Valve Steam Machine Prototype Unveiled: A Steam Box With Infinite Possibilites, with More Steam Controller Info Promised Soon

When Valve announced its Steam OS, which would work with third-party "Steam Machines," the immediate question was, "What would a Steam Machine look like?" Valve has now given us a taste, unveiling a prototype for a Steam Machine, specs and all.

One of the most important parts of the Steam Machine prototype unveiling is the fact that Valve intends its Steam OS to run on "high-end, high-performance" hardware. But Valve is also keeping its specifications flexible, so there will be a wide variety of Steam Machines at different price points.

"Some of those companies will be capable of meeting the demands of lots of Steam users very quickly, some will be more specialized and lower volume. The hardware specs of each of those machines will differ, in many cases substantially, from our prototype," said Valve in its announcement. "Others would opt for machines that have been more carefully designed to cost less, or to be tiny, or super quiet, and there will be Steam Machines that fit those descriptions."

Valve even states that enterprising individuals "can go and build exactly the same machine by shopping for components and assembling it themselves."

Open, customizable, and upgradable are the keywords for Steam's first generation of consoles. Steam Machines, basically, will be the anti-Xbox, anti-Nintendo, anti-PlayStation, bringing back the era of tinkering more akin to the early garage-built personal computers of the 70s and 80s.

Valve is beginning by shipping a prototype to 300 Steam users, built entirely out of off-the-shelf PC parts, meaning the users can swap out and upgrade hard drives, CPU, and even the motherboard.

Here are the prototype's (obviously loose) specs from the announcement:

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 

Valve promise a closer look at its Steam Controller soon, which was partially unveiled in late September to have a touchscreen in the center, with two circular haptic trackpads instead of a traditional d-pad and XYBA buttons.