PiixL G-Pack VESA mountable Steam Machine aims for funding

We first saw the PiixL Jetpack last December when it was announced by the British PC makers and designers on the wave of optimism surrounding Valve's Steam Machines plans. Today PiixL wrote to HEXUS to inform us that its G-Pack PC, which is intended to be affixed to the back of your big TV and run Steam Big Picture Mode via Windows, is going to be the subject of a Kickstarter campaign. With Windows rather than SteamOS installed the name of the machine has been changed from Jetpack to G-Pack…

As a reminder of what the PiixL G-Pack is; it is a PC which VESA mounts to the back of your TV and was conceptualised (as the Jetpack) to be a powerful Steam Machine. Now the London based company is going to launch it with Windows/Steam Big Picture Mode. Standing out from the crowd, this is a living room destined PC which has been designed to allow power users to deploy "the latest and greatest components available".

Specs include:

Z97 Express chipset
Support for all 4th Generation Intel processors, including Core i7 4790K
GTX 780ti and Titan Black (top end configurations)
M2 SSDs as standard and up to 1 Terabyte
RAID-enabled, hot-swappable Dual HDD support for built-in NAS
Chassis fits discretely behind (VESA mount) TVs from 32-inches to 70-inches, while providing easy access physical controls thanks to its extendibility

PiixL tell us that it has improved the G-Pack chassis since we first saw it and that it has specifically "been improved for easier user upgradeability and supports virtually all GPUs and ITX motherboards available on the market today within a combined thermal envelope of 500 watts".

With Windows as the installed OS you will also have a much wider selection of (Steam) games and applications to choose from. PiixL says that there will be full GamePad control present for both gaming and media and it will offer a "true one-touch experience from standby to entertainment".

The PiixL G-Pack will launch on Kickstarter towards the end of this month when we will find out more about the project and the all important pricing strategy.

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Didn't Steam's streaming feature kill a large part of the market for this? Combined with the fact it's going to be ridiculously expensive. It's going to be a £600-700 device competing to replace a £350 console. While I like the idea on paper, commercially I just can't see this being anything but a massive failure.

I'd love a gander at the cooling in this, if it can indeed house a 780ti and a 4790k.

Think about PC games with -80% reduction. You can't get this with console.
But you're right, streaming feature is killing the “high performance steam machine vs good pc streaming and bad perf steam machine to display”

How are they going to cool this adequately and quietly? Also, what if your tv's VESA mounting holes are already otherwise occupied. Say for a wall mount, for instance.

This is my main concern as well. I like the idea of this, but my TV is already mounted to the wall. If they somehow had VESA supports on both sides so you could have both mounted to the wall, that'd be cool, but I doubt the frame would be strong enough.

EDIT: Actually I'm confused now because reading their site, they say this:

WILL IT FIT MY TV?
Yes! G-Pack fits any TV which diagonal display size is between 37″ and 70″, and some 32″ are compatible as well. Please check this topic again soon as we’ll upload more material to check if your TV fits with G-Pack! In terms of weight we tested it to over 400kg without even starting to bend our brackets, so we’re perfectly confident in recomending it for TVs up to 100kg in weight!!

I don't understand why they're talking about the weight of the TV, I thought this mounted to the back of the TV but it seems the TV mounts to it?

PiixL G-Pack VESA mountable Steam Machine aims for funding

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