Fubarberry already posted a SteamDeckHQ article about this but I wanted to highlight the direct sources.
Per Valve in their Steam Machine FAQ:
If I don’t get a Steam Machine right away, is there anything else I can do?
Thanks to the openness of the PC platform, there are lots of options for devices that will allow you to run games natively or streamed to your TV. There are many PC sites and communities out there that can help you with that. For our part, we are continuing to work toward enabling SteamOS to be used on more hardware than just ours. In fact, with the newly-released SteamOS 3.8, you can run the same code and operating system as Steam Machine on your own living-room PC using whatever PC parts you want: learn more here. Right now, only AMD GPUs are supported, but we’re working on expanding support for the future.



I’ll admit something slightly embarrassing.
This has kinda sorta been the case for quite a while now, people have been installing Steam Deck versions of SteamOS on various AMD machines with various levels of success. It was also acknowledged by Valve, with an “at your own risk” policy.
But idiot me thought “AMD platforms” means the CPU needs to be AMD. So just FYI to anyone in the same boat: no, Intel CPUs should work just fine. The only thing they meant is that the GPU has to be AMD. All the other components can kind of be whatever the heck you want. Including CPU, as long as it’s x86-64.
But actually, I understand they now also support Intel GPUs. I think I’ve read that somewhere. So at this point it’s pretty clear that you can use anything expect nvidia.
When AMD bought ATi everyone knew this would be the case for a lot of people. There are definite benefits to matching an AMD CPU and GPU though.
What are those benefits?