Adding a Second RAM Stick to Valve's Steam Machine Boosts Performance Up to 20%

Valve’s Steam Machine ships with a single stick of DDR5 memory, and the performance cost is larger than the company has let on.

Independent testing from hardware analysis outlet Gamers Nexus puts real numbers on the gap. In their benchmarks, adding a second 16GB SO-DIMM to switch from single-channel to dual-channel memory produced a performance swing of up to 20 percent, depending on the workload.

The difference shows up most clearly in CPU-intensive tasks. The 7-Zip compression benchmark ran nearly 19 percent faster with two sticks of RAM — a result that tracks with the bandwidth uplift dual-channel memory provides. Decompression speeds were nearly identical regardless of configuration, confirming that not every workload benefits equally from higher memory throughput.

In games, the results were split. Baldur’s Gate 3 averaged 69.4 fps with dual-channel memory versus 60.2 fps on the stock single-stick configuration — a 15 percent improvement. Resident Evil 4 Remake gained 10 percent (129.9 fps vs. 118.1 fps). The Outer Worlds 2 jumped 14 percent. Starfield showed only a modest 3 percent gain.

Some titles barely registered a difference. Black Myth: Wukong, Stellaris, and Final Fantasy XIV ran at nearly identical frame rates regardless of memory configuration, suggesting those games are less sensitive to memory bandwidth in the scenarios Gamers Nexus tested.

The contradiction with Valve’s public stance is hard to ignore. The company previously stated that the performance gap between single- and dual-channel configurations was negligible. The benchmark data tells a different story — at least for the workloads that do lean on memory bandwidth.

Valve confirmed that all currently shipping Steam Machines come with a single 16GB stick. Earlier documentation suggested customers might receive either a 1×16GB or a 2×8GB configuration, but that flexibility has been dropped. Out of the box, every unit runs in single-channel mode. Users who want dual-channel performance have to buy and install a second stick themselves.

None of this is surprising from a hardware perspective. Dual-channel memory doubles the memory bus width, and games or applications that move large amounts of data between the CPU and RAM see a clear benefit from that headroom. Even on fast DDR5 memory, the bandwidth gap between single- and dual-channel operation remains real.

The good news, at least, is that the upgrade path is straightforward — the Steam Machine’s SO-DIMM slot is accessible, and adding a second stick is a simple DIY job. It’s just not something most buyers would expect to need to do on day one.