Steam Frame’s price isn’t just about memory costs

Memory prices have taken most of the blame for the Steam Frame’s steep $1,059 starting price. Valve says that’s only part of the picture.

So, it’s not just RAM

Speaking to Tom’s Hardware, Valve engineer Pierre-Loup Griffais said memory is just one factor behind the headset’s cost. Copper, motherboards, and even worldwide shipping have all got more expensive over the past couple of years, and that’s feeding into the final price too. Valve wants gaming hardware to be cheaper, he said, but the company is dealing with the same rising costs as everyone else in the industry.

This follows earlier reporting from July, when Qualcomm’s own chip price hikes were already pushing Steam Frame costs up ahead of the official reveal. Most of the pricing talk around Valve’s hardware this year has centred on the DDR5 and LPDDR5X shortages that also affected Steam Machine pricing. Griffais’s comments point to something wider than that, the same AI-driven demand that pushed DRAM prices up nearly 500% over the past year appears to be squeezing the broader supply chain too, not just memory chips.

That suggests prices won’t necessarily fall once memory supply stabilises. If costs for copper and shipping stay high, so does the price of the headset. Valve isn’t absorbing that cost either, it’s being passed on to buyers, with no console-style subsidy in place.

Creds: Tom’s Hardware

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