Valve Releases Details About Steam Box Beta Hardware Specifications

Valve are not hanging around, they’re getting their systems ready for release into the wild to 300 lucky people. While we still don’t know who will get the hardware (I know I have my name down!) we now know a little more about the systems, a nice addition to the wave of information we had last week about the new controllers.

Steam Machines will be available next year from a variety of companies, with varying specifications and in Valves own words they may differ substantially from the Valve prototypes.

Much like Nvidia are working on at the moment with their BattleBox, I think it’s already shaping up that “Steam Box” will be a badge of honour, much like a “this machine meets our standards” much in the same way as THX do with giving their thumbs up to movie production quality, albeit with Valve offering a set of templates for people to build towards, and upon.

“So for our own first prototype Steam Machine ( the one we’re shipping to 300 Steam users ), we’ve chosen to build something special. The prototype machine is a high-end, high-performance box, built out of off-the-shelf PC parts. It is also fully upgradable, allowing any user to swap out the GPU, hard drive, CPU, even the motherboard if you really want to. Apart from the custom enclosure, anyone can go and build exactly the same machine by shopping for components and assembling it themselves. And we expect that at least a few people will do just that. (We’ll also share the source CAD files for our enclosure, in case people want to replicate it as well.) “

This isn’t the final hardware, it’s not even representative of the whole range of what Valve wants to do, but it should give you some idea of the higher end of their scale in terms of performance.

The 300 prototype units will ship with the following components:

• GPU: some units with NVidia Titan, some GTX780, some GTX760, and some GTX660
• CPU: some boxes with Intel i7-4770, some i5-4570, and some i3
• RAM: 16GB DDR3-1600 (CPU), 3GB GDDR5 (GPU)
• Storage: 1TB/8GB Hybrid SSHD
• Power Supply: Internal 450w 80Plus Gold
• Dimensions: approx. 12 x 12.4 x 2.9 in high

Upgrades will be at each user’s discretion on the final models, and Steam intend to help customers understand the differences between machines, hardware strengths and weaknesses, and upgrade decisions. Seeming trying to educate the PC gaming community to make it feel a little more accessible.

What are your thoughts on the new hardware, excited on this new bridge between the desktop PC and the HTPC?

Thank you Valve for providing us with this information.