Build a new PC, or get a Steam Box?

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Curious what people think here.

I'm saving up now to build a new gaming PC. New case, CPU, GPU, Ram, the whole nine. I've got the parts picked out and am waiting a few months to put the scratch together to purchase. It's been a while since I've built a rig from the ground up, so I'm excited.

However - I'm seeing a lot of chatter about the new Steam Boxes that various companies are going to release in the latter half of the year, and now I'm not sure which way to go. Most of the games I play are on Steam already anyway, so it makes sense. But I don't know if I will be limited ONLY to Steam games (i.e., bye bye Diablo 3, SimCity, etc.). I could also build a gaming rig that far surpasses the power of a Steam Box without much fuss.

Anyway - thoughts? Also curious if anyone's interested in the Steam boxes at all. Thanks.

 

Don't know what kind of specs a steambox would have, but I would expect it to be not that high, considering what's been done with the new generation of consoles.

One thing to keep in mind is that the steambox' operating system isn't windows, it's a linux variant. That means that not all games will run on it out of the box. Furthermore, this steambox OS is supposedly tailored for playing games, so I'm not sure how easy it is to do anything else on it (interwebs, making simple documents).

I have a HTPC running on Openelec/XBMC, which is a linux distribution tailored to home entertainment, i.e. watching movies and listening to music. It does well for what it's intended, but anything outside of that will require some special hoops that need going through. So what I'm trying to say is that it might be kind of more limited than you might expect from a PC.

I would build my own PC, because I want it to be able to do specific things, and that's generally not something that I kind find on the shelf anywhere. But even if I were considering something like a pre-built PC, I would wait it out a bit. Watch the cat out of the tree, as they say around here (literal translation). See what start up problems they have, what it turns out is actually possible to do on this steambox and what not. No great need to be the first adapter, because they'll basically be the beta-testers. Or alpha-testers, if the launch problems of steam itself are any indication.

 

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I've purposely avoided being an early-adopter of anything for that reason. I'm generally fine with version 2.0 of just about everything.

Also, I would like the ability to do other things with it, even though this rig will be used primarily for gaming. My wife and I have MacBooks for our work stuff, and we usually use them for email, web, etc. I'd much rather build a box that I can customize.

Basically I'm looking for excuses to build my own machine, which it seems is what I really wanna do anyway.

 

Well in that event, I'll just get a GPU that is HDMI capable (most of them these days) and an extra-long HDMI cable. I'm not above relocating my PC to the living room.

And then...um...removing it before the wife gets home.

 

Here is a website with info on the current release steam machines, including price and specs of each one.
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/...m-machines-and-all-of-their-glorious-variety/

IMO they are very over priced and the manufacturer's missed the point of the steam machine concept and instead of building an affordable alternative to the PC that would still blow consoles out of the water, they turned it into an arms race to build the most powerful steam machine, which makes the price impractable.

at this point in time I would build a new PC.

 

Wouldn't any pc you slap Stam OS on be a steam-box?

 

You could always build a cube PC and stick steam os on it, yes.

 

Well, there's some cheaper options as well in that list, and some of the prices are for the small form factor and design as well, I'm sure.

Other than that, yes, you could put Steam OS on any PC you build yourself as well, but what would be the point of that? Might as well put a more broadly usable Linux distro on it as well (I'm considering it for the HTPC as well), or just plain Windows with Steam and all the other goodies that make it usable for more than just games.

 

Have any of you had good experience with Alienware machines?

 

Don't know much about Alienware, except that it generally looks like a discoball and costs more than I would pay.

 

Wasn't that how Apple tried to operate with some of their Macs this last decade?

 

In the 90's, yes. The old weird colored bubble iMacs were pieces of crap. The past decade has been great for Macs. Slick, simple, beautifully designed cases, both the desktops and laptops. By far the most reliable, easy-to-operate computers I've ever owned. In my industry (graphic design) they're everywhere, and I never, ever hear any of my friends or peers go "ugh, these macs are such pieces of sh*t. So stupid that everybody uses these." Just never, ever happens. We love 'em. Because they just work. Forever. Some people may consider them overpriced, but for the quality and reliability you get, the price has never bothered me.

If it weren't for gaming, I would never use a PC.

 

Apple products due tend to be very durable. My very first computer, an Apple IIGS still worked fine in 2009, but I had to put it in storage for a lack of space.

My PowerMac 6500/300 from 1997 died in 2011, and I could probably fix it if I had a replacement power supply, but its proprietary and it would probably cost less to buy a TV tuner card for one of my newer computers. All I used it for in the last few years of its life was the TV tuner card, AIM, and displaying text files from GameFAQs so I didn't have to hit alt-tab mid-game (everything else is Windows).


Anyways, in addition to the iCraps (I never heard any good things about the iMacs you're talking about), I was thinking of things like the MacCube and that other one that looks like a monitor with a small, circular stand where the CPU is in the stand, yet the stand is actually smaller than the base of a smaller flatscreen monitor I have.
I can't recall what it was called or what year, just that it was in the window of the Apple Store at Woodfield Mall for a while.

Both struck me as being cutesy CPU cases rather than selling on the machine's capabilities.

 

New question.

I've never really messed around with SLi before. In considering my future rebuild, I'm faced with two options.

My current GPU is an EVGA SuperClocked GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB, and it's only a few years old. I could find a second one online for about $100 right now.

Or, would it be better to upgrade to a single new GTX 660 Ti or 670, for around $300?

 

Awe, nuggets. Yeah, I didn't think about the power consumption. Good call.

I'll do the upgrade.

 

Also, SLI is a lot more prone to have problems with games than a single card setup.