Steam Machine Teardown Reveals $1,300 Cost

Super easy to open and upgrade.

Earlier this week, Valve started delivering Steam Machine prototype units to 300 lucky people. And while YouTube already features a handful of unboxing and boot-up videos, the team at iFixit have managed to tear the whole thing apart. Based on the particular Steam Machine used in the teardown, the components added up to around $1,300 in total cost.

Since the Steam Machine is essentially a streamlined gaming PC, taking the unit apart is a straightforward affair. The case opens up after pulling out only one screw, and reveals a 2.5-inch 1TB Seagate solid state hybrid. Apparently, there's also room for a second hard drive. The GPU duties are handled by a 3GB Zotac GeForce GTX 780--no Titan in this particular model. The 3.6 GHz Intel Core i5-4570 CPU is kept cool by a large fan, and the 8GB of Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR3 memory wrap up the important internal components.
Of course, there's no way of knowing if these same components are planned for a commercial Steam Machine build. These are prototypes, and even within the 300 units Valve sent out, there are differences in hardware. Valve and its third-party partners will share more Steam Machine news during CES 2014 in January.