Steam box

[DanceswithUnix]

OK, this is a bit silly because we don't know what the requirements are going to be yet, but what the heck it's Friday

What do you think a Steam box should look like and what sort of price can we get one down to without breaking the bank, looking stupid under the TV, or making us deaf. My starter for ten:

£95.50 A10-5800K APU http://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd-a...hz-100w-retail
£66.90 ITX motherboard http://www.scan.co.uk/products/msi-f...-hdmi-mini-itx
£65.76 Low profile low latency 1600MHz ram http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-(...9-9-24-xmp-15v
£33.02 HTPC case http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silve...-black-w-o-psu
£34.99 Modular 400W PSU http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/c...ov-psg400.html
£36.60 500GB laptop size drive http://www.scan.co.uk/products/500gb...8mb-cache-13ms

That's £332.77 so far.

My thoughts for the above:

Is a DVD drive worth having in a digital download game machine? I am going with "no" for now.
APU makes a little ITX case easier to do. uATX is a cheaper motherboard, but I lost it again trying to find a case I didn't think was ugly.
A10 APU gets you a full set of shaders. The 65W one might be better here as it will be flat out quite a lot, and I'm not sure I trust an MSI motherboard on full load for long either (yes I am biassed against MSI motherboards).

Need some sort of controller. Perhaps a bluetooth USB stick would get me using my PS3 or Wii controllers?

[Dooms]

Basically one of these: http://uk.gigabyte.com/products/prod...px?pid=4581#sp

Maybe even using laptop tech such as the nVidia 760m? To be honest they can go either way with whats in the box and I'm struggling in my mind to see how they can get the spec to a decent level but keep the price low enough to interest people.

[DanceswithUnix]

The i3 version of Brix is £340, with insignificant SSD size, not enough ram and gutless graphics.

http://www.icubes.co.uk/ProductDetai...7u-1-9ghz.aspx

The spec I put at the top could, I'm sure, be squashed down into a small case by any company making a lot of them. I notice there is quite a nice ITX shuttle:

http://www.icubes.co.uk/ProductDetai...tle-xh61v.aspx

or at least I like the shuttle heatpipe solution on there, but again I don't see how you can put graphics capability in that box.

[directhex]

It won't be AMD based. Gabe has already made it clear it'll be running Linux, and nobody can say with a straight face that ATI's Linux drivers are good enough for Valve to ship hardware relying on it.

[teppic]

Kaveri looks like it could be a good base, but the AMD drivers in Linux aren't up to scratch (not as bad as they used to be). Presumably it will launch with a couple of major game ports in a deal with game studios.

To compete with the next gen consoles it'd have to have the power of a 7850 or a GTX 660.

[Kumagoro]

Nvidia it seems are going to make some hoohaa soon about a new amazing product which isn't a gpu. I wonder if it's the stream box as it seems to be coinsiding with valves up coming announcements.

[DanceswithUnix]

It won't be AMD based. Gabe has already made it clear it'll be running Linux, and nobody can say with a straight face that ATI's Linux drivers are good enough for Valve to ship hardware relying on it.

I know they have traditionally not been as good as Nvidia, but I honestly couldn't say whether they are good enough. My E350 netbook seems quite stable in Linux, though I have never tried Linux gaming on it. The KDE desktop is 3D rendered though and the drivers certainly hold up better than Intel ones ever have for me.

Kaveri looks like it could be a good base, but the AMD drivers in Linux aren't up to scratch (not as bad as they used to be). Presumably it will launch with a couple of major game ports in a deal with game studios.

To compete with the next gen consoles it'd have to have the power of a 7850 or a GTX 660.

GTX660 will limit case sizes somewhat. I can't see one of those working well as a half height card

Well switching to Athlon x4 saves a few quid, a GTX660 more than adds that back though. Starting to look a bit expensive.

[teppic]

For building one, assuming the AMD drivers get up to scratch, Kaveri looks to be the best idea. The current x4/APUs aren't the best processors, and you can't get small factor FX CPUs. The drivers are fine for day to day tasks, but gaming performance isn't great. My 7970 couldn't run Trine 2 at even medium settings without stutters, in Windows it didn't break a sweat at max. My 670 can run Trine 2 fine in Linux.