HP and Lenovo Chromebooks expected to support Steam

HP, Lenovo, Acer and Asus are expected to be among the first companies to release gaming Chromebooks. The Chromium Gerrit code change suggests that vendors are working on Chrome OS devices that will support Steam.

In January 2020, Google said it would be bringing Steam to Chromebooks, and that plan may be starting to take shape. 9to5Google noticed on Saturday a code change showing a list of Chromebook models that will support Steam:

• Acer Chromebook 514 (CB514-1H)
• Acer Chromebook 515
• Acer Chromebook Spin 713 (CP713-3W)
• Chromebook Asus Flip CX5 (CX5500)
• Chromebook Asus CX9 (CX9400)
• Chromebook HP Pro c640 G2

None of the laptop manufacturers we contacted responded to us in time to post. Google has told Ars Technica in the past that there is a lot of experimentation going on with Chromium Gerrit, so things may look different by the time the change hits consumers.

However, last month Chromium Gerrit also showed off work on RGB keyboard support for Chromebooks, another sign that gaming Chromebooks could be coming.

Expected minimum specifications

It looks like a Chromebook will need some pretty powerful specs to run Steam. Currently expected minimum specs include an 11th Gen Intel i5 processor and 8GB of RAM. As 9to5Google points out, other Chromebooks may be added to the list, especially since we haven’t received official confirmation from Google, Steam, or any laptop manufacturers yet. The publication pointed to a Chromium Gerrit link showing testing of 10th generation Intel and AMD processors.

Interestingly, there are no details about the Arm-based chips. While there are no Chromebooks with dedicated Nvidia GPUs, 9to5Google noted the Chromium Gerrit contribution from Nvidia employees, which it says “will be used exclusively by the virtual machine that will be used by Steam.”

Nvidia is working with MediaTek, maker of many of the Arm-based SoCs used in Chromebooks, on a reference platform that supports Chromium, the Nvidia SDK, and Linux. The company has promised to bring capabilities like Nvidia’s ray tracing and DLSS to Arm-based chips, and has demonstrated such features running on MediaTek’s Kompanio 1200 chip, which is expected to appear in Chromebooks. Since we’re talking about the first Chrome OS devices with dedicated Nvidia graphics cards, we expect these gaming Chromebooks to come with a higher price tag as well.

The Chromebook models described in Chromium Gerrit are already quite expensive. For example, the Acer Chromebook 515 currently starts at $650, while the Asus Chromebook Flip CX5 can be found for $830 with the i5. The HP c640 G2 Chromebook starts at $489 but goes up to $1254 for the i5.

As Google Stadia fails, it will be interesting to see Google’s next attempt at bringing gamers to PC.