Valve to reveal Steam Box reference design this afternoon, Source 2 on Friday - rumor

Valve will be making the second of three announcements today regarding whatever plans it has in the works in a little over two hours. And as with anything pertaining to Valve making an announcement, Source Engine 2 has popped up.

According to an "anonymous" Valve employee posting on 4chan - and snapped by Reddit - Valve will supposedly show off a schematic for its Steam Box which will be running SteamOS and uses Nvidia's streaming tech.

It won't be a finished product, but the designs shown will outline how upgradable the hardware system will be, and it may even announce official partners.

Here's what the supposed Valve employee said on the matter, courtesy of Tom's Hardware:

"It will support all hardware. All CPUs, all GPUs -- from three generations ago at the oldest for Nvidia, two for AMD and all going forward. The release design, however, will have a Nvidia GPU and an AMD CPU. It will use regular PC parts, however, there will be a certification program. We have to guarantee some sort of baseline performance – if there's analog out, then the audio must not crackle, PSUs that are small won't burn your house down, small cases without retarded branding, low latency wireless networking, etc.

"You are free to build an 800 pound glowing monstrosity if you wish, and it'll work, but that's not really what we want you to do. There will also be prebuilt and bundled solutions."

While that covers today's reveal, and isn't far-fetched considering Monday's announcement, Friday, the firm will supposedly be showing its Source 2 game engine which will work with Linux, Windows and OS X and maybe even PlayStation 4 eventually.

It Valve does indeed show off Source 2 on Friday, it's possible the game they will show running on it could be the fabled Half-Life 3. You would like that, wouldn't you? Note, I said: "could be". Stranger things have happened.

Anyway, as with all things anonymous, take it with a grain of salt until something is officially announced.

Valve made the first of its upcoming living room announcements on Monday regarding SteamOS, Beta Hardware, and Big Picture Mode.

It has also opened up a Steam Universe community hub.

The counter clock can be accessed through this page, and we'll be keeping an eye on things for you as well.

Thanks, Splatteredhouse.