14 DAY TRIAL // Dell is jumping the gun with the Steam Machines launch, and the new Alienware dedicated systems are now available for preorder on the official website.
Valve is not building its own consoles, and that was made clear almost right from the start. They did the same thing the United States is trying with the space program. They are going to let the "private" industry do all the work, and they will only control the OS and the Steam client.
It's brilliant, in theory, but it remains to be seen whether the Steam Machines will have a real impact from the get-go or it takes a while until the status-quo changes.
The Alienware Steam Machines are not the only ones, but they are the most prominent due to the Alienware name that's associated with it. As it stands right now, there are three different versions of the Alienware Steam Machines so that gamers can choose between them.
The main items differentiating them are the processors. The $449.99 (€396) version comes with a 4th Generation Intel Core i3 CPU, the $649.99 (€572) version has 4th Generation Intel Core i5 CPU, and the $749.99 (€660) version has a 4th Generation Intel Core i7 Processor. The first version also has only 4GB of RAM.
Custom-built NVIDIA GeForce GPU for all of them
The interesting thing about the Alienware Steam Machines is that they all come with the same kind of video card that is a custom-built NVIDIA GeForce GPU with 2GB GDDR5. There is no information about what GPU is integrated, which is a little bit weird considering that they are not exactly cheap, and you might want to know exactly what you are paying for. This information will be made available by the first customers, but that doesn't make it OK.
The preorders are live on the official Dell website for now, but they will probably be available soon on Steam as well.
The Steam Machine is a new hybrid PC / console that is running a Linux operating systems called SteamOS. The launch date is November 10.