http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse#announcements/detail/2145128928746175450

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

didn't see a thread about this here so i thought i would post one; looks like specs are a lot higher than i expected.

edit: not sure why the topic came up as a question, newb topic starter here.

Hmm. I'm no PC expert, but 16GB RAM seems like overkill for a machine made just for gaming and media streaming. Also, 450w power seems maybe a bit low to make it viable for future upgrades. Maybe they'll swap. Otherwise, that's a nice little PC.

So buy one of these and a copy of Windows and you're good for a gaming PC.

It's probably a little bit of future proofing on their part. I think Watch Dogs is going to require 4GB and that's just a cross-gen game. I wouldn't be surprised if 16 becomes the standard amount of gaming PC RAM two years from now.

Hope I get one of those with the Titan in it.
And then hope the Valve guys are so confused and I can send it back later with a GTX660 in it!

But seriously, not terrible specs for a machine like that I guess

Wow that's much better than I was expecting but seriously how much are they expecting to sell this for?

Yeah exactly, I saw that this was on a Linux based operating system and was designed with streaming in mind and expected something that would end up more competitively priced. Who's going to pay a tonne of money for one with Titan built in? Wouldn't those people just build their own?

i couldn't see this go below 600 easy, but since its Valve, who knows.

That is the big question for sure, though I would hope that Valve knows exactly how cheap some people are able to get hardware for a PC these days when they're willing to look around for deals for more than 1,5 seconds and maybe set their prices accordingly.

Obviously not gonna bump it lower because manufacturing probably costs a lot as well.
But when they release Half-Life 3 at some point and the masses go "WOOO! WAITING FOR ELEVATORS AND OH LOOK PHYSICS BASED PUZZLES!" Valve will earn so much money that they'll just throw SteamBoxes at everyone in the world.

They're like the Oprah of the gaming community.
Only armed with knives

If you have some idea of what a Titan is but have no clue how to put together the rest of your computer, then I can see someone buying this.

Another requirement would be having loads of disposable income, of course. If you're a guy on the upper end of society who has wanted to try PC gaming for a while but has never had the know-how or the time or the motivation to get into learning anything about PC's, then you could pick one of these up and install Windows (which doesn't even require work these days and may actually take less than 39 minutes!) and be good to go.

That's true, nothing really changes I guess because that's pretty much how it is now.
Want a PC and play some games quick and easy? then people just buy them. Others setup their own.

Also, I remember a time where windows sometimes took an hour to install and the install progress window said "Might take a few minutes"
Good times! .. All this less than 39 minutes business is making me worried.
How little is it installing? How much am I missing out on for not buying the "Ultimate Haha Not Home or Pro-edition-what-a-bunch-of-chumps, Super Duper Dapper Amazing X-Treme Extreme" version of Windows?

The announcement in the link makes me very worried this is just going to end up being a dumb branding thing that OEMs can slap on their pre-built gaming PCs. If Valve isn't making the box, then there won't be a subsidy for buying it. That means that we're probably going to end up with Dell, HP, and Asus making Steamboxes that suck just as much as their current desktop gaming computers (think a million GBs of RAM and 8TB of HDD space, but a low end video card and no SSD) and cost either the same or slightly less (because of the lack of Windows).

Well this should be interesting.

No surprise they are sticking with NVidia for their excellent Linux binary video card drivers.

Just spec'ing a hardware target range for Linux gaming is going to be a big help to getting things moving finally. Plus they will iron out all of the driver nonsense. The things should just work when you power them up.