[Insula Gilliganis]

With Dream Machine 2007's (aka DM12) arrival just days away, I recently starting thinking... what has been my favorite Maximum PC Dream Machine EVER?? With 13 versions to choose from (2001 had 3 Dream Machines... gaming, content creation & entertainment versions) I finally decided on these three as one that really stood out in my mind from all the others:

#3) Dream Machine 2005 (DM X) - Using an AMD processor for the first time in an all-in-one Dream Machine, the "Dual Everything" concept had the editors abandoning the old "speed at any cost here and now" philosophy of previous Dream Machines and built a machine that could be getting faster as we speak with software just now being optimized for four core processors. Two years into the future DM X gave us a glimpse of the four core future many of us are just now entering (thank you July 22 price cuts!!)

#2) Dream Machine 2002 (DM 7) - The "speed tested, overclocked & ready to burn" sports car themed DM 7 was cock full of "not for mere mortals, pre-production parts" and a paint job last produced 27 years earlier which only hard core foreign car fanatics would have remembered. And in another blow against conventional thought, MPC Computer Sports thumbed its noses at the DDR loving crowd and stuck with RDRAM one last time. From its custom fitted power cables sleeve tubing, the 9700 video card practically stolen from ATI, and the first painted Dream Machine, DM 7 started the trend of expecting next generation parts on the inside and beautiful paint jobs on the outside.

#1) Dream Machine 200 (DM 5) - Like the impact of experiencing an atomic wedgie, a purple nurple & a ton of bricks falling on you all occuring at the same time, DM 5 came out of the blue like a bolt of lightning on a clear day and rewrote what the Dream Machine should be. Coming from the ashes of the previous year's WEAK Dream Machine (somewhat buried in a how-to article and configured to JUST barely equal MAXPC's baseline Dell), DM 5 became the first "modern" Dream Machine, one built without regards to the previous boot/Maximum PC self imposed monetary spending limit of $5000 and ended up being a behemoth that looked like it needed a forklift just to move it around. But DM 5 was also the end of an era, when computers were filled to the gills with multiple optical drives, tons o' fans, maxed out PCI slots full of SCSI & MPEG decoder cards, and a rat’s nest of a wiring job that made Larry Fine's hair looked like it was styled & groomed by Vidal Sassoon. I am sure that you would do exactly like what Frederick Vong on page 70 of the November 2000 issue seems to be about ready to do: Bow down in the presence of the "holy incarnation known as" Dream Machine 2000 and do your best Wayne & Garth imitation... "I'm not worthy!"

I actually got thinking about the above after wondering what this year’s Dream Machine configuration would consist of. I was wondering if we would be totally & completely surprised by something unexpected like an eight core setup with two Phenom FX processors or perhaps even just an overclocked Barcelona. But, apparently, neither is not going to happen according to what Gordon Mah Ung mentioned in podcast #25 (I guess either an overclocked & water cooled Core 2 Extreme QX6850 or more exciting, a Penryn will fill the CPU socket). Also mentioned as Dream Machine 2007 components by “The Murph” in pervious podcasts are dual NVidia 8800 Ultras (using Leadteck Leviathan Water Cooling HDCP cards would be nice) and a Cooler Master case (guessing either CM Stacker 832 or COSMOS 1000 which probably will NOT be painted as Dream Machines since 2002 have been painted ONLY on even numbered years). I was surprised that Dream Machine 11 didn’t sport a boot drive consisting of a Gigabyte GC-RAMDISK or its unreleased, where-the-heck-is-it successor (http://www.techreport.com/onearticle.x/10116) or something similar, so lets hope this year something unique can be done in that department instead of just a bunch of Seagate Barracuda ES.2s/7200.11 or Samsung F1s raided together… not that there is anything wrong with either of those solutions as both have higher platter densities than the Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000. And perhaps another power supply besides one made by PC Power and Cooling will be use.

Lastly, although Gordon has written some thoughts about building each years Dream Machine in the past two Dream Machine issues, would be interesting to find out his thoughts on his favorite Dream Machine or its evolution through the years (since he has been around for all but the first two) or Michael Brown’s thoughts as he was there in the building of Dream Machine 1.
Thanks for reading my ramblings (obviously I had some free time on my hands and not enough other things to think about) and have fun reading Harry Potter this weekend & this year’s Dream Machine issue starting next week.

[flapjack]

I would bet that there will be a 4 Terabyte Array, a Pc Power and Cooling PSU, and a Silverstone Case.

[Lawrence Chang]

Its odd that we are just talking about the DM right now. Wheres all the hype?

[PC_destroyer]

I have a guess on what the PC might be...

CPU: Intel Penryn Quad-Core (overclocked 5GHz+)
Mobo: Intel x38 chipset
Video: 2x 8800Ultra
RAM: 4GB Corsair Dominator (DDR3?)
PSU: PC P&C 750w
HDD: 4x 1TB RAID0
Optical: Same as previous build
Case: Silverstone or Coolermaster
Cooling: Danger Den Custom Kit

I hope i didn't spoil it

[PHX Suns 13]

well i would expect a phenom or barcelona, because that would be more likely, sincei t's coming out sooner...
so maybe a 4x4 w/ those basic 2.0ghz bareclonas, and dual 8800's on the 680a or some amd chipset... and the new updated pcp 1kw psu w/ 8pin connectors, etc...

[TheMurph]

[SpazzAttack]

[PHX Suns 13]

well it was a good build, i thought you guys were going to get some exclusive parts, that aren't out yet...

or maybe a prototype coolit tec cooling system, like they showed at computex etc..

[ravenhawk82]

My idea of a dream machine: (using only parts that have been released)
2x 8800Ultras (overclocked, of course)
QX6850 (they're out... Just hard to find)
Asus Striker Extreme motherboard
4 1TB Hitachi drives in Raid 0
Some sort of phase-change CPU cooler
lots of extras

And Murph, there'd better be a penguin on that thing!!!!

[TheMurph]

[ravenhawk82]

Told you not to send them back. How bout a Tux sticker if you can't get a real one?

[ravenhawk82]

I just checked themail to find THE NEW ISSUE, and after thorough examination, I didn't see a penguin. I'm suing.

[flapjack]

[PC_destroyer]

I got the Spetember issue. I can't believe ow off i was. And I can't believe that there isn't a Penryn proc in it!!!

I was close about the video, HDD, PSU, cooling, optical, and Case though.

[amdmaxx]

Can u list the components they picked?
I am interested in which Optical drive was chosen.
Thanks.

[SpazzAttack]