Valve Announces Hardware Specs on Steam Machines – Intel CPU and NVIDIA GPU

Greg Coomer from Valve announced for the very first time the hardware details that will be used on the first 300 prototype Steam Machines the company will be shipping out later this year. 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. The only thing that Valve will be designing is the chassis, but they will be sharing the source CAD files for the enclosure, in the event that someone wants to make or modify it on their own!

It should also be noted that Valve doesnt want gamers to believe that buying a Steam Machine is the only way to get the ideal living room experience. many gamers will want to use the PC they already have and that is entirely possible thanks to SteamOS. The prototype were talking about here is not meant to replace that, Coomer says in a blog post made this morning. Many of those users would like to have a way to bridge the gap into the living room without giving up their existing hardware and without spending lots of money. We think thats a great goal, and were working on ways to use our in-home streaming technology to accomplish it well talk more about that in the future.

Hardware Specs on The First 300 Valve Steam Machine Prototypes:

GPU: some units with NVIDIA Titan, some GTX780, some GTX760, and some GTX660
CPU: some boxes with Intel Core i7-4770, some Core i5-4570, and some Core i3
RAM: 16GB DDR3-1600 (CPU), 3GB DDR5 (GPU)
Storage: 1TB/8GB Hybrid SSHD
Power Supply: Internal 450w 80Plus Gold
Dimensions: approx. 12 x 12.4 x 2.9 in high

It’s a shock to see that a 450W power supply used for something that could be running an NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan graphics card, but it goes to show you what you can get away with when using high-quality components! The NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan has a suggested PSU rating of 600W in case anyone is wondering.