Revealed Alienware Alpha, a Steam machine of 550 USD

In January to Valve announced 13 powerful machines for the gamer community. Some machines did not have the specifications, nor the prices revealed.

Today at E3 2014, Alienware decided to reveal the details about one of these Steam Machines, the Alienware Alpha. This PC game console was designed from the start to bring your favorite Steam games to your living room.

This console will have a starting price of 550 USD for the model with an Intel Core i3 Hashwell processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM with a speed of 1600 MHz, and a custom GPU from Nvidia Maxwell and mobile architecture. The GPU will come with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory (a type of DDR memory aimed at graphics applications that offers greater performance in videos and games). AlienWare Alpha will also have bi-directional HDMI inputs and outputs, as well as two USB 2.0 ports on the front of the unit and 2 USB 3.0 ports on the rear.

The console will be available at the end of the year, during the festive season and will also be sold with an Xbox 360 wireless controller and a receiver for the Valve controller, which was postponed to 2015. As for the operating system, the choice fell to the windows 8.1, but Alienware is developing a custom user interface that will run on Windows 8.1, similar to the way that Steam Big Picture works on TVs. Whoever wants a mouse or keyboard will have to buy separately.

The good news is that each user can upgrade the CPU, storage disk and RAM, only the GPU will have a fixed value of 2GB.

See complete specifications of Alienware Alpha:

• Exclusive Alienware Alpha Console-mode UI
• Xbox Wireless Controller 360 Wireless Controller (with Receiver)
• Intel Core i3 processor 'Haswell'
•  4GB DDR3 @ 1600MHz Memory
•  Nvidia Maxwell custom GPU and mobile architecture, with GDDR5 2GB of dedicated GDDR5 high-speed memory
•  Dual-band Wireless-AC 1 × 1 with Bluetooth 4.0
•  HDMI Out: Uncompressed 8 Channel Audio & support for 4k content
•  HDMI In: Direct HDMI pass-through
•  Gigabit Ethernet
•  2x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0
•  Optical Audio Out
•  500GB SATA 3 HDD
•  8.1 64 bit Windows

The parts that can be added to this configuration are:

• 'Haswell' Intel Core i5 and i7 processor
•  8GB DDR3 RAM with 1600MHz frequency
•  2 2 Wireless-AC Dual-band Adapter with Bluetooth 4.0
• 1TB or 2TB SATA 3 Hard Drive

More screenshots of Alienware Alpha

[Source]: PC Gamer