Valve's Steam Machine has already drawn criticism for its high price and less-than-stellar performance: in gaming tests, the console landed between the AMD Radeon RX 6600 and RX 7600. Now it turns out that memory was one of the compromises. Instead of dual-channel DDR5, Valve used single-channel DDR5, and fresh tests from Gamers Nexus show that it really does hold the system back.
The gap is most visible in workloads where CPU performance matters. In the 7Zip file compression test, moving from single-channel to dual-channel memory improved performance by up to 19.4%. In games, the effect depends on settings: at High or Ultra quality in 1080p, most titles gained only 0.6% to 3.6%, because the load more often runs into the GPU. Baldur's Gate 3 was the exception, with gains reaching 8.7% even on Ultra.
At low settings and high FPS, as in esports-style scenarios, the benefit becomes easier to notice. Baldur's Gate 3 at 1080p gained 15.3%, The Outer Worlds 2 at the same settings added 14.7%, while Resident Evil 4 in performance-priority mode showed roughly 10% extra. In other words, single-channel memory hurts most when Steam Machine is expected to push lots of frames, not just render heavy graphics.
Still, a memory upgrade may not be straightforward. Gamers Nexus ran into unstable booting with some DDR5 SODIMM modules, so they ultimately had to pick a stick that was as close as possible to Valve's stock memory. Valve also still does not list the supported DDR5 frequencies for Steam Machine, and some combinations of timings and speeds may cause trouble.
Steam Machine ships with DDR5-5600 and unimpressive timings, so faster memory could theoretically bring another performance bump. But without clear compatibility information, that upgrade remains risky. Prices were not listed in the original material.