CyberPowerPC Steam Machine will compete with consoles at $499

While some of the companies adopting Valve’s living room gaming fomula are simply grafting the SteamOS operating system onto powerful Windows PCs, CyberPowerPC has just announced a Steam Machine designed to actually compete with the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 for around the same price point.

Starting at just $499, the new CyberPowerPC Steam Machine A will come with a 3.9GHz AMD A6-6400K processor and AMD Radeon R9 270 discrete graphics, 8GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive in a new custom case, and come complete with a Steam Controller and SteamOS when it ships in the second half of 2014. It won’t be able to run all your Windows games, of course, but Valve is promsing to announce a raft of content for the Linux-based SteamOS operating system over the course of the year including triple-A games.

CyberPowerPC will also offer a second configuration, the Steam Machine I, for $699. It comes with a 3.5GHz Intel Core i3-4330 processor, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 760 video card, and faster 802.11ac Wi-Fi compared to standard 802.11 Wi-Fi in the other config.

We’re not yet sure how compact or portable the chassis will be, since CyberPowerPC hasn’t yet provided those specs, but it won’t be the only Steam Machine priced to compete with consoles in the living room. iBuyPower will also sell an AMD-based Steam Machine for $499, and we expect more systems of various shapes and sizes to be announced at Valve’s press conference later this evening.