Does the complexity of building a gaming PC flummox you? Usually buying a console like the Xbox 360 or PS4 would be the answer to your solution. After all, game installs are more more straight-forward on a console and you don't need to worry about upgrading components. Yet, despite feeling a bit foreign to terms such as DDR3 Ram, CPU heat sinks and SLI some people still prefer to get their game on with a true-to-life PC, keyboard and mouse.

There's something to be said about the joy one feels as a PC gamer. You literally have hundreds of commands at your fingertips due to the QWERTY keyboard layout and three-button mouse. There are myriad downsides to PC gaming though. PCs and Macs to a (far) lesser extent get viruses. They also get slower over time as you download more and more files onto your hard drive. And a top-of-the-line gaming rig only lasts, like, nine months. 

What if there was a console-shaped PC gaming system that gave gamers the best of both worlds? Thankfully, game distributor and developer Valve Corporation has tirelessly worked on bringing such an item to market. It's called the Steam Box and it's coming soon to a TV set near you. It may sound weird but, unlike traditional gaming PC and consoles, Valve doesn't actually make the Steam Box. The only box it made was a prototype/beta device.

So how do you go about buying a Steam Box? Well it's as easy as pie. Just simply choose what third-party vendor you wish to buy from (i.e. Falcon Northwest, CyberPower PC etc.) and select from three different performance tiers: Good, Better or Best. "Good" machines are equivalent to a slightly more powerful PS4. A "good" system has no qualms about firing up a game at Full HD at 60 hertz. The "best" configurations can run in the thousands of dollars thanks to Nvidia GTX Titan GPUs and over clocked Core i7 CPU's.

Don't want to buy a steam box, but don't like bulky PCs? Just build a Steam Box then. Anyone with enough know-how can build one. The SteamOS is a free download (take that, Windows 8.1!).

Just be mindful that you may get burned during the building process. Why? Well, the water that cools the system had to be released one way or another. Thus, that very same water exits the system via vent holes and dissipates into the air in the form of pure water vapor, aka steam. 

Psyche! 

Though you have to admit, having a steam punk-style Steam Box would be the most ironic product of all time.

Is Valve's Steam Box something your interested in? Let me know in the comments section below.