A few months ago, when the rumor of a Steam Box was hot, Xi3’s new modular gaming rig was incorrectly pegged as Valve’s gaming console. The company has unveiled their rig, the Piston, and it’s a modular PC with some nifty stats. The Piston is incredibly small - no side is longer than 4.27”.
The small-form modular PC includes:
* 3.2 AMD Trinity Processor
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Radeon 7000-Series GPU
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8GB of DDR 3 memory
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128 GB solid state drive (upgradeable to 1 TB) HD
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three display ports (HDMI, DisplayPort and miniDP)
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12 USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports
According to the company’s Q&A, “Xi3 has never described its PISTON Console (PC) as the Steam box or a Steam Box, especially since it appears that Steam Box is a term created by journalists and not by Valve. To be clear, however, PISTON Console owners will be able to access and play games on/through Steam since it is a Web-based platform open to anyone with an Internet connection and a Steam account, either on a Windows- or a Linux-based system. So in this regard, PISTON could be considered the first commercially available Steam Box.”
The tiny gaming rig will cost a mere $999 USD and will be released on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day in the United States.
