Valve's Steam Machine Gets iFixit Teardown
A detailed look at the components inside Valve's Steam Machine.
We've already seen a teardown of Valve's Steam Machine thanks to YouTube user Corey Nelson, but the iFixit teardown is something of a rite of passage for new gadgets.
The iFixit crew managed to get its hands on one of the 300 beta units shipped out last week and finished up its teardown early this morning. Thanks to other beta kit users, we already know that this machine packs a quad-core Intel i5-4570 CPU clocked up to 3.2 GHz, 16 GB of RAM, a GeForce GTX 780 GPU with 3 GB of VRAM, an ASRock Z87E-ITX motherboard, and a Silverstone ST455F power supply. So what can the seasoned teardown pros at iFixit say about ease of access and repairability?
According to iFixit, the Steam Machine's parts are easy to access and easy to upgrade; the controller was also easy to take apart. This, along with a modular design and room for another hard drive, was enough to garner the computer an admirable 9 out of 10 on iFixit's repairability scale. In total, the computer's components come to about $1,300 in value.
For the full gallery of images, as well as the step-by-step teardown instructions, head on over to iFixit!
Follow Jane McEntegart @JaneMcEntegart. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

then again, what did we expect? the folks at ifixit must've had fun with this one
dude, that GTX 780 by itself is $500 in value
There's no way this would sell for $500. Valve already said there will be 3, a low, medium, and high spec system.
I would assume this is their high spec system.
Power supply and riser. Makes you wonder if they made the full case.
you have already listed the reasons for which Steam OS will fail in its current form. unless they come up with something new and different, this current version will be little more than a fascination for some folks
Another reason I don't think Steam OS is viable is the number of different possible configurations for Steam Machines. That's a big point of consoles, that developers know exactly what hardware they're dealing with and can optimize much more than if they're dealing with a variety of CPUs and GPUs.
You bet what?
So if some developers don't see the business case to develop or at least provide decent ports for Windows now, what makes you think they'll see the business case to develop for Linux? So yes, I think Steam OS will not be a threat to Windows because it will be just a niche and a curiosity, but if it did somehow take off, it would just further fragment the PC (meaning non-console, non-handheld) gaming market.
The hole Nvidia thing skyrockets the price.
16 GB RAM might be also excessive ( 8GB DDR3 2133MHz or 2400MHz is a much better option).
There are other things that are increasing price.
Check my homemade "SteamBox" with a placeholder A6-5400K:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1440405/asrock-fm2a88x-itx-fm2-mitx-board-kaveri-ready-build
Fragmenting? Games are already linux-compatible. Steam is unifying cross-platform play with SteamOS. How is it fragmenting anything? It doesn't require any new hardware. It doesn't require a user to buy a new OS. Steam is steam, whether it's on Windows or on some other OS. Steam-compatible games will still be steam-compatible games, regardless of whether it runs on Windows, or Mac, or Linux. Game developers/publishers already implement linux-compatibility in games without a major player (like Steam) expressing intent to support linux (until now). Is every game going to have this support from the publisher? No; just like how they already don't. At the moment (and I'm sure it'll change in the future), SteamOS (and steambox) will let people play Steam games that are already linux-compatible on a system where that person might not want to go through the hassle of installing linux, installing wine, troubleshooting all of the issues that go into it. And don't need Windows for anything else.
A lot of people--Steam as well as game publishers--actually don't like working with Microsoft/DirectX, and things implemented in Windows 8 made them even more upset.