Eyes-on with Valve's Steambox prototypes

The Steamboxes are here! Well ... sort of. The prototypes for various Steambox designs are certainly here at CES 2013, and we just spent a grip of time acquainting our lenses very closely with them. The devices range in size and form factor, as well as origin -- several of the devices we saw originate from Valve internal, but inclusions like Alienware's X51 and Digital Storm's Bolt were also being held up as examples of the ongoing "Steam in your living room" initiative (note: all the controllers are off-the-shelf Logitech wireless devices, not prototypes). The idea here, as Valve hardware engineer Jeff Keyzer told us, was to show off a variety of form factors for living room-friendly designs. We'll have more from our meeting later today, but for now you can feast your eyes on the elegant prototypes -- as well as Xi3's Piston, and the aforementioned other two third-party PCs -- that we'll be sure to see more of as 2013 goes on.

[MultiConsoleGamer]

Next gen is going to be insane.

[onyoursistersback]

They both look cheap!!! And the controller look like it was made in the 90's!!! If there concepts/prototype make the hella flashy!! Haha like they made that big "X" that was all chrome out years ago for the Xbox

[dirthurts]

These are mostly chassis that you can buy now, for cheap. Nothing here is really meant to be anything resembling a final product.
The controller is also a cheap Logitech controller I believe (not 100 percent sure on the brand, but I know I've seen them in stores).

[sandman224]

I want to see how the final version of valves steam box handles battlefield 3

[AKS]

It might be a bit easier to just pick a game that's on Steam as a benchmark. Metro 2033 is pretty much guaranteed to drain a lot of processing resources even if you have a dual card setup (I do, and it is still taxing). Max Payne 3 also has a pretty high top end, especially with high AA. Far Cry 3 might be another option, but for my setup (which is an overpowered dual card rig), it's mostly antialiasing and postFX that are draining. It's pretty smooth for me otherwise.

[Tetsujin]

I wonder if you can use your own controller on one, I have a usb port for a PS2 Controller I'd like to use on it.