Dream Machine 2012: The Future Is Now

Cover 445 Edit2

Dream Machine 2012 is the PC utopia we all long for

Conventional wisdom says that PC performance doesn’t matter anymore. That’s because the average consumer, the average gamer, and the average PC jockey can’t tell the difference between a slow POS machine and a fast one. Well guess what, baby? That’s a bunch of crap.

Each part was carefully selected for its ability to kick ass

The truth is, the average gamer can tell the difference between a slide show and 110fps. The average consumer knows that a five-minute boot isn’t good and the average PC jockey really doesn’t like to wait five hours to encode a video. It’s not that they can’t tell the difference, they’ve just resigned themselves to the changing personal computing landscape, buying into the malarkey that portability and “ the cloud ” trump speed and power.

Dream Machine 2012 video preview

Well, not us. As power users our aspirations for an ever-more-capable, barrier-busting desktop rig never falter. For you, for us, and for all the PC enthusiasts who still give a damn, we present a preview of the utopia we envision: Dream Machine 2012 .

This rig is lovingly crafted to be our most elegant Dream Machine yet, without compromising the thing that matters most: performance.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Category Make/Model URL Price
CPUIntel 3.1GHz Xeon E5-2687W www.intel.com $1,885
MotherboardAsus P9X79 WS www.asus.com/ $380
RAM

64GB Corsair Dominator

Platinum DRR3/2133

http://www.corsair.com $899
GPUs

2x EVGA Hydro Copper

Geforce GTX690

www.evga.com $2,400
SSDs2x OCZ Vertex 4 512GB www.ocztechnology.com $1,198
HDDs3x 4TB HGST Ultrastar 7K4000 www.hgst.com $1,587
CaseSilverstone TJ11 www.silverstonetek.com $590
Paint JobSmooth Creations www.smoothcreationsonline.com $700
KeyboardCorsair Vengeance K90 http://www.corsair.com $129
SpeakersAudioengine 5+ www.audioengineusea.com $399
MouseCyborg R.A.T. 7 Albino www.cyborggaming.com $99
PSUCorsair AX1200i http://www.corsair.com $350
Monitor2x Dell U3011 www.dell.com $2,800
CoolingVariousRow 13 - Cell 2 $926
OSWindows 7 Professional www.microsoft.com $140
Total Cost Row 15 - Cell 1 Row 15 - Cell 2 $14,482
Jimmy Thang
Jimmy Thang has been Maximum PC's Online Managing Editor since 2012, and has been covering PC hardware and games for nearly a decade. His particular interests currently include VR and SFF computers.
Latest in Hardware
Crucial X9 external SSD on blue background
You can pick up the 2 TB version of my favorite budget external SSD for less than $0.06 per GB, transfers 300+ GB of data in 6 minutes
AMD Strix Point APU chip, held in a hand, with the reflected light showing the various processing blocks in the chip die
AMD's next-gen 'Gorgon Point' APU outted and seemingly sticks with RDNA 3.5 graphics which is disappointing for handheld gaming PCs if accurate
The Lenovo Legion LOQ gaming laptop on a blue background
Okay, so it's not technically in the Amazon Big Spring Sale, but this is the cheapest RTX 4070 gaming laptop you'll find today
A close-up photo of an Nvidia RTX 4070, with its heatsink removed, showing the AD104 GPU die and the surrounding Micron GDDR6X VRAM chips
With Nvidia Ace taking up 1 GB of VRAM in Inzoi, Team Green will need to up its memory game if AI NPCs take off in PC gaming
A collage of Radeon RX 9000 series graphics cards, as shown in AMD's promotional video for the launch of RDNA 4 at CES 2025
AMD's CEO claims 9070 XT sales are 10x higher than all previous Radeon generations but that's just for the first week of availability
Samsung 3D monitor
Samsung has a crack at ye olde glasses-free 3D monitor thing but its new cheaper 49-inch ultrawide OLED is far more interesting
Latest in Features
Ragnarok Battle Offline
After punishing my graphics card with Monster Hunter Wilds, I've returned to the rock-solid frame rates of my old hunting grounds: Windows XP
Ghoul in sunglasses
I'm convinced being a ghoul in Fallout 76 is the best way to vibe in West Virginia, thanks to these powerful perk cards and my new true love: Radiation
Steel Hunters hands-on
Steel Hunters is like a more tactical Titanfall, but as an extraction shooter it's undermined by boring loot
A close-up photo of an Nvidia RTX 4070, with its heatsink removed, showing the AD104 GPU die and the surrounding Micron GDDR6X VRAM chips
With Nvidia Ace taking up 1 GB of VRAM in Inzoi, Team Green will need to up its memory game if AI NPCs take off in PC gaming
While Waiting
While Waiting is a game all about chugging through life's most mundane tasks with a heaping side order of whimsy
Phyre
Playing a few hours of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 has put a lot of my worries to rest