Dream Machine Fever: The 17 Finest PCs Ever Built

boot's first issue in 1996 brought you the first ever Dream Machine.

Among other components, the first Dream Machine featured a SCSI adpater and a CD-ROM.

boot 1997's Dream Machine cover.

Note the ATI 3D Rage/3Dfx Voodoo combo.

Featuring an Intel Pentium II 300Mhz CPU.

Dream Machine 1998: the Ultimate PC

"It's hard to resist a mobo that comes with built-in SCSI"

128MB SDRAM (expandable to 1GB!)

1999's Dream Machine was done in a Built It style

Here we hook up the drives and add the videocard.

The Dream Machine of the new millenuim!

We abolished our price limit for 2000 and went big. Grand total? $11, 987

In 2001 we decided one Dream Machine wasn't enough, and built three.

The Essential Gaming Rig

The Entertainment Center

And the Content Creation Box.

Dream Machine 2002 gave us our first look at ATI's Radeon 9700

It also shattered five benchmark records.

Dream Machine 2003 featured a unique cooling system.

It also featured a pie in the sky price tag of $10,985

The 2004 Raw Power Dream Machine

At the time we called this $12, 328 machine "future proof."

Dream machine 2005 was the Dual-Everything Machine

Dual videocards, dual-core CPUs and two terabytes of storage.

Dream Machine 2006: the Fastest PC EVER!

This bleeding-edge machine had a custom paint job courtesy of Smooth Creations Custom.

We used an Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 CPU with an Nvidia nForce 590 motherboard.

Dream Machine 2007: a supercharged stock car.

We liquid-cooled the quad-core CPU with black coolant.

Total cost for this benchmarking beast? $11, 595

Dream Machine 2008 got caught in the Intel/Nvidia war.

We nicknamed it the "Butt-Kicking Benchmark Buster"

It was also one of the priciest DM builds at $17, 285

Dream Machine 2009 was actually three price-tierd machines,

The Stimulus Package built

Intel's Core i7 was our most luxurious item added to the rig.

Last year's Dream Machine, the Perfect PC

Clocking in at $15, 782 with two 2TBHard Drives and two SSDs