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Cheap Micro PC for Steam Streaming

I've been invited into the steam streaming beta, it works great between the two computers in my offline for testing purposes.

I want to connect a PC to my living room TV though. I don't want to spend much on a computer because it's just going to do nothing but stream. Any ideas on a small micro PC anyone can suggest that has enough USB ports, a HDMI connection, and a SPDIF audio port would be nice too for my living room surround.

Something like a Rasberry PI would be great, but probably not enough ports.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

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dalberson

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☠ MASQ ☠

The second phase of the Beta went online a couple of days ago and your question is one of the things that needs answering as it's still not entirely clear which hardware platforms this will work on.

As you'll know the plan is that the "server" PC is going to do all the rendering and the client should be able to grab a video stream at pretty much the same quality. You need to be able to access at least 1 HDMI and three USB ports (SPDIF really isn't necessary with the HDMI carrying audio) and you could do this with anything from a Pi to Intel DC3217IYE if you want hobbyist or even repurpose a SFF business machine like an Optiplex, either running Windows, or Linux including the Debian SteamOS.

Expect it to still be clunky though with some games running better than others, some not at all and some looking like all is well and then crashing for no good reason!

This stage is all about feedback so whatever you end up using make sure you post both the hardware and OS details.

Pancake_Effect

ASKER

Steam can run on a Pi? Figured it was a unsupported OS. That is true about the hdmi.