Valve reveals specs of prototype Steam Machine gaming PC

The internet has been positively buzzing with all things Valve over the last week. The PC gaming company has opted for a slow trickle of information, and now it has revealed the specifications for its prototype Steam Machine PC that will be sent to 300 lucky beta testers. It has gone with some moderately high-end specifications, contrary to original reports of these machines coming with mid-range specs.
For a gaming PC, one of the most important components is the video card, and Valve has opted to go with the powerful NVidia Titan for the top model. Some users will receive a GTX780, others get a GTX760, and the rest will see a GTX660. The Titan retails for around US$999, the GTX780 goes for a little under $700, the 760 for a tad under $300, and the GTX660 sells for around $200. Any way you slice it, these are some powerful video cards.
Moving to the processor, Valve will ship a range of units, all in the Intel line. The top end will have an i7-4770, then a step down to the i5-4570, and finally some units will ship with a core i3 processor. The i7 model retails in the $300 range, the i5 goes for about $200, and the i3s go down from there.
All of the models will come with 16GB DDR3-1600 RAM, which is enough to cover any of the most demanding PC games on the market. Valve hasn't mentioned much about whether this will be upgradable for the future, but since it's still just a PC with Steam Machine branding attached, it's a safe assumption that it will.

As for storage, Valve is including a 1TB/8GB hybrid drive.
All of this will be powered by a 450W 80Plus Gold power supply, which should be enough, but that Titan graphics card is likely to push the power demands of the box to its limit.
Vavle elected not to show pictures of the box just yet, but it did reveal the dimensions, which are 12 x 12.4 x 2.9 inches (30.5 x 31.5 x 7.3 cm).
For the top model, which comes with the Titan graphics processor and the Core i7, a user looking to build one with the same specs would spend around $1,600, plus the cost of the case, motherboard, USB ports, and so on. It's definitely a beefy machine, and it will be interesting to see how it performs with SteamOS installed once Valve starts shipping them to gamers.