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Details and Specs for Valve "Piston" Revealed


Adam91

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Some details have been revealed about a console Valve is creating codenamed "Piston", not much has been revealed about Valve's latest project just yet but early spec and details have been revealed at CES

yesterday. Read below for more info.

 

Article and Images from

Polygon.

 

Xi3 brought an early version of Piston to CES, but was tight lipped on details about the hardware currently in development with Valve. Xi3 chief marketing officer David Politis told Polygon that Piston will offer up to 1 TB of interal storage and offer modular component updates, including the option to upgrade the PC's CPU and RAM.

 

Xi3 wouldn't discuss price for Piston, but commented that the Steam Box is based on its "performance level" X7A offering, which is priced at $999. Xi3 declined to comment on what would differentiate Piston hardware-wise from a standard X7A.

 

Xi3 also offers the entry level X5A, which is priced at $499 with a Linux operating system.

 

The demo unit of Piston featured an IO board boasting one ethernet port, 1/8" audio in/out, SPDIF optical audio, four USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports (with one dedicated to keyboard input), four eSATAp ports, two Mini Display Port ports and one DisplayPort/HDMI port.

 

 

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I'll add a bit of what I know to this.

 

The piston is not an actual product, it is a concept. While they showed off one of these concepts at the CES there are several more which are being considered just as much as the one shown off at CES.

 

The piston (which I will for now on call 'the Steam Box') is a miniature computer which will likely cost $1000 at the cheapest given that it contains a 1 TB SSD which normally sell for about $2000. It's main purpose will be to play games through Steam on your tv and to utilize the new 'Big Picture' feature on Steam. It will come with a controller supposedly more precise than anything that currently exists. It is meant to be a cheaper alternative to buying a gaming PC. It will come built in with a Linux operating system however it will be possible to switch to a Windows Operating System. It is quasi customizable with all of it's parts being replaceable, however they have also bundled some components together making this more difficult, for example to replace the graphics card you also have to replace the Motherboard.

 

The Steam Box is speculated to start a new genre of Steam Boxes which will act like consoles except use the Steam market place. This genre would currently consist of the Nvidia Shield, The Piston, and Razer's new gaming tablet.

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