The Xi3 Piston: The Little Cube Before Valve’s Steam Machine

The Xi3 Piston was the first device anyone publicly called a Steam Box. In January 2013, the Utah hardware maker Xi3 Corporation walked into CES with a small aluminum cube, grapefruit-sized, built around a modular motherboard that let users swap in newer processors, RAM, or storage when the existing parts aged out. Valve had invested in the company and showed the prototype in its own CES booth. Eleven months later, on Black Friday, Xi3 launched the Piston as a standalone product for $999.

The Steam Machine that arrived in living rooms years later was a different machine. Valve publicly distanced itself from the Piston a few months after the reveal, and the device shipped in small numbers before fading from view. The Piston is what came before.

The Aluminum Cube Valve Brought to CES 2013

Xi3 Corporation is a small hardware company headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, formed in 2010 around a “building block approach to the world of computing.” For years the company sold modular mini-PCs to corporate and industrial clients, including its X7A gaming-class machine. The Piston was an altered version of that X7A line, and it was shown publicly for the first time at the 2013 International CES trade show in Las Vegas.

Xi3 displayed the prototype in its own booth, number 20425 inside the Las Vegas Convention Center, and Valve showed it again in its booth, number 25730. The same press release that named the Piston also confirmed Valve had invested in Xi3 Corporation. Steam had more than 50 million subscribers at the time, and the Piston was designed specifically to support both Steam and its Big Picture mode, the interface Valve built for HDTVs.

“Today marks the beginning of a new era for Xi3,” said Jason A. Sullivan, founder, President and CEO of Xi3 Corporation, in the joint Xi3 and Valve CES 2013 announcement.

“Not the Steam Box,” Valve Said

The investment was real and acknowledged by both companies at the show. Engadget’s hands-on coverage of the Piston at CES echoed the partnership, noting that “Valve wouldn’t back this system if it didn’t have some serious graphics chops.” The Piston was, at that moment, the closest thing on Earth to a Steam Box.

The relationship did not last. A few months after CES, reports began to circulate that Valve had pulled back from the Piston. The Sixth Axis reported in October 2013 that “Valve don’t seem to have anything to do with this, with Xi3 striking out on their own.” Tom’s Hardware later summarized the position more directly: “Valve said it actually had nothing to do with the Piston and that Xi3 was on its own.” Valve’s distancing was never formally explained, though the publication’s later reporting suggested Valve wanted Linux and SteamOS for the program, a direction the Piston was not built to take.

Xi3 went ahead and shipped the Piston anyway. The company positioned it as a Steam-compatible living-room PC running Valve’s Big Picture mode and later added SteamOS to its list of supported operating systems.

The arrangement was unusual. Valve’s money was real and on the record, but Valve’s name was no longer behind the box. Xi3 would carry the marketing, the price tag, and the reception alone. The Piston eventually shipped with SteamOS support, but only after Valve had already moved on to a different shape of hardware.

The Hardware Xi3 Actually Shipped

By the time the Piston went on sale, the underlying silicon had been confirmed by AMD itself. The chip was the R-464L, an embedded version of AMD’s Trinity APU and the same silicon used in the A10-4600M laptop processor from 2012. Forbes reported the AMD confirmation of the Piston’s actual chip: the CPU cores ran at a 2.3 GHz base with a 3.2 GHz turbo, and the integrated GPU cores ran at 496 MHz with a 685 MHz turbo. The R-464L chip itself was a 35W part. Xi3 said the whole system drew about 40W under typical load.

Xi3 marketed the Piston with the phrase “Radeon 7000-Series GPU” and “384 discrete class graphics cores.” Forbes confirmed with Xi3 that the actual graphics were AMD’s Radeon HD 7600G, integrated into the APU’s die rather than a separate card. The Piston was an APU-only machine from the start.

Around that chip, the Piston shipped with 8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 128 GB solid-state drive that could be expanded to 1 TB at 6 Gbps, all inside a chassis that measured four inches square. The connectivity list ran to 12 USB ports, a microSD slot, gigabit Ethernet, and three display outputs: HDMI, mini DisplayPort, and DisplayPort. The Piston did not include built-in Wi-Fi.

A $999 Box on Black Friday 2013

Xi3 put the Piston on sale on November 29, 2013, Black Friday, with pre-orders shipping from November 15. The base price was $999, the same price Xi3’s existing X7A performance machine already carried. The marketing claimed the box could drive 4K across three displays, support up to 1 TB of storage at 6 Gbps, and never lag behind modern gaming standards. TechSpot reported the $999 price and November 29 launch confirmation. Forbes called the gap between those claims and the disclosed hardware what it was.

Xi3’s lack of transparency regarding the hardware inside is borderline deplorable, especially considering the console starts at $999.

Jason Evangelho wrote that in a Forbes investigation published September 30, 2013, a month before Xi3’s full spec and pricing announcement. A later test of an early Piston prototype by Bringus Studios, summarized by Tom’s Hardware, found Half-Life ran fine, Half-Life 2 barely hit 60 FPS, Portal 2 clung to 30 FPS and was still laggy, and Team Fortress 2 dipped into the mid-20s. Doom (2016) ran at 50% resolution scale and 480p. Counter-Strike 2 was essentially unplayable.

What the Piston Got Right About Living-Room PCs

Even at $999, the Piston got several things right about the living-room PC that the rest of the industry would spend the next decade rediscovering. Its aluminum chassis was small, sturdy, and built to dissipate heat during long gaming sessions. Its modular motherboard was designed to swap in newer processors, RAM, or storage when the existing parts aged out, an upgrade path conventional consoles and most living-room PCs of the era did not offer.

The Piston was also built from the start to be controlled from a couch. It packed 12 USB ports for controllers, keyboards, and mice, and its HDMI, mini DisplayPort, and DisplayPort outputs could drive a high-definition TV rather than a PC monitor. Xi3 marketed the device around Steam’s Big Picture mode, the full-screen, controller-friendly Steam interface that is still the default way to play Steam games on a TV today. The Piston’s small footprint, low power draw, and focus on quiet operation over raw speed prefigured the form factor the Steam Deck would eventually adopt.

Even the Forbes contributor who called Xi3’s marketing “borderline deplorable” wrote that “The Piston has a genius design, and its aesthetics rock.” The hardware vision was sound. The execution was the problem.

Where the Piston Leaves Off and SteamOS Begins

Valve’s eventual Steam Machine used full-size desktop components, not a modular cube, and ran SteamOS, the Linux-based operating system Valve built for living-room play. The Piston, by contrast, ran Windows and reportedly did not boot cleanly on two Linux distributions when Bringus Studios tested it. The two ideas diverged early. Valve’s Steam Machine line did not catch on commercially, but SteamOS survived and is now the operating system on the Valve Steam Machine shipping with a single DDR5 stick, the new hardware carrying Valve’s living-room PC ambition into the second half of the decade. Tom’s Hardware later covered a Piston prototype tested ten years later by Bringus Studios, confirming that the same R-464L silicon that defined the Piston in 2013 still struggled to run modern games in 2024.

The Piston is the prototype that previewed the concept before Valve decided what shape it actually wanted. Xi3’s modular mini-PC did not survive as a product. The living-room PC built around Big Picture mode and a quiet, controller-friendly form factor did, first as Steam Machines, then as the Steam Deck, and now as the refreshed Steam hardware line shipping in 2026. The little aluminum cube walked the first mile of that road on its own.

The Piston Timeline

• January 7-8, 2013: Piston shown at CES; Valve’s investment in Xi3 confirmed.
• September 30, 2013: Forbes publishes its investigation; AMD confirms the R-464L chip.
• October 1, 2013: Full hardware specs, the $999 price, and the November 29 release date confirmed.
• November 15, 2013: Pre-orders ship.
• November 29, 2013: Piston goes on general availability on Black Friday.

Frequently Asked Questions

What was the Xi3 Piston?

The Xi3 Piston was a modular mini-PC gaming machine unveiled at CES 2013 by Utah hardware maker Xi3 Corporation. It was built around an AMD R-464L embedded Trinity APU, packed 8 GB of DDR3 RAM and a 128 GB SSD, and was designed to run Steam’s Big Picture mode on a high-definition TV from a small, four-inch-square aluminum chassis.

Did Valve make the Xi3 Piston?

No. Valve invested in Xi3 Corporation and displayed the Piston prototype in its own CES 2013 booth, but Valve publicly distanced itself from the product a few months after the reveal. By the time the Piston shipped in November 2013, multiple outlets reported that Valve had nothing to do with the device.

How much did the Xi3 Piston cost?

The Piston launched on November 29, 2013 at a starting price of $999, the same list price Xi3 already charged for its X7A performance mini-PC. Pre-orders began shipping on November 15, 2013.

Is the Xi3 Piston a Steam Machine?

Technically, no. The Piston predates the official Steam Machine name and ran Windows rather than Linux. The Steam Machine line that followed used full-size components and the Linux-based SteamOS, not the small modular cube Xi3 shipped.

Where can I buy a Xi3 Piston today?

New Xi3 Pistons are no longer in production, and the device faded from view shortly after its 2013 launch. Used examples appear on collector marketplaces from time to time, but Xi3 itself has not actively marketed the Piston for years.