Valve Announce New Steam-Powered PC at CES

[RobinHood]

The Half Life creators are finally ready to showcase their Steam-powered system, which is less than half the size of traditional gaming PCs.

Today Valve and hardware partner Xi3 announced they will showcase a new "development stage computer system" this week at CES. The press release didn't share the PC specifications, but it will be optimized for Big Picture mode and be housed in one of Xi3's modular systems like the one shown above (most likely with a different array of ports). This chassis is roughly the size of a grapefruit and is built to mount on the back of displays.

"Today marks the beginning of a new era for Xi3," said Xi3 CEO Jason A. Sullivan in a press release.

"This new development stage product will allow users to take full-advantage of their large high-definition TV displays for an amazing computer game experience. As a result, this new system could provide access to thousands of gaming titles through an integrated system that exceeds the capabilities of leading game consoles, but can fit in the palm of your hand."

You can read the entire press release here.

 

[Echo]

needs to be literally steam powered

 

[Kukka]

http://www.xi3.com/news.php?id=708

 

[RobinHood]

needs to be literally steam powered

Steam powered PC you say?
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2012/09/19/lian-li-pc-ck101/1

 

[RobinHood]

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/

 

[RobinHood]

Apparently there's 3 big announcements coming up soon, I think the Steam box will be one of them

 

[RobinHood]

First one's out - Steam OS Announced!

 

[RobinHood]

The features seem pretty cool

In-home Streaming

You can play all your Windows and Mac games on your SteamOS machine, too. Just turn on your existing computer and run Steam as you always have - then your SteamOS machine can stream those games over your home network straight to your TV!

Family Sharing

In the past, sharing Steam games with your family members was hard. Now you can share the games you love with the people you love. Family Sharing allows you to take turns playing one another’s games while earning your own Steam achievements and saving your individual game progress to the Steam cloud.

 

[[FFF]Skellen]

Good luck upgrading the cpu/gpu to a mouse & wheel space looks a bit tight for him in there have to put him on a diet first

 

[RobinHood]

Next announcement is out - the Steam boxes are coming!

Sounds like you'll be able to build your own and just install the OS too, which sounds pretty cool.

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamMachines/

 

[God UK]

Get entered in getting one for "Beta" testing...

damn i need a gamepad

 

[RobinHood]

Someone has done some pretty amazing analysis of the images used on the announcement pages

 

[RobinHood]

And now the Steam controller!

http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamController/

 

[RobinHood]

The full article about the controller is worth a read, it sounds pretty amazing.
I'm not keen on consoles due to the controllers and I'm lame with the joy sticks, but these track pads could be really nice to use, quite keen to check this out.

 

[RobinHood]

The Steam Box


Valve will ship 300 prototype Steam Machines to beta testers this year, and there's nothing particularly special about their specs. That’s kind of the point, though: the first Steam Machine is a computer that can fit bog standard parts just like a full-size gaming rig, and yet fit into your entertainment center. Valve's steel and aluminum chassis measures just over 12 inches on a side and is 2.9 inches tall, making it a little bigger than an Xbox 360 and smaller than any gaming PC of its ilk. And yet the box manages to fit a giant Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan graphics card and a full desktop CPU — and keep those parts quiet and cool — without cramming them in like a jigsaw puzzle.

That might sound like common sense, but it’s remarkably hard to find a case that does so while still making it easy to drop components in. Here, the key component responsible for dividing those three zones is a simple plastic shroud which unscrews in a jiffy. The box we touched was already surprisingly cool and quiet, but Valve's still tweaking the design: we saw Valve printing a couple of the shrouds as we walked through its rapid prototyping lab.

The secret is actually quite simple, it turns out: Valve designed the case so the parts can breathe individually. The CPU blows air out the top, the power supply out the side, and the graphics card exhaust out back, and none share any airspace within the case.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/4/5063760/we-try-the-steam-machine-valves-video-game-console-of-the-future

 

[RobinHood]

Good review here