Megatron: The Ultimate Gaming Machine
- The Gaming, Technology entry posted on November 3rd, 2007.
Back in the day, when I was more into gaming, I built the ultimate gaming machine. Codename Megatron (for ultimate nerdery).
That computer is still here but it’s collecting dust. Outdated and unrefined, it has sit under my desk doing absolutely nothing for more than a year and a half or more — I only use Macs for real productivity, of course.
Much like the new Transformers movie, Megatron is getting an upgrade in performance and appearance. Not by fixing up the existing machine but by throwing it out and starting fresh.
Yes, this is Megatron version 2.0 of the Ultimate Gaming Machine.
Ordered Component List
Here’s the rundown. When this lot comes in, I’ll be sure to take some pictures and do some fun documentation (I mean, what else do I have to post about, right? Hah).
System Core
- Motherboard: Asus P5N32-E SLI
- CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 (3.0 GHz, FSB1333, 4 MB L2)
- Ram: 2 x OCZ DDR2-800 Gold 2048MB w/ Heatpipe Cooling
- Video Card: 2 x Asus GeForce 8800 Ultra 768MB
- Sound Card: Creative X-Fi Extreme Gamer
- Networking: Bigfoot Killer NIC M1
Storage
- Primary Hard Drive: Western Digital SATA Raptor 74GB
- Secondary Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500GB SATAII
- CD/DVD: Asus 18x DVD-RW Lightscribe (black)
Case / Cooling
- Case: Antec P180 (Black) w/ Window and Liquid Cooling Package
- Power Supply: Silverstone ST1000 1000W Power Supply
- CPU Cooling: Koolance CPU Waterblock CPU-330
- Video Liquid Cooling: 2 x Koolance GeForce 8800GTX/Ultra Waterblock
- Sticky Cooling: Arctic Silver Ceramique
- Additional Liquid Cooling: Thermaltake Aqua TMG1 120mm Radiator
- Case Fans Upgrade: Blue LED for L33tness
- Case Mod: Blue UV Cabling w/ UV Lights for Uber L33tness
Software
- OS: Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit
Update: Assembly Complete
Megatron has been built for a while now but I figured I’d go ahead and update this post now since it is well past due.
Here are some photos…
It runs amazing — unstoppable.
13 Responses to “Megatron: The Ultimate Gaming Machine”rss
Chris Cable, on November 3rd, 2007, said:
You should have got the Q6850 instead of the E6850. Especially when you’re getting water cooling and could have overclocked it. Especially when you don’t have a budget to stick to. DDR3 would’ve been nice, too. Also Vista Ultimate doesn’t have anything special in it, yet, does it? In reality, I’m super-jealous, anyway.
Travis, on November 4th, 2007, said:
@Chris:
Since this is a gaming system, I don’t think so. Only one or two games these days can actually take advantage of a quad-core processor, so I’d be spending about $900 for a small performance gain in only a couple of games.
Plus, the system is compatible with today’s quad-cores, as well as the next refresh of chips from Intel coming later this year/early next year. That means that in maybe two years, when quad-cores are more widely utilized, I could have an easy upgrade path.
Chris Cable, on November 4th, 2007, said:
Very true, but I was assuming cost wasn’t an issue, that high performance was. :)
BONTB, on November 7th, 2007, said:
That’s nice pc you built there! I remember back when I was 8 started playing with comodore 64 now how cool is that!
I had to wait 45 minutes for tetris to load over the cassette player hahahahahaha
AntiBarbie, on November 9th, 2007, said:
Man, I am jealous too! My computer is so old that I am surprised it doesn’t have an 8 track player on it somewhere.
RecycleCindy, on November 10th, 2007, said:
Looks awesome. My son who is the gamer would love the power!
Elton John, on December 6th, 2007, said:
Our dream system will be used for mild overclocking, along with daily data processing duties. Most importantly, we want to be able to game aggressively, and that means a first-class graphics card. Another important feature is that we want to do some video editing, as well as have support for High-Definition (HD) TV input signals.
A Thinker, on December 8th, 2007, said:
Sounds like a good machine you’re building there! Might you need a monitor?
Elton John, on December 13th, 2007, said:
Our biggest surprise of this year was the extreme value we found in NVIDIA’s 7900 GS. This card packs an amazing amount of power into a small price point. GeForce 7900 GS is based on the same GPU as NVIDIA’s more expensive, high-end cards such as the 7950 GT and 7900 GTX, except that NVIDIA has disabled four pixel shading units. This gives an effective number of 20 pixel shedders, which in this 256MB card performs stunningly.
Futon-Matt, on December 14th, 2007, said:
Sounds like you’ve got yourself a nice machine there. Congrats.
Matt
dulloq, on December 30th, 2007, said:
congratulation , seems to be a big thing!
Edward, on January 5th, 2008, said:
I love the name!
Create a Receipt Organization Workflow in MacOS from Travis Vocino, on January 18th, 2008, said:
[...] you read this blog or know me at all, you know I’m a Mac zealot (except for the Ultimate Gaming Machine hobby of [...]
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