ram to the point it's no longer practical to run games on it anymore, then all the compute power it has will also be wasted. at this point might as well redesign from ground up to be a tether device...
That's literally my point. Let me buy the non-Meta headset now, and upgrade it with more ram in 2 years when the prices aren't as stupid
That's what I've been wanting, but I don't think so, at least not yet. I have a pretty powerful PC, and I don't care to use this away from it. I'm totally fine with a tethered requirement. Being standalone is cool, but it isn't worth the additional price in my opinion.
edit: My brain somehow completely glossed over Steam Frame not Steam Machine. I haven't actually thought about VR in years. my bad.
You basically just got a bigger more expensive Steam Link at that point. Which the original one should still work?
The Frame is a VR headset. How is that comparable to the Steam Link that is meant for display on a screen?
If all I had was a big screen beyond with a steam link strapped to it that's still a pretty great vr headset for the price
I believe you are thinking of a Steam Machine with this response.
You're right, kinda threw out that comment before leaving the the house.
On that note, though; I'm sure the RAM in the steam machine will likely be upgradeable, since it's basically a small form prefab PC with Arch / SteamOS pre-loaded on it.
In fact, I hope this means we will see a desktop release of SteamOS that isn't just turning your PC into a bulky Steam Deck.
There are advantages to soldered RAM. It can be faster without extra cost. The issue is it's not upgradable. It depends if they're targeting people who will upgrade their device or people who won't on which is the smarter option.
If you want SteamOS though, there are already plenty of options. SteamOS is just another distro based on Arch. It isn't doing anything special (except on the actual Steam Machine which will have extra hardware to, for example, turn on when you press the button on your controller). There is literally no reason you should be waiting for it, especially if you want just a desktop OS that can play games. If you want a console-like experience, where it's harder to access the desktop and more restricted, then there still isn't a reason but it is a thing you can do.
The nice thing about Steam OS in Desktop mode is that you can get the Arch experience without setting up Arch.
I tried Steam OS for a while, locked into desktop mode, and it was great; but I got tired of having to reinstall aur after every update. Ended up going back to an Ubuntu build and using KDE Plasma Desktop, since that was the main thing I enjoyed.
But you can get the same with Garuda, CachyOS, or other Arch based distros, without any limitations. There's no reason for people to be waiting for SteamOS because it's not even the best option for most users.