The Dream PC 2015

The EngiNeer · August 31, 2015

The Dream PC 2015

To boldly go where no Dream Machine has gone before Last year, we as maximumPC team 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.

We mainly went with this theme, though, because we think NASA and its space programs are cool. Really, who doesn’t? Historically, NASA has been known for giving mankind a cutting-edge glimpse of the [CENSORED]ure of technology and innovation—topics that Dream Machine tries to evoke each and every year. The space program also embodies the spirit of what it means to dream big. It’s the perfect theme for this year’s Dream Machine.

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.

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

TOTAL COST $21,325

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