With only 300 Steam Boxes to go around, how can you possibly get one? Follow our detailed guide.

We'd like to start with specs, but the Steam Machine hardware varies—and the components aren't exactly printed on the box. Will it pack a punchy i3 paired with a GTX 660? Maybe a monster i7 mated to a Titan?

We may never know—we can't stop drooling over the packaging.

Unabhängig vom Inhalt gewinnt Valve die Auszeichnung für die beste Verpackung aller Zeiten.

Ist das ein Begleiterkubus, den wir da entdecken?

Wir widersetzen uns dem Drang, das Brecheisen herauszuholen und die Steam Box sicher zu öffnen.

Sieht aus, als hätte Valve es versäumt, eine Messingbrille mit der Konsole zu versenden, aber es gibt nur einen Weg, um sicher zu sein.....

Beim Aufbrechen der Kiste entweicht kein Dampf - abgesehen von diesem süßen Logo.

Vorne: eine riesige Taste.

Die Taste hat einen leuchtenden Anzeigering und befindet sich neben zwei USB 3.0-Anschlüssen für deine kabelgebundenen Controller.

Bevor wir die Haupthardware unter das Messer legen, lass uns einen kurzen Blick auf die Beilagen werfen:

Ist das die Zukunft der Gamepad- vs. Tastatur- und Mausdebatte? Valve scheint sowohl eine Tastatur als auch eine Maus in einen Controller eingebaut zu haben.

Individuell konfigurierbare Touchpads und eine Vielzahl von Tasten machen dies zu einer Art Hybrid aus den beliebtesten Eingabegeräten.

Valve ermutigt Entwickler und Tüftler, mit seinem Betriebssystem zu experimentieren, und hat daher fürsorglich einen Notfallplan erstellt: ein USB-Wiederherstellungslaufwerk.

Laut Valve: "SteamOS Beta wird mit unserem Steam-Client-Programm ausgeliefert, das als Benutzeroberfläche dient und die Verbindung zu unseren Steam-Online-Diensten ermöglicht. Allerdings können Sie immer noch auf den Standard-Linux-Desktop zugreifen."

Bringing PC games to the living room without a keyboard means you're gonna need a controller with a lot of buttons. This looks like enough.

The only thing that feels better than a new controller in your hands is... taking it apart.

And we're in! The plastic casing separates into two halves: main button board and covers in the upper, and not a thing in the lower.

Lifting the main button board out gives a quick look at how the super-configurable touchpads fit into the unit.

Reading all of those inputs and sending them back to the mothership is a tough job. But the NXP LPC11U37F microcontroller handles the task well.

On the reverse of the the main board, we find three switches. Half Life 3 confirmed.

Back to the box: Around back, the Steam Machine's PC heritage is on full display. If this I/O panel is at all representative of final hardware, we can safely predict that connectivity will not be an issue:

PS/2 keyboard/mouse port

Two USB 2.0 and four USB 3.0 ports

HDMI, Dual-link DVI, and DisplayPort

S/PDIF digital optical audio out

eSATA

RJ-45 Ethernet port, plus connectors for the external Wi-Fi antenna

3.5 mm audio in/out, rear speaker, c/sub, and mic ports

Sturdy posts and a nice sliding lock secure the hefty upper case to the lower. A single screw locks them in place and keeps your steam properly bottled up.

Our first look, much to nobody's surprise, reveals all the usual components of a gaming computer. Video card, hard drive, CPU cooler, and power supply are all neatly tucked beneath cowlings and ducts.

See that shiny grille hole there? We've got a theory for that:

This looks like a built-in extension cord, to bring power from the back of the Steam Box up to the power supply in the front. Just to be safe, we'll start the unplugging here.

A molded plastic cowling covers the video card and fills the void between the card and the upper case, protecting it from shaking around and damaging itself.

Wild SATA data and power connectors appear! This pleases iFixit.

If you were worried about storage capacity, worry no more. It seems the Steam Box is prepped for a second hard drive to store all your games.

This particular Steam Machine has a 1 TB Seagate ST1000LM014 laptop SSHD (Solid State Hybrid Drive). It's a 2.5" SATA III 6 Gb/s, 5400 RPM SSHD with a 64 MB DRAM cache and 8 GB MLC NAND Flash.

TL;DR This is a one terabyte platter drive paired with an 8 GB SSD and some clever software that keeps your most-frequently used data on the super-fast SSD.

Tucked away inside this unit is a ZOTAC GeForce GTX 780 3 GB GDDR5 graphics card.

2304 Stream Processors running at 863 MHz Base / 900 MHz Boost

3 GB GDDR5 RAM running at 6008 MHz

PCI Express 3.0, SLI-compatible

As an added bonus, it looks like some kind of futuristic car.

The inner cowling is one complex bit of custom-fitted craftsmanship. Its two parts were a little tough to wrangle out of their homes.

A SilverStone RC2 PCI Express x16 riser card also falls in our quest toward motherboard glory.

Out comes the entire off-the-shelf Mini-ITX motherboard.

This Steam Box is equipped with two modules of Crucial Ballistix Sport 8 GB DDR3 (PC3 12800) RAM. At 16 GB total, it's the maximum this motherboard will support.

This motherboard includes DisplayPort, DVI, and HDMI ports, just in case you feel like using the integrated Intel HD Graphics 4600 instead of the GTX 780.

A gaming giant this juiced needs some serious cooling power; this fancy fan is no surprise.

This heatsink fan is a Zalman CNPS 2X Mini-ITX CPU cooler. Big AND quiet—nice.

Under the hood, the CPU powering our Steam Machine is a 3.2 GHz (with a Max Turbo Frequency of 3.6 GHz) Intel Core i5-4570.

After mining through a small mountain of off-the-shelf components, we strike a vein of Valve-designed gold.

Behind the "Big Button" on the front of the Machine lies a board containing 12 LEDs—for illuminating the circumference of the power switch—plus the clicky button itself.

The board is wrangled by an NXP LPC11U24F 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 microcontroller.

We found a SilverStone SST-ST45SF-G 450W SFX12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Full Modular Active PFC Power Supply in our Steam Machine.

Some notable features about the power supply:

450 W continuous power output at 40° C operating temperature rated for 24/7 operation

80 PLUS Gold level efficiency (87%~90% efficiency at 20%~100% loading)

Silent running 80 mm fan with 18 dBA minimum

Steam Machine (Beta) Repairability Score: 9 out of 10 (10 is easiest to repair):

The Steam Machine is designed to be opened and worked on. The case is secured with a single Phillips #2 screw.

Modular design with off-the-shelf components makes it easy to remove and upgrade the hard drive and video card.

RAM removal is made difficult by the motherboard cowling, and may require removing the cowling.

During reassembly, precise cable routing is difficult without a repair manual.

Our Steam Machine is a prototype, but according to Valve, you'll be able to fashion your own Steam Machine out of any computer running SteamOS. Your mileage may vary, and future revisions may have different scores.