Over the past few months I?ve been hearing some buzz about the new SteamOS from, you guessed it, Steam. If you?re a gamer there's no doubt that you?re familiar with Steam, and you also know that it runs on Windows. The SteamOS, is in essence, it's own operating system, at least more or less. The SteamOS runs on top of Debian 7, which is one of the many forms of Linux. Though to get the Steam OS up and running you don't need to be familiar with Linux at all. Today I want to put together a complete system from the ground up with the intention of running it as a dedicated SteamOS box. The plan is to use this to play my Steam games while sitting on the couch, much like if I were playing on a console system like the PlayStation 4 or XBOX One.

In addition to wanting to play my games while sitting on the couch I wanted to keep the cost of the build comparable to what the latest generation of console systems cost. Taking a quick look around, a basic XBOX One retails for as little as $399.98 over at Amazon.com. The PlayStation 4 is remarkably the same price as the XBOX One, $399.99. Since both of the current generation console systems are available for ~$400, so that's what the Steam Box budget is going to be today. If we?re going to be building a system from the ground up in the realm of $400.00, we may have to trim a few corners from what we would like to build. Though we should be able to build a pretty solid gaming system for that if we do it right.