Presenting Machinegun v4 – my own Dream PC

Right after I wrote the annual Dream PC article for Digital Life in Dec 2008, I felt an itch to upgrade my existing PC, which was actually doing well as it was. For the DL article, I had played with an Intel Core i7-965 chip, some Corsair DDR3 RAM and a nice Lian Li case, and I couldn’t help the urge to upgrade my own rig!

Thus began the an almost two-month long sourcing plus building process for a new, souped up rig.

Which parts of the DL Dream PC – essentially a showcase of the best PC components out there that PC buffs are nuts about – can I fit into my own machine, while adding water-cooling to the mix? Lots, apparently – from the Intel chip to a new Creative X-Fi soundcard with optical output.

In the end, the experience was as much fun as it was toil, building a rig called Machinegun v4 (Machinegun was the PC name I gave to my hostel PC when I duked it out with friends on Quake in NTU).

How else do you describe the labour of love? Of late nights, cut fingers, frustrating leaks in the water-loop (now fixed) and angry stares at my messy room from my wife… fortunately, the result was, of course, a much improved PC I could say was an one-and-only geek machine.

Anyway, here are the specs:
>>Core specs
-Intel Core i7-920
-Asus Rampage II Extreme
-6GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 RAM
-MSI Radeon HD4870x2
-Western Digital Velociraptor 300GB
-Creative X-Fi Titanium Fatality

>>Power + case
-Seasonic M12-700
-Silverstone TJ07 case

>>Water-cooling
-Swiftech GTZ
-Aqua Computer Aquagratix 4870×2
-Feser 360 rad
-Swiftech MCP355 + XSPC res-top

The result is far, far from the gurus at MDPC – and my photography skills are far, far from great, especially when being pissed off late in the night by a wonky screwdriver! But the PC’s good enough to be chumming along nicely below my desk now… and my room is back from being a warzone!

Here’re some “ghetto” pix of the experience… not touched up, (mostly) not cropped, and not glarmourised!