Cyberpower's Steam Machine in Both Intel and AMD Flavors
CyberPower's two Steam Machines arrive in the second half of 2014.
On Monday CyperPower revealed two Steam Machines powered by Valve’s Steam OS platform. These include one for the AMD fans and one for Intel customers. Both will arrive in a custom CyberPower Steam Machine gaming chassis.
"The revolutionary Steam OS will give you full control over your Steam game library straight from your living room. All Steam Machines will run the latest version of Steam OS, an open source Linux-based operating system developed specifically for gaming and other entertainment," the company said in a statement.
So let’s cut to the chase. The AMD version, Steam Machine A, will have a $499 price tag and come with an AMD A6-6400K APU clocked up to 3.90 GHz and mounted on an mITX motherboard. This machine will be backed by an AMD Radeon R9 270 2GB GDDR5 video card, a 500 GB 7200 RPM SATA 3 hard drive, and 8 GB of DDR3-1600 dual channel memory. Other features include Wireless AC and Bluetooth connectivity, and an included Steam controller.
Moving on to the Intel box, the Steam Machine I, this model will sport an Intel Core i3-4330 clocked up to 3.5 GHz and mounted on a mITX motherboard. Backing this processor will be a Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 card with 2 GB of GDDR3 memory, and the same 500 GB hard drive, same 8 GB of RAM and the same wireless connectivity. This model will also come with a controller, but will cost a bit more at $699.
"The key hardware feature will be the Steam Controller, which features two circular, clickable trackpads with a touchscreen in the middle," reads the company press release. "Driven by the player's thumbs, the Steam Controller allows for higher fidelity than traditional gamepads, which makes it a better alternative to a mouse and keyboard for controlling PC-centric genres like strategy games and first-person shooters."
The company states that both models will be fully customizable when they become available in the second half of 2014.
| CYBERPOWERPC Steam Machine A | CYBERPOWERPC Steam Machine I | |
|---|---|---|---|
Base Price | $499 | $699 | |
Case | CYBERPOWERPC Steam Machine Gaming Chassis | ||
Graphics | AMD Radeon R9 270 2GB GDDR5 Video Card | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 2GB GDDR5 Video Card | |
Processor | AMD A6-6400K 3.90 GHz | Intel® Core™ i3-4330 3.50 GHz | |
Storage | 500GB SATA-III 7200 RPM HDD | ||
RAM | 8GB DDR3 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory | ||
Chipset | mITX motherboard w/ 802.11 WiFi + Bluetooth | mITX motherboard w/ 802.11 AC WiFi + Bluetooth | |
Accessory | Steam Controller | ||
OS | Steam OS | ||
Availability | ETA: 2H 2014 | ||
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motherboards don't fit in mini itx form factor.
motherboards don't fit in mini itx form factor.
This is true. The only 3 AMD mITX mobos are FM2. About a year ago when I worked at a PC parts shop, people would come in looking for mITX AMD AM3 boards but there weren't any.
It is pretty much as expected. The APUs will be HTPC and entry level while CPUs will be high end.
I think it's a bad move because not everyone will want a mITX APU and may want to rather throw in a more powerful CPU and discrete GPU combo but they can't. For those people, there is Intel as you can still build a i5 4670K/i74770K into a mITX system.
The 700USD is 580USD worth of hardware, not counting the case, PSU and controller.
I think both are pretty nice, just looking at the specs, but benchmarks will tell the whole picture. As it is, they look line nice machines.
It does, it's called LibreOffice, it can also run Ab Init, folding at home or whatever else you can run on linux. Specifically it's Debian, polished and branded into SteamOS by valve.