So what's the Perfect PC that MaximumPC is building this month?

[AnitaPeterson]

Hello there,

You might think it odd, but I really don't want to spend $10 CDN on the magazine just to find out what their idea of a "perfect PC" or Dream Machine is...

I was wondering if any of you reads this magazine. Can you give me a brief synopsis of the article, and tell me which components they put together?

Thanks much!

 

[Sniper82]

Their dream machine and say my dream machine are 2 almost completely different machines. Last time I read that mag about their dream machine I could build a much better one if I had the money.

 

[abaez]

Cooler Master ATC110 with a really sweet paint job to match some guys car.
PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 475-PFC
P4 2.53 oc'd to 2.85
Alpha Novatech PAL 8942 heatsink
Asus P4T533
Samsung RIMM4200
RAdeon 9700
Audigy gamer
Two WD1200JB's raid
Liteon 48x
Pioneer DVR-A04
Sony F520 Monitor
Sharp LL-T1820 LCD
Klipsch 5.1
Intel NIC
MS keyboard and mouse
XP Pro

 

[Howard]

abaez, is that your dream PC or theirs?

Cause whoever's dream PC is that... you don't aim high, my friend.

 

[abaez]

It's theirs.

 

[Coherence]

abaez, is that your dream PC or theirs?

Cause whoever's dream PC is that... you don't aim high, my friend.

It's MaximumPC's current dream machine. I subscribe, and of all the PC mags I've read and subscribed to in the past, I definitely think it's the best. (Besides, subscriptions are only $12/year!)

Anyway, I got my copy of the current issue on the same day Intel announced their 2.85Ghz P4. Granted, this PC is OC'd to that speed, but since it wasn't available at the time, MaxPC wasn't able to use it in their system.

Their philosophy was not to simply take the most expensive parts out there and slap them together, of course. They built the system using a modicum of reason. Otherwise, they probably would have used a 42" flat plasma display, Platinum sound card, 10krpm hd's, etc. When they built it, they used parts that have a reasonable price/performance ratio, but still on the higher end of things.

 

[dexvx]

Originally posted by: Howard
abaez, is that your dream PC or theirs?

Cause whoever's dream PC is that... you don't aim high, my friend.

Thats about the best you can do for a single processor desktop system. I'm sure you could go higher, but then it wouldnt be a desktop anymore.

 

[sandorski]

Though I'm an AMD diehard, that dream machine looks quite nice to me. Except that POS(exageration...but I'll never buy another one ) Audigy.

 

[Howard]

Desktop just means something atop a desk... However, even if you stuck to the common usage:

Cooler Master ATC110 with a really sweet paint job to match some guys car.
PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 475-PFC
P4 2.53 oc'd to 2.85
Alpha Novatech PAL 8942 heatsink
Asus P4T533
Samsung RIMM4200
RAdeon 9700
Audigy gamer
Two WD1200JB's raid
Liteon 48x
Pioneer DVR-A04
Sony F520 Monitor
Sharp LL-T1820 LCD
Klipsch 5.1
Intel NIC
MS keyboard and mouse
XP Pro

I'll leave the case, as no case is perfect for everybody.
PC P&C has a power supply more powerful than the one they listed. The Turbo Cool 600 Sun Ultra AXmp, to be specific.
A dream PC wouldn't necessarily need to be OCed. I leave this one alone.
A heatsink and a fan... Definitely not the best kind of cooler, and definitely not the quietest. If you want to get outrageous I'd have vacuum-insulated line going to a deep freezer @ -60 C filled with 3M Fluorinert FC-87. Don't get me started, there are even better solutions out there.
I'll leave the motherboard alone, as some may not need gigabit ethernet, fiber channel host bus adapters (great for some sweet storage), SCSI RAID, etc. But since this is a dream PC...
Samsung RIMM4200? That's like walking into McDonald's and asking, "Could I have a combo"? Unless you forgot to type something, of course.
Radeon 9700 I leave alone.
Audigy Gamer? Just for the software, eh? The TerraTec 6fire DMX has better sound quality, although it doesn't support EAX 3.0
IDE drives in a RAID? Could have used a SCSI controller (RAID preferred) and set up some SCSI sweetness. Solid state storage would have even been better.
The media and monitors I'll leave alone.
Multimedia speakers for a dream PC? Come on, just pick something from a decent audio store!
MS mouse and keyboard... Again the McDonald's thing. Less so for the NIC. Unless it's another omission.

 

[Howard]

A reasonable dream PC? ... That's like an animal-loving, commie pinko Red Dawn.

 

[mastertech01]

Samsung RIMM4200? That's like walking into McDonald's and asking, "Could I have a combo"? Unless you forgot to type something, of course.

I guess I dont get your statement here... Thats what it is called, RIMM4200, what it is, and what the P4T533 uses. 32Bit Rambus.

 

[wfbberzerker]

Originally posted by: Howard
Desktop just means something atop a desk... However, even if you stuck to the common usage:

Cooler Master ATC110 with a really sweet paint job to match some guys car.
PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 475-PFC
P4 2.53 oc'd to 2.85
Alpha Novatech PAL 8942 heatsink
Asus P4T533
Samsung RIMM4200
RAdeon 9700
Audigy gamer
Two WD1200JB's raid
Liteon 48x
Pioneer DVR-A04
Sony F520 Monitor
Sharp LL-T1820 LCD
Klipsch 5.1
Intel NIC
MS keyboard and mouse
XP Pro

I'll leave the case, as no case is perfect for everybody.
PC P&C has a power supply more powerful than the one they listed. The Turbo Cool 600 Sun Ultra AXmp, to be specific.
A dream PC wouldn't necessarily need to be OCed. I leave this one alone.
A heatsink and a fan... Definitely not the best kind of cooler, and definitely not the quietest. If you want to get outrageous I'd have vacuum-insulated line going to a deep freezer @ -60 C filled with 3M Fluorinert FC-87. Don't get me started, there are even better solutions out there.
I'll leave the motherboard alone, as some may not need gigabit ethernet, fiber channel host bus adapters (great for some sweet storage), SCSI RAID, etc. But since this is a dream PC...
Samsung RIMM4200? That's like walking into McDonald's and asking, "Could I have a combo"? Unless you forgot to type something, of course.
Radeon 9700 I leave alone.
Audigy Gamer? Just for the software, eh? The TerraTec 6fire DMX has better sound quality, although it doesn't support EAX 3.0
IDE drives in a RAID? Could have used a SCSI controller (RAID preferred) and set up some SCSI sweetness. Solid state storage would have even been better.
The media and monitors I'll leave alone.
Multimedia speakers for a dream PC? Come on, just pick something from a decent audio store!
MS mouse and keyboard... Again the McDonald's thing. Less so for the NIC. Unless it's another omission.

ill leave most of your post alone... but maxpc went with ata instead of SCSI because of some bug w/winxp which causes its write speeds to be really low (something like that)

 

[mastertech01]

ill leave most of your post alone... but maxpc went with ata instead of SCSI because of some bug w/winxp which causes its write speeds to be really low (something like that)

Thats a shame since all they had to do was convert to dynamic disk to fix that. SP1 should also have a fix for it as well.

 

[tydas]

Don't forget mags are usually 2 to 3 months behind...its a god mag if you like to look at paper occasionally instead of a crt...

 

[John]

Originally posted by: tydas
Don't forget mags are usually 2 to 3 months behind...its a god mag if you like to look at paper occasionally instead of a crt...

It's a great mag to read while you're on the toilet, or taking a hot bath.

 

[kgraeme]

So you want to know about an expensive "dream machine", but you're too cheap to buy a magazine?

 

[dexvx]

Looks like different people have different definitions of dream eh? I'm not into vapochill, water cooling, etc.

Personally I want a midtower case thats light, very quiet, and having tier1 components.

Or a 1U Rack that fits the above (although I doubt the quiet part).

 

[Varun]

Wow like has been said, it's not that great!

A Dream Machine should make you say WOW not, oh it's pretty good.
A dream machine to me is something that is powerful and (almost) silent.

I would get water cooling I think, or something along those lines, and put the pump in my laundry room or something.

Also, I would go for a SCSI Raid 0 4 disk or RAID 5 or something along those lines.

Just my 2p

 

[Dug]

Thats a shame since all they had to do was convert to dynamic disk to fix that

I've looked through most of the posts at storagereview and it seems that converting to dynamic disks only brings back about 70% of expected performance. I of course can't verify if this is totally true, just something i've read.

At least they had the new Seagate sitting there ready to go. And they did mention reading through the storage review forums. Maybe at the time (2-3) months ago, nobody had come accross the dynamic disk fix.

Wow like has been said, it's not that great!

Actually it is, considering the time frame, plus they make their Dream machines from parts that you and I can buy. Although a lot of those parts are expensive, they aren't completely out of reach. Example would be solid state storage- At $16000 for 18Gb you would need to spend $208000 to equal the storage of those two WD's. That's not exactely attainable to the likes of you and I. Nor feasable for the company to cough up for a magazine article.

I don't see anything on the list that could be improved on. (Except maybe the sound card, but that's very subjective.)

No pumps in the bathroom or deepfreezers here.

PC P&C has a power supply more powerful than the one they listed. The Turbo Cool 600 Sun Ultra AXmp, to be specific.

And what form factor is that again? And you want quiet?

A heatsink and a fan... Definitely not the best kind of cooler, and definitely not the quietest.....A dream PC wouldn't necessarily need to be OCed. I leave this one alone.

Actually that is the best heatsink out there when combined with a slow moving fan, which will be quieter than even the hard drive. And since you mention that a dream machine doesn't need to be overclocked, this would be the quietest, easiest, cheapest solution that is maintenance free.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Thank you, all.

Now, don't start to fight. Of course bettter choices could be made. It's just that I was really curious about their idea of Perfect PC...

 

[Howard]

ATX.

A better question would be, why would you use a heatsink in a dream system? I would want my system to be completely inaudible (unless it's reading disc-based media).