With only 300 Steam Machines delivered to lucky beta testers, the team at iFixit was able to get hold of one and just like what the online repair community usually does, the gaming machine was dissected to know more about its "anatomy."
The 300 Steam Machines for Beta Testing were shipped December 13 and all the guys at iFixit needed were two screwdrivers to pry it open.
Valve has not announced a tag price for its creation but based on its innards, iFixit was able to come up with a rough estimate.
"The Steam Machine is essentially a highly customized desktop PC and shares many of the same hallmarks of repairability: parts that are easy to access and upgrade, modular design, and even room (and a pre-routed SATA cable) for a second hard drive. Curious as to what this particular Steam Machine was worth in terms of hardware, we specced out the components and came up with a rough value of $1,300," iFixit disclosed in an email to Tech Times.
"We've seen plenty of desktops before, so (for us) the controller was a more interesting test of Valve's hardware design prowess. Valve knows that dragging PC gamers into the living room and away from their mouse would require an adequate substitute. Valve's take on adequate: more buttons. The controller is essentially a handheld keyboard-and an easy to disassemble one, at that," the iFixit team added.
As iFixit found out, the Steam Machine has a Mini-ITX motherboard that is maxed out with two PC3 12800 8GB Crucial ballistix Sport RAM. All of the graphics demand is handled by a ZOTAC GeForce GTX 780 with 3GB GDDR5 memory. The brains under the hood is a 3.2GHz Intel Core i5. The The storage is pretty generous and comes in the form of a 1TB solid state hybrid drive by Seagate. To make sure power is delivered to all of its components, the Steam Machine comes with a SilverStone SFX Series 450-watt power supply.
iFixit gave the innovative gaming device a repairability score of 9 of 10. It praises the Steam Machine for its modular design that will make it easy for users to upgrade their rig. The biggest challenge during the exploration was the removal of RAM while cable routing was a bit tricky during reassembly.
Gamers can expect more details from Valve at the upcoming CES in January.
