Steam Machine, But you weren't expecting this.....

[CarDesinr]

So with the current Steam Machine craze, I decided to think out side the box ( see what I did there ) so here is the craziness. This is meant to take advantage of Steam's in home streaming. I could put tech names but these are just gonna be casual description and links so you guys can look at it:

 

 

So here is what i'm starting out with. A PNY 512 MB 9800GT Power Edition, 2 x 2 Gb 1333 DDR3 SO-DIMM ram, 2.5" 120Gb 5400 rpm cannibalized laptop hard drive. 

 

 

It's basically a M-ITX board with a celeron 847 soldered to the board.

 

 

This is a 1U server case with an 80 plus bronze 200 watt power supply.

 

 

PCI Express riser card is needed because the full length slot is horizontal in the back.

 

 

Since the case doesn't come with any fans, I was thinking I might need a bit of air flow ( sarcasm ) so i'm gonna get 2 or 3 of these.

 

So what do you think. Any feedback would be great.

 

[DIV1D3]

I'd probably invest in a case, keep it out of harm and reduce dust.

Other than that, it's a beast PC .

[atrash]

Can that 200w psu actually support that 9800gt? Does it have at least a single 6pin pcie connector?

[CarDesinr]

Nope, Its the power edition so its the 75 watt tdp version which means no supplementary power. I think the current config is perfect.

[CarDesinr]

Here is the mental quick and dirty power calculation. The CPU consumes 17 watts under load, put another 75 watts for 9800GT because that's the max amount of wattage that can delivered over the PCI Express bus, the hard drive will eat 5 watts max because of the laptop design, so now the only things left are the fans and the ram. I think the other 103 watts can take care of that. Even if I assume 20% power inefficiency, I still have roughly 80 watts to work with.

[Corvus]

Loving the idea of using in-home streaming. Might actually build myself a small steambox myself after reading this!

[Maslofski]

so inhome streaming means you use that build with the 9800gt (wich i sadly "use" too) to play games on the tv and other devices?

[CarDesinr]

so inhome streaming means you use that build with the 9800gt (wich i sadly "use" too) to play games on the tv and other devices?

So the basic idea is that you have your full gaming pc set up in your office and over the network it does all the processing and sends the data to the second pc on the network that is doing the receiving. Some people are attempting it with a rasberry pi as their receiving end computer.