Is This Valve’s Steam Box Console? Xi3’s Piston Detailed
 

After months of speculation, additional details of Valve’s supposed Steam “console” have begun to emerge and it looks like Xi3 will be producing it.

In a press release sent to journalists late yesterday, Valve and compact PC manufacturer Xi3 announced the Piston, a first-stage development computer that’s been optimized for Steam. At this point, both Valve and Xi3 are keeping a whole lot of information close to their chests but some additional details have begun to emerge. What we do know is that Valve has made a substantial investment in Xi3 for the continued development of Piston and whatever mass market implementations may follow.

Read more here: Is This Valve?s Steam Box Console? Xi3?s Piston Detailed | Hardware Canucks

Looks interesting but is woefully underpowered.

I would hope that the steambox has at least an a10 with a 6670, however that comes with all the issues of crossfire compatibility. I would hope to see an A6 with a mid range discrete gpu like the 7850 or gtx 560 ti. I'd think intel would be out of the question with a reasonable price point similar to a console at release.

Nah I got a AMD Dual Graphics setup in one of my computers and there isn't a compatibility issue what so ever. If Dual Graphics mode is enabled it acts a a single graphics card but more powerful than both the APU and Discrete combined.

Your first hope could be possible (I think that would be nice). Don't think your second thought will see the light of day in that compact of a setup.

I really like the layout of the back I/O shield. 4xeSATA ports, 4xUSB 3.0, 4x USB 2.0: that's more than most ATX motherboards give you... I definitely haven't seen four eSATA on a motherboard's rear I/O before.

Hmm so Radeon 7660G likely means mobile AMD A10'ish on the x86 side, so I definitely have to agree that this is underpowered. At 1080p medium details, most of the AAA games on Steam's front page would be CPU bound by that unless they jack up the clock speeds. Getting to the desktop A10 levels would be sufficient for medium, but then the power brick would be almost as big as the "console".

The dimensions seem just barely big enough for a 92mm fan, which I hope is what they're using.

More info: Gabe Newell Reveals More Steam Console Details | Hardware Canucks