Now that Valve Software’s Steam
service has a 10 foot interface, named Big Picture Mode, it’s time to build a
small gaming box that can be controlled from the couch.
THE MISSION As PC garners, were big fans of
Valve Software’s Steam service and can’t imagine life without it. We’ve got a
huge library of installed games, all of our friends are on it, and almost every
AAA title is released on Steam, making it indispensable. The only problem with
Steam has been that its interface was designed for sitting 24 inches away, at a
monitor, making it incompatible with couch bound gaming. Valve has rectified
this dilemma with its recently launched Big Picture Mode, which slaps a 10-foot
interface on top of Steam and makes it easy Lo control with a gamepad. Since
distance and connection issues can get in the way of running your desktop PC on
your HDTV screen, we’re going to walk you through a more workable solution.
First, we will advise you on selecting a small but powerful PC that’s suitable
for a Living room, then we’ll walk you through selecting appropriate
peripherals, and finally well show you how to get it all up and running, ready
for Big Picture Mode deployment.
THE
MISSION As PC garners, were big fans of Valve Software’s Steam service and
can’t imagine life without it.
1. Get Yourself A Living Room Pc
If you’re like us, you already have a
desktop gaming PC that (lives in a separate room, semi-far away from your
television. Here in San Francisco, we reside in homes so cavernous that
oftentimes our living room and bedroom or office are roughly 20 feet apart from
each other, and don’t even get us started on our spacious bathrooms and ample
parking options (this is sarcasm). Seriously though, space constraints aside,
we like to keep our PC out of the living room since it’s big, somewhat noisy
(despite our best efforts), and resides under a desk large enough to qualify as
a studio apartment in the Bay Area. The living room is reserved for TV watching
and Netflixing, and the only gaming it ever sees is on a board, typically.
However, now that Steam offers a Big Picture Mode interface that can be
controlled from across the room, we’d Like a dedicated Steam box chillaxing in
our living room so we can play some PC games from our couch.
The
living room is reserved for TV watching and Netflixing, and the only gaming it
ever sees is on a board, typically
To accomplish this feat, we had two options
buy or build. Anyone who reads this magazine knows the route we took, but there
are also a couple of worthwhile rigs for folks who don’t want to get their
hands dirty. For the more budget conscious. Alienware’s X-51 has an elegant and
amazingly thin chassis that can be had for as little as $800 (it received a 9 verdict
in our May 2012 issue). If you’re willing to part with a bit more cash, Falcon
Northwest has a new slimline rig called the Tiki that’s just 4 inches wide
(pictured on right). The baseline Core i5/GTX 650 combo will set you back
$1,600, but Core i7 and GeForce GTX 680 are also options, if you can afford it
(see our review in the September 2012 issue), Though both of these machines
would look great in a living room, we chose to build a system because that’s
what we do here, and because we have a perfect template for this task: the
“Small but Mighty Gaming
Rig from our October 2012 issue (Build It).
2. Prepare Your Rig
The rig we built for this job splits the
difference between a full-powered gaming machine and a small form factor PC. We
know technically, it’s a small form factor PC since it has a tiny Mini-ITX
motherboard, but that board houses some kick ass components, including a
water-cooled Intel Core 15-3570K processor, a 240GB SSD and 3TB HOD, and an
overclocked GeForce GTX 670 from MSI. In our benchmarks, this little rig
cranked out l6fps in Batman: Arkham City at 2560x1600, which is more than
enough muscle for gaming on our TV. That’s one hell of a PC, and the fact that
it’s not any taller or wider than a roided out Chihuahua is icing on the cake.
The
EPIA PX 10000 is the first motherboard from VIA Technologies to be released in
their 10cm x 7.2cm 'Pico-ITX' form factor
