Earlier this month, Valve revealed that it would postpone the launch of its upcoming Steam Machine desktop and Steam Frame VR headset due to ongoing memory and storage shortages that have been affecting the PC market since late 2025. Additionally, these supply issues are impacting already released products as well.
Valve included a statement on its Steam Deck page indicating that the device would experience "intermittent stock issues in certain areas due to shortages of memory and storage." Currently, none of the three configurations of the Steam Deck offered by Valve are available for purchase, nor are any of the certified refurbished options that Valve occasionally provides.
So far, Valve has not indicated any increases in pricing for the Deck, at least for the time being—the 512GB OLED variant remains priced at $549 and the 1TB model at $649. However, the entry-level 256GB LCD model has officially been phased out now that it is sold out, raising the effective starting price of the Deck from $399 to $549. In December, Valve announced it was stopping production of the LCD version and would not restock it after it sold out.
The hardware of the Steam Deck has reached the four-year mark this month, and since then, newer, faster hardware with superior chips and higher-resolution displays has emerged. Nevertheless, those Ryzen Z1 and Z2 chips are not always significantly quicker than the Deck’s custom AMD chip; many of those newer handheld devices are also much pricier than the OLED Deck’s $549 starting price.
When available, the Deck still presents impressive performance and specifications for its cost. Shortages in RAM and flash memory chips—primarily driven by the AI industry's overwhelming demand for these components and anticipated to persist through 2026 and beyond—have surfaced at a particularly inconvenient time for Valve.
The Steam Deck has contributed to slightly diminishing Windows' stronghold on gaming PCs, thanks to the Proton translation technology that enables the unaltered Windows games to function on the Linux-based SteamOS. The company’s plans to expand on this achievement with the Steam Machine and the Steam Frame have been hindered by the memory and storage shortages, resulting in potential Steam Deck buyers considering alternative Windows-based handheld options instead.
If you are seeking a handheld device that operates on SteamOS, Lenovo’s Legion Go S is currently the only third-party handheld that comes equipped with this operating system. However, adventurous users can experiment with SteamOS on any handheld that is powered by AMD.
Valve is providing beta assistance for the Legion Go (without the S), the Asus ROG Ally, and the Asus ROG Ally X, and we have successfully installed the operating system on many different AMD-based desktop and laptop computers. For those who prefer not to wait for the Steam Machine, creating a custom build is another option—I have done it myself with positive outcomes thus far.
To achieve the best performance, a configuration with an AMD Ryzen processor and a Radeon graphics card is recommended, and recent testing by Ars has indicated that graphics cards with only 8GB of VRAM might face challenges running games as smoothly as they do on Windows.
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