To boldly go where no Dream Machine has gone before
Last year, we said we would need to build this year’s Dream Machine in space to beat our 2014 über-desk PC. That’s why this year’s Dream Machine is upping the ante by going out-of-this-world with a NASA motif. Specifically, we’re modeling our Dream Machine after NASA’s iconic 1960s Titan II Gemini Launch Vehicle, which was powered by Titan II missiles. Dream Machine 2015, coincidentally, is powered by Titan rockets of its own; specifically, four supercharged Titan X GPUs.
Unlike the computers that powered the Titan II GLV, however, our Dream Machine is orders of magnitudes more powerful than all the command centers on Earth back in the ’60s, as you will no doubt discover in the following pages.
So, strap yourself in and prepare to be jettisoned into the final frontier of computing!
Stellar components
If money were no object, what would the best PC look like? That’s a question that Dream Machine has always tried to answer, and this year’s build is no different. We’ve filled every PCI-e, RAM, and SATA slot we could with the highest-grade components that we could find. Make no mistake, this PC has enough horsepower to reach relativistic speeds.
1) GPUs: We grabbed the single fastest graphics card on Earth, Nvidia’s GeForce GTX Titan X, and then we grabbed three more and put them into SLI. Oh, did we mention that they are all liquid cooled and heavily overclocked?
2) Water cooling: Allowing our rockets to run at full capacity is our liquid-fueled custom dual-loop system from EKWB. This will ensure that our engine and rockets don’t overheat when we break the sound barrier.
3) Storage: You want hard drives? We’ve got four 6TBs of them mounted on the other side of the case. There’s enough storage here to last us years in outer space. They are perhaps only eclipsed by our four 1TB Samsung 850 Pro SSDs that we’ve put in hyper drive RAID 0.
4) Case: CaseLab’s Magnum SMA8 is an astronomical chassis that is equipped to carry all the cargo we need to send our Dream Machine into outer orbit and back. It’s also got a super sexy paint job from Smooth Creations.
5) CPU: The central processing unit behind our rocket is Intel’s Core i7-5960X, which is the most advanced CPU money can buy as of this writing. It’s got eight core engines, which we’ve boosted to Mach 4.5GHz speeds.
Ingredients
| Part | Header Cell - Column 1 | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i7-5960X | $1,050 |
| Mobo | Asus Rampage V Extreme | $470 |
| RAM | 64GB DDR4 Corsair Dominator | $1,495 |
| GPU | 4x EVGA GeForce Titan X Hydro Copper | $5,200 |
| SSD | 4x Samsung 850 PRO 1TB | $2,560 |
| HDD | 4x WD Black 6TB | $1,200 |
| Cooling | EKWB custom loop cooling | $450 |
| Case | CaseLabs Magnum SMA8 | $520 |
| Paint | Smooth Creations | $800 |
| OS | Windows 8.1 | $100 |
| Monitor | Dell UltraSharp UP2715K | $2,500 |
| Mouse | Logitech Daedalus Apex | $70 |
| Keyboard | Razer BlackWidow Chroma | $170 |
| Headset | Kingston Hyper X Cloud II | $100 |
| Speakers | Adam Audio 5.1-powered system | $3,700 |
| Sound system | Sound Blaster X7 | $400 |
| LED strips | Logisys RGB LED | $90 |
| PSU | EVGA SuperNOVA 1600 | $450 |
| TOTAL | Row 18 - Cell 1 | $21,325 |
Note: Thanks to CyberPower PC for sending us the 4 Samsung 850 PRO SSDs!
Click the next page to read about the individual components.
How a Microsoft exec managed to pitch Microsoft Word through the genius tactic of being able to actually use it in a 'type-off' demanded by clients: 'I was the only one who'd actually been a secretary'
Former Valve exec says the company struggled to sell Half-Life until coming up with the ultimate 'one simple trick' of marketing manoeuvres: slapping a 'Game of the Year' sticker on the box
