The Best PC Money Can Buy

In our previous roundups, we have spoken of PCs that were assembled on a budget. While these setups will normally get very good performance, there are enthusiasts out there for who being “adequate” is not enough! A true enthusiast will go to any length and spend ungodly amounts of cash on building his system. If you are one of those for whom money is not an objection, this roundup will help you on achieving your dream of ‘The Ultimate Computing Nirvana’.

CPU: Intel Core2duo Extreme Q6700 (Rs. 44,000)
In the last few months, Intel’s Core2Duo range of processors have completely annihilated AMD in the performance game. Intel not content with just holding the performance crown has continued to build on its Core2Duo range and has released a Quad-core processor. The new Quad-core processor runs at a clock speed of 2.66 GHz, has an L2 cache of 8 MB, and is currently the fastest consumer chip in existence, leaving no doubt about its presence in our roundup.

Motherboard: Asus P5W DH Deluxe Intel 975 Chip-set (Rs. 18,000)
Though Nvidia has recently released its 680i chipset, we have chosen not to include it here at this time due to lack of commercial products being available yet. The Intel 975 chipset we have chosen here, is not a slug either. Products based on this chipset are still among the fastest performers out there.

Asus in keeping with its sterling reputation, has produced another winner here. The Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherboard is among a select group of motherboards, that are compatible with the new Kentsfield processors. Other staple standards such as eSATA, dual SLI slots and DDR-II 800 MHz are present. The board also packs in advanced O.C. features and Wi-Fi support.

RAM: Corsair Dominator TWIN2X8500C5 (Rs. 25,500)
RAM is one of the most important constituents of any PC system. Slow RAM can cause bottlenecks and actually reduce performance of a fast system. Therefore, it is understood a screaming system also requires great quality ram. To derive full value out of the Asus board, which is DDR 2 capable we decided to go for are twin sticks of the well known Corsair DDR-2 PC8500 Ram memory sticks. Run these rams at a tight timing of 5-5-5-15 and watch your machine make a mockery of any benchmark you will ever run.
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Graphics Card: XFX Nvidia 8800 GTX (Rs. 42,000)
Does this really need any introduction? Nvidia ‘s latest “monster” with 768 MB of VRAM is based on the G80 GPU, and is able to give you the most realistic extreme gaming experience as of right now. We have already reviewed it, and found it to be 50 percent faster than previous generation cards. Check out its incredible performance and why it belongs to this lineup.

Sound: Creative XFI Platinum (Rs. 15,500)
In PC audio, Creative has been the 500-pound Gorilla for nearly an eternity now.The performance of their latest range of X-FI (extreme fidelity) products, have now reached such incredible levels, they can arguably take on the very high-end production sound cards like the Delta 66 series and still hold their own. The X-FI platinum is a 7.1 card capable of outputting clear audio and adding new realism to games. Bolt this on and be prepared to fly!

LAN- 2 x Marvell 88E8053 Gigabit LAN Controller, Wireless LAN 54Mbps IEEE 802.11g (Onboard)
Both wireless and wired connectivity is available onboard. The Wi-Fi adapter can be configured to act either as an access point or as a wireless network card.
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HDD: Seagate ST3750640AS 750 GB x 2 (Rs. 24,200)Western Digital Raptor 150 GB x 2 (Rs. 15,000)

A power user will normally have multiple drives, which will be assigned different task roles as per requirements. Hence for our storage purposes, we decided to divide our HDD section into two parts. Our first part consists of just plain storage, where the emphasis is more on space rather than performance. For this, we chose Seagate’s 750 GB drive, which is the biggest drive available now. Built on the SATA II platform using Perpendicular Recording Technology, this is a BIG drive. Combine it with the RAID support built onto our chosen motherboard and you get a fairly decent 1.5 terabytes of space to play around with.

The second part of our division called for a fast HDD solution. For this, we did not spend too much time searching. The only solution that made sense were a pair of Western Digital Raptors, which run at 10,000 RPM in a raid 0 setup. These drives can be used as the primary Windows installation drive for incredibly fast performance.

Optical Drive: Sony BWU-100a (Rs. 40,000)
2006 has seen the advent of both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD products. Both are next-generation optical storage formats, and can hold as much as 2-4 times more data on their discs. Keeping this in mind, we had a quick look around to see which the ideal format to use with our rig. HD-DVD has no commercial writer available for general consumer use. Blu-Ray has products has available both from Sony and Pioneer.

The drive therefore we chosen here is the Sony BWU-100a, which not only has support for Blu-Ray burning but supports all previous technologies like CD/DVD burning, making it universally compatible. It gives you the capability, of backing up 50 GB of data at one time and is therefore indispensable in our roundup.
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Monitor: Dell UltraSharp 2407FPW LCD x2 (Rs. 80,000)
A powerful machine is of little use if a great monitor does not back it up. Keeping this in mind, we chose Dell’s 24-inch monitor. This monster LCD comes with four USB 2.0 Slots and has a native resolution of 1920x1200. Its response time of 5ms (Grey to Grey) allows for fluid video and gameplay at HD resolutions. The monitor also comes fully equipped with S-Video, composite and component inputs therefore allowing you to hook it up to a video camera, gaming console and other external video sources. Hence, for a complete graphical experience. we chose to use two of these beauties in a multi-monitor setup as the perfect solution for our rig.

Keyboard: Logitech G15 Keyboard (Rs. 4,750)
Logitech sure came up with a winner with this one. With wide spaced backlit keys, programmable menus for games and an LCD that shows various machine statistics at a quick glance, this is the keyboard to own.

Mouse: Logitech G5 Laser Mouse (Rs. 3,700)
The G5 is arguably one of the best available gaming and general all purpose mice available today. With its laser tracking capability of 2000 DPI, and its weight system (allows you to set the weight of mouse through plastic weights) this mouse belongs with our roundup. The G5 is normally available as part of a keyboard mouse set with the Logitech G15 Keyboard.

Cabinet: Antec Titan 550 (Rs. 6,000) with Zebronics 730WPSU (Rs. 6,500)
Antec needs no introduction. Over the last few years, it has come to be widely regarded as one of the best cabinet makers in the world. Antec’s Titan series, has reached cult status with assemblers and enthusiasts. For those who plan to multiple raid setups this case will spoil you for choice.

For our power requirements we weighed options from Antec,Coolermaster and Zebronics. We chose to go with Zebronics‘s 730W SLI Ready Unit, which is a well designed unit and can easily power this huge rig.

Speakers: The Creative GigaWorks G750 (Rs 32,000)
The creative Gigaworks have been the standard to emulate for PC speakers for a long time now. The latest in the line of excellent products, the G750 7.1 speaker system embodies the power of speaker technology. In terms of output, it packs in a mere 700W RMS in total. Yep you read it right. 700W RMS. Each of the individual speakers is capable of putting out 70W RMS and the subwoofer 210W RMS.
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Specification Table