Maingear is joining the Steam Machine fray at the Games Developers Conference with its announcement of the upcoming Drift Steam Machine. The Drift is a configurable small form factor gaming PC that will come equipped with Valve’s SteamOS operating system in November.
Maingear’s new Steam Machine uses a small aluminum unibody chassis with optional Glasurit automotive paint to create an exceptionally attractive gaming console. It comes in two base systems – the Maingear Drift and the Maingear Drift SS – from which users can further customize based around the Intel H81 and Z97 chipsets respectively.
The Drift is the entry level system starting at $949. This system includes a MSI H81-i motherboard, Intel Pentium Anniversary Edition G3258 processor, 8GB Corsair Vengeance 1600 MHz memory, a NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti, 500GB Seagate Barracuda hard drive, 8x DVD drive, and a 450W Silverstone power supply.
Maingear’s Drift SS takes things up a notch by moving to a Gigabyte GA-Z97N-WIFI motherboard, Intel Core i5-4590 processor paired with Maingear’s Epic 120 Supercooler closed-loop water cooler, a NVIDIA GTX 970 GPU, and a 250GB Samsung 850 EVO in addition to that 500GB hard drive in the Drift PC. The higher end liquid cooled Drift SS starts at $1,949.
The Drift SS comes at a hefty premium but it sure would look impressive in your entertainment center!
Maingear is offering up the systems for pre-order today and will start shipping the customize-able systems next month. Note that systems shipped before November will come with Windows 8.1 x64 and not SteamOS (though you can emulate the experience by booting Windows into Steam Big Picture Mode or installing the beta yourself).
This type of shit is why
This type of shit is why people thing pc gaming is expensive almost a thousand dollars for entry level hardware in an off the shelf silverstone case.
:EDIT: I priced this system out its $597 so thats over 350 dollars worth of markup.
For comparison cyber power will sell you a similar system with an i5 4460, r9 280, 240gb ssd and a 1tb hd for *drum roll* $885.
:edit: If you want something closer performance wise you can get a machine with nearly identical specs save the 1tb hd and 270x for $670
Was about to write same
Was about to write same thing, agreed!
Build your own PC Gaming rig with far better specs for less. Steam machines are just soon to be FAD things.
Done. I already made the
Done. I already made the smallest gaming rig on the planet here.
Little Mac 4.2L
http://www.overclock.net/t/1526575/build-log-little-mac-4-2l-gaming-htpc/0_100
Let’s see the boutiques match that!
Well, I do like the paint
Well, I do like the paint job.
What is up with all of this
What is up with all of this steam machines and their overpriced tag? I have still not seen any for a reasonable amount. The specs are garbage for a 1,000 price tag.
Agreed- I think you’re
Agreed- I think you’re looking at a small market segment with a boutique premium.
The original Steam machines were going to be Alienware(another high-priced boutique vendor) and they had top of the line, must-have specs. I think this segment is trying for the more main-stream market because they realize they can compete in the non-premium titles segment and/or lowered settings in the leading edge market.
That said, I think Steam also is lowering it’s bar to widen its main-stream appeal by allowing its name on these systems.
Well i think that with this
Well i think that with this prices the “Steam Machine” is not going to go far.
With 1000 you can get a really good gaming build and out perform all of these Steam Machines I’ve seen so far.
Bleeding edge technology,
Bleeding edge technology, always priced to bleed the dollars. There may be some initial R&D and engineering costs to be amortized, but still those prices are a bit too high. As the volume of sales increases the costs will have to come down, Steam OS costs 0 dollars up front, but there is probably some expense involved in getting the hardware certified to work with the OS. For sure the Steam OS ecosystem will grow, and the new and shiny factor of the pricing will be under more competitive pressure and start to come down.
The one selling point of the Steam OS based Steam machines, is that they are PCs in their own right, and as such they are more user upgradable than any console. The Steam client, as well as the Steam Gaming library will give the Steam Box users all the advantages of a gaming services ecosystem like the consoles offer with the user upgradability of a PC. Steam OS is much more customizable, owing to its Debian roots, Steam OS is open source, its code base will be improved upon by the entire community of developers, Valve, Steam box OEM’s, and users. A fully open source OS, can be much more effectively streamlined to provide the best gaming performance, while taking up the minimum of system resources and CPU cycles.
At some point in time discrete GPUs, will begin to get their own on DIE/Module CPU/s to help accelerate Gaming engines and reduce Latency. There will be a need to have a small footprint OS capable of managing the on DIE/Module CPU/s accelerators, and gaming engines. Steam OS will be the prime candidate for such systems, maybe pared down and embedded OS like, or fully functioning and all hosted on the PCI card along with the GPU/CPU and gaming engine, in a gaming console on a PCI card fashion, with much better response time, owing to the OS/gaming engine/CPU being part of the discrete GPU package/card.
Debian has its issues, but I
Debian has its issues, but I don’t see many other ways for Linux to appeal to the main-stream. MS really needs to have its nose bloodied in the public market by someone so I’m hoping this works.
M$ created the necessity for
M$ created the necessity for an alternative OS in the gaming industry by trying to impose an Apple style closed app ecosystem on Third party PC/Laptop OEMs, and the users/owners of the third party OEM hardware. M$ was forced to backpedal on 8/8.1, but M$ still has Apple like aspirations, and Steam OS will offer an alternative to the 30% off of the top going into M$’s coffers. A fully open source gaming specific distro has the definite advantage of more eyes on the code base, and allows the entire market OS ecosystem base to take part in the OS’s continued development. I’m not religious, not by any stretch of the imagination, and I’m praying that Steam OS works. OS vendor lock-in is the single most terrifying prospect for any computing market.
M$’s OS is used on the majority of third party OEM PC/laptop hardware, unlike Apples OS/ecosystem, which is restricted to Apple’s branded/sold hardware, Most people use windows, not out of any great love or affection of M$, but because of M$’s stranglehold on the third party PC/laptop OS market. Having a supported Linux distro, by the entire gaming industry, will make an alternative OS more of a reality in the third party OEM PC/laptop market. With the arrival of Steam OS, and the Steam machine, the hardware ecosystem will begin to support the Linux kernel/driver/API base, the more sales the more support.
Valve needs to stand up and
Valve needs to stand up and kill all these 3rd party steam machines. Standardize everything and sell it yourself. Price should match X1 and PS4.
Valve could, but Valve is
Valve could, but Valve is selling the Idea of the Steam Client running on an open Steam OS, and hardware. People are free to download and run steam OS on any PC, even a used PC if you want to save money. Expecting Valve to become a console maker, is expecting Valve to be like the other console makers. The steam Library/ecosystem comes via the Steam client, and you are free to continue to use windows if you so choose. The Steam OS/Steam Client ecosystem is meant to be a better more open way to have both an open gaming OS, in addition to the Steam Client/ecosystem and user upgradable hardware.
You are always going to pay more for any introductory hardware simply because the hardware is usually the newest CPUs/GPUs/etc. based, so blame the market not Valve. It will take a while before the steam machines wind up at microcenter/etc. on sale, usually last years model(New) at a good price, but still in the case Of Intel’s CPUs not much more powerful year on year, the old years steam machine models will still probably game reasonably as good as this years model, and the Steam Machines are upgradable. It’s going to take a while for more competition to kick in in the Steam machine market, and there will be sales on the way. As long as the Steam Machine comes with a socketed CPU/SOC motherboard, there will be plenty of options. If you are unhappy about the pricing of the current Steam Machines, roll your own!
Garbage! All we really care
Garbage! All we really care to buy is an ITX case with a PCI riser. We don’t care about these builds.
This a joke, and why I called
This a joke, and why I called fail on Steam Boxes instantly. They will fail.
Maingear is one of the upper end builders, so the price is not surprising, but if Valve is trying to get people to come to the “PC community with Linux” it’s not looking good. First impressions are everything.
I’ve read that Steam Machines will start at console prices, and I don’t see that as incentive for someone to drop their XBOX or PlayStation for.
As a PC only gamer, I’m pretty embarrassed about the offerings I’ve seen so far, aside from the Alienware “Steam Machine” running Windows for ~$500, because people know Windows and they should be reminded Windows has the better software and hardware support. Linux is still struggling with that.
I’m interested to see how this plays out, but so far I’m still not impressed.