Maximum PC

I think this should be in this particular forum.. I think. .heh. Anyways.

I just got my Issue with the Dream machine 2004 and... Wow.

Just wanted to ask, if you built this rig, would you change anything? Would you add or remove anything? Or use a seperate part?

I personally think the rig is amazing, well.. I don't think it, it just is apparently. But I didn't like the case. Last year had a more stylish case and it had water cooling. Why not a water cooled rig this year?

Would I build this? I practicly have; Without all the bells and whistles though. I have no need for touch-screen LCD's and the like. But that's me and the reality of money. I'm sure I'd consider all that stuff if I had an open budget!

I think they nailed it pretty much square on the head though as far as a Dream machine goes. I went straight to newegg and put that Logitech unit in my wish list. I about bought it actually...but am struggling with the actual need for a $200 keyboard when I have so much else to do right now to worry about stuff like that.

I also agree with them not going over the top and holding at 4Ghz. It just makes sense IMO. Water would have been nice as I'd like to see more H2O articles, but don't feel it necessary for this machine. It's just an added hazard they didn't have to muck with.

At the time we were building it, we couldn't find a water block to match the CPU as it hadn't been released yet.

the harddrrives are at zipzoomfly....
the seagate versions are at ncix although they are the 160gig version...

still waiting for my issue.

I know how you feel. But it's worth the wait.


I got my issue, grabbed it and RAN to the bathroom to sit on the toilet and read it. I knew I was gonna crap myself when I saw it so I got prepared.

whoah there . I don't think you needed to share that much

Hey, um...Josh. I just posted this else where, and traveled in here to feedback for an idea/suggestion:

"...Or H20 added to the DM next month to show what it can do before they rip it apart. Everyone is curious about overclocking these new chipsets (PCIE directly) and an article from MPC would be nice. Seeing a website's take is one thing, having it in widely distributed paper-print is another!-"Wet Dream"

Danger Den is shipping blocks (finally) for the new socketT/775's (TDX/RBX). Basically it's just a new lexan top for the regular TDX/RBX. Others are now hitting the streets as well, as you guys probably already know by now. I could drop a friendly letter to them to see if they would send you guys one for review.

Besides, we're due for another water article. There's a lot of new toys since the last one (black ice extreme, 12v HPPS pumps, TDX blocks, etc...). Let's piece one together instead of running one straight from a box. Sounds fun!

I was actually kind of disappointed by this years DM. I was expecting an fx-53 or p4 EE and def not something based on intels new socket after seeing all the problems they've been having with it. If your dream machine is a pentium 4 3.6ghz (560) and I have a A64 3800+ or the equivalent of a 3.8 ghz p4 does that make my cpu better than yours? And thats not even the fx. Also why on earth would you spend 1k on a case that doesn't look that good and does not offer any special cooling. You could have gotten a Mach2 or vapochill and still had money left over. If I had to pick between that case and last years I would pick last years. To be fair its definitely a good rig but not worthy of dream machine status no matter how many touch screen LCDs you load it up with.

BTW my system murdas it

It sucks that NVIDIA couldn't give an SLI solution in time. Obviously, were it my rig, I'd replace the ATI cards with the SLI solution (and deep six anything that was in the way).

I'd also have a case window... why hide all those components?

Overall though, damn impressive job. The entire issue is pretty hardcore for that matter... [Ch]ams' Takes to follow in a future thread.

Nice job Gordon, Will & Josh (and any intern who may have been harmed in the making of DMY2K4)!

I'm sorry. I was fairly disappointed when I sat here and shook my head at almost every decision made for DreamMachine2k4.

Sure, it's nice... but for something that's supposed to bar no expense, there seemed to be a number of mind-boggling compromises.

Aye, it was weird that they didn't use an FX-53 or an EE. I think it would have been nice to see an AMD chip in there, and like Chams said. A window would be nice. And what was so special about the case?

I loved last years case.. Wanted one since. They could have used the newer Coolermaster case, the one that looks like the wavemaster with the sound guage.

After reading the article I have to say I agree with most of what they did. Its a nice system hardware wise.

My only complaint is with the case. OK, so its supposed to be post modern. I can go with that. It might have been served better if the "maximum PC" logo had been the same size as the "DM 2004". IMO Post modern screams by not screaming at all.

Anyways, I would have likely liked it more if a shot had been included with the door closed. I like the LCD but the optical drives should have been painted or stealthed.

Just my opinion - I know they very and reading the article, it sounds like time was a factor.

Manta

We really wanted to use PCI Express and DDR-2 in this year's Dream Machine. Because there were no chipsets for Athlon 64 with DDR-2 or PCI Express support when we were building the machine, that locked us into the P4 architecture.

We wanted PCI Express because we thought we were going to be able to get a dual-PCI express videocard rig in, but alas, it wasn't ready in time.

On the CPU front, we did extensive testing on the EE and the Prescott. The Prescott won because the EE just wouldn't overclock. When we got the Prescott over 3.9ish GHz it smoked the EE. Speed always wins.

Like Josh said, we were severely limited by the lack of cooling block solutions for the new socket.

This year, September was just a little too early to get all the cool stuff that we would have liked to see in. I still think it's a very solid machine, and a top performer in most of the important benchmarks. The silver paintjob looks much better in person than it does in the photos. Apparently, that's a brutal color to photograph.

You overclocked it approx. 400MHz with air cooling. How much more do you think you could have gotten out of it with liquid?

Also, I'm glad Leadtek finally sent you a review board. I've been telling them to do it for awhile. But in the 6800U v. X800XTPE shootout, you mentioned you only could overclock the X800XTPE by 5MHz. Seems like a clarification should be issued.. you only o/c'd the memory by 5Mhz. You did a nice job on the core.

I think we could have gotten another 100MHz at least with water, and maybe more than that with phase change, which is what we wanted to do initially.

Even without the fancy cooling rig, I think that this year's Dream Machine turned out very well.

///Will

I think the Audigy 2zs gamer is a poor choice, since the Platinum and Platinum pro have more cool stuff than the Gamer, notably more neat hardware.

You could have easily pushed the EE to 4ghz+ if you didnt decide to spend 1g on steel and went with phase change and an fx-53 at 3ghz+ still would have been better. Why were you guys so decided on pci-express and ddr2? thats going to become the standard eventually but you don't see much of a gain if any with pci express and ddr2 is still running pretty slow. I thought it was kind of funny how the little frag box bested your DM in the very same issue. tsk tsk maximum pc. tsk tsk.

Hmm....which box you talkin? The DM beat the Falcon in everything but Halo (where its was within error I believe). Only a 1.3FPS difference. I doubt you can blame this on the CPU choice. And, it spanked the ProMagix box in everything but musicmatch benches where it fell short at 3:44 to 3:42 - a reproducible but un-noticable difference. The prescott *appears* to be more overclockable on air than the EE as well. I would have liked to have seen an AMD solution, but I agree with not going EE.

There are things I didn't like - but the CPU was not one of them.

Manta

Not sure if this has been said throughout this thread, but the Sept 2004 issue does have Lean Machine 2004 as well right?