Really need more info about this to be revealed before I can make a judgement, since I don't know whether it's like an Ouya/VitaTV thing, a cheap console to play the games you want to, or if this will mean affordable PC gaming but with restrictions, so you can't play uPlay or Origin needed games. Or if it'll be a range of different console grades, like Laptops and PCs do, so you can choose what suits you the best at the price you can afford. So come on friday, hopefully more will be announced then.
Pretty nice spec range, if this is to predict the line up of the final products. Now to see if they all work cleanly of SteamOS and at an affordable price
Some of those specs seem really strange to me. 16GB of RAM is way more than any home gamer needs, an 8GB hybrid drive is a joke, and a 450W PSU seems horribly underpowered for something with these specs. I suppose Valve knows what they're doing, and the consumer can upgrade the machines, but this is just... strange. Going to reserve most of my judgement until they have more information.
This is one thing I noticed as well. The PC I'm using right now has a 650W PSU and is probably 1/2 as strong as the strongest Steam Machine prototype.
Just wanted to throw this in, but a 1TB/8GB SSHD is one drive. It has the 8GB of an SSD which will handle the most commonly accessed files on the HDD and store it for easy access. Basically it's a hard drive with a ram stick. Small formfactor. One SATA cable. Easy. The real problem I'm seeing is cooling. Unless they're making their own enclosed liquid cooling loops that have like, 1cm thick radiators, this thing will probably get pretty hot (Especially running a 4770). Also, a Titan requires at least 250 watts, so using a 450 watt PSU and a Titan would mean they'd need to use a lower model CPU, which would probably bottleneck the system.
