Sneak Peek- Steam Machine Beta Program Teardown From iFixit

Inside the Steam Machine (Credit: http://www.ifixit.com/)

iFixit has an awesome full teardown of the Steam Machine beta machines that were sent out to a lucky group of 300 people.  It was quite interesting to get a look inside the guts of the Steam Machine from Valve, and the mysterious new controller that has been flooding the wastegates of the Internet. 

How they managed to pack all of the estimated 1300 US Dollar components inside is beyond me.  Once you get a look at the layout inside the machine, it is quite apparent that a lot of work went into its design.  Thankfully, all the connectors are standard, including plain jane SATA data and power connectors.  Joy! 

Inside the meaty machine is a ZOTAC GeForce GTX780 3 GB GDDR5 graphics card.  That is one mother of a card, and explains a lot of the estimated cost.  On further teardown, it is shown just how carefully crafted the engineering team designed the inner compartments and cabling.  Also amazing, is just how this machine stays hydrated with such thirsty parts on a 450W power supply!

Breakdown of parts in the Steam Machine:

• SilverStone SST-ST45SF-G 450W SFX12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Full Modular Active PFC Power Supply
• 1 TB Seagate ST100LM014 laptop SSD
• ZOTAC GeForce GTX780 3 GB GDDR5
• Two sticks of Crucial Ballistix Sport 8 GB DDR3 (PC3 12800) RAM
• Zalman CNPS 2X Mini-ITX CPU cooler
• 3.2 GHz (with a Max Turbo Frequency of 3.6 GHz) Intel Core i5-4570.

Self designed Valve parts:

• NXP LCP11U24F 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 microcontroller (Front Button and LED)
• Case and internal cowling
• NXP LPC11U37F microcontroller (Steam Controller)

Source:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Steam+Machine+Teardown/20473

Hot Hardware : The Little Black Box

Google it, I dare you.  “little black box” will likely present you with a Lingerie store, so be sure to search “little black box media player.”  That stated, I wanted to present this nifty little piece of hardware today.  That hardware is The Little Black Box.

Read on for more.