Until Valve's Steam Machines hardware begins releasing next year, prototype boxes will arrive to beta testers for exhausting hardware testing. Valve will ship three hundred boxes to chosen beta testers with hardware specifications much greater than the upcoming consoles.
Other companies will too develop their own Steam Machines hardware, but Valve will still put together a box designed as "a high-end, high-performance box, built out of off-the-shelf PC parts." Until owners decide to upgrade the default parts, the Steam hardware prototype will include 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 DDR5 (GPU)
- Storage: 1TB/8GB Hybrid SSHD
- Power Supply: Internal 450w 80Plus Gold
- Dimensions: approx. 12 x 12.4 x 2.9 in high
For the sake of comparison, the Xbox One and PS4 will house 8GB of RAM and include 500GB of internal storage.
To go along with their new hardware, Valve also revealed a touch-enabled controller that rids of analog sticks in favor of haptic touchpads.
