Gaming Design you dream PC

[Mama Dizzys]

This is the thread where you describe the PC you would get if you had a ridiculous budget
What types of games would you play with it?
Would you use it to watch very high quality videos?
Would you be looking for something more productive?
Would you choose quiet fans, or loud fans? (Some people would actually choose louder fans. Most likely for comfort/white noise or something)
And tell us the grand total of your dream computer

 

[Alexander1970]

Only 1 time to see a RTX2080 Ti and a Ryzen 3900X in Action.
Dreams maybe sometimes come true....

 

[Originality]

If money were no issue, my dream PC setup? I've got a few ways to go about it.

Tiny/Static Build (£4820):

Intel NUC8i7HVK - £1000
Samsung 970 Pro 2TB - £990 x2
Samsung DDR4 2666Mhz 64GB (32x2) - £340
Windows 10 Pro - £220

Razer Core X Chroma - £380
nVidia GTX 2080 Ti - £900

Mac Mini Variant (£4039):

Mac Mini (i7/64GB/2TB/10Gb configuration) - £2959
Razer Core X Chroma - £380
AMD Radeon 7 - £700
(If R7 is discontinued, and until 5700XT or above is supported) AMD RX Vega 64 - £325

Portable Variant (£3925):

Lenovo X1 Carbon (7th gen, fully specced): £2645
Razer Core X Chroma - £380
nVidia GTX 2080 Ti - £900

Tower Build (£10,987):

Case: Phanteks Eclipse P600s - £135
Expansion: ITX Expansion+Riser - £25
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X - £800
Cooler: Corsair H150i Pro - £145
Motherboard: Gigabyte - X570 AORUS MASTER - £390
RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB 3600Mhz DDR4 64GB (16x4) - £655
PSU: Phanteks Revolt X 1200W - £235
OS Drive: Corsair Force NP600 NVMe Gen4 2TB SSD - £425
Other Drives: Samsung 970 Pro 2TB - £990 x3
Graphics: GTX 2080 Ti - £900+
Windows 10 Pro - £220

Second ITX System - this a dual-system case

CPU2: Intel Core i9-9900K - £460
Cooler2: Corsair H60 (2018) - £65
Motherboard2: ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac - £177
RAM2: Corsair Vengeance RGB 3200Mhz 32GB (16x2) - £305
OS Drive2: Samsung 970 Pro 2TB - £990 x2
Graphics2 (via Riser): GTX 2080 Ti - £900
Windows 10 Pro - £220

I would use custom cooling to better fit with the requirements of the CPU/Mobo, but that's much harder to price up. This is just for an illustration.

In all of the above, I've not added monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, networking or NAS because that really depends on the workspace you've got. Also I only added Windows 10 in because if money is no object, you have no excuse to pirate Windows

Edit: You could also add 3x4TB Samsung 860 SSDs and 4x14TB Seagate HDDs in that case, adding around £3500 to the price, however that means 7 SATA cables going between the two systems, which will making cabling more messy. I stuck with M.2 because 8+4TB of NVMe storage should be enough for anyone.

 

[Alexander1970]

After a nice read and write with @Originality I decided to make it:

PC for "classic" Gaming:

Cooler Master Big Tower ATX
350 W Power Supply
Intel Pentium III 1,4 Ghz Tualatin with Cooler Master Fan



ASUS TUSL2-C Mainboard



512 MB Infineon SD Ram



Gainward GeForce 6800 Ultra golden Sample 256MB GDDR3 RAM AGP



2x 200GB HDD Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 ST3200021A IDE



Creative Soundblaster LIVE! 5.1



Windows MILLENIUM Edition




That is MY dream PC.

 

[kuwanger]

@alexander1970

Actually, I have a simliar system. It's a Compaq SR1313CL (Kelut motherboard) with a Sempron 3000+, 1.25GB RAM (under Windows 98 SE I have to appear as 512MB IIRC), an X700 Pro, a 250GB HDD, and an SB Live! (don't think it's a 5.1). I have Windows XP and 98 SE installed. The only real problem is that virtually no PCI sound cards are 100% DOS compatible* and Win 9x isn't 100% DOS compatible--so, a few games like Zone 66* can't be played with sound. Still, it gets really close to a "perfect" high end retro system IMO. I have a K6-2 500MHz with an ISA sound card if I really want to play those very few DOS games native. Of course, realistically most the time I just use DOSBox.

The real problem to me is defining "dream PC". I don't think I have a single one because you basically need at least a few era specific PCs to get a reasonable good experience. I would say having USB/microSD HDD though can go a long way to make older systems more bearable.

* A few motherboards have DDDMA/PC/PCI (SB-LINK) but even then not all sound cards have drivers that'll work in non-protected mode. Zone 66 uses a version of unreal mode. Demos are also pretty notorious for pulling off stuff that breaks. Finally as much as modern computers have DOS backwards compatibility, most have no support for UMBs which makes a lot of 90s DOS games unplayable. I'm sure you know most this being retro focused, but just throwing this out there for others.

 

[Alexander1970]

@alexander1970

Actually, I have a simliar system. It's a Compaq SR1313CL (Kelut motherboard) with a Sempron 3000+, 1.25GB RAM (under Windows 98 SE I have to appear as 512MB IIRC), an X700 Pro, a 250GB HDD, and an SB Live! (don't think it's a 5.1). I have Windows XP and 98 SE installed. The only real problem is that virtually no PCI sound cards are 100% DOS compatible* and Win 9x isn't 100% DOS compatible--so, a few games like Zone 66* can't be played with sound. Still, it gets really close to a "perfect" high end retro system IMO. I have a K6-2 500MHz with an ISA sound card if I really want to play those very few DOS games native. Of course, realistically most the time I just use DOSBox.

The real problem to me is defining "dream PC". I don't think I have a single one because you basically need at least a few era specific PCs to get a reasonable good experience. I would say having USB/microSD HDD though can go a long way to make older systems more bearable.

* A few motherboards have DDDMA/PC/PCI (SB-LINK) but even then not all sound cards have drivers that'll work in non-protected mode. Zone 66 uses a version of unreal mode. Demos are also pretty notorious for pulling off stuff that breaks. Finally as much as modern computers have DOS backwards compatibility, most have no support for UMBs which makes a lot of 90s DOS games unplayable. I'm sure you know most this being retro focused, but just throwing this out there for others.

@alexander1970

Actually, I have a simliar system. It's a Compaq SR1313CL (Kelut motherboard) with a Sempron 3000+, 1.25GB RAM (under Windows 98 SE I have to appear as 512MB IIRC), an X700 Pro, a 250GB HDD, and an SB Live! (don't think it's a 5.1). I have Windows XP and 98 SE installed. The only real problem is that virtually no PCI sound cards are 100% DOS compatible* and Win 9x isn't 100% DOS compatible--so, a few games like Zone 66* can't be played with sound. Still, it gets really close to a "perfect" high end retro system IMO. I have a K6-2 500MHz with an ISA sound card if I really want to play those very few DOS games native. Of course, realistically most the time I just use DOSBox.

The real problem to me is defining "dream PC". I don't think I have a single one because you basically need at least a few era specific PCs to get a reasonable good experience. I would say having USB/microSD HDD though can go a long way to make older systems more bearable.

* A few motherboards have DDDMA/PC/PCI (SB-LINK) but even then not all sound cards have drivers that'll work in non-protected mode. Zone 66 uses a version of unreal mode. Demos are also pretty notorious for pulling off stuff that breaks. Finally as much as modern computers have DOS backwards compatibility, most have no support for UMBs which makes a lot of 90s DOS games unplayable. I'm sure you know most this being retro focused, but just throwing this out there for others.

That brings me to my Dream PC Number 2:

Big Tower ATX
200 W Power Supply

Intel Pentium 200 MMX



Asus TX97-E Mainboard



32 MB EDO RAM



ATI Rage II 2MB RAM



40 GB HDD Seagate Barracuda ST340014A



Creative Soundblaster 64 AWE Gold ISA



Windows 95b



OR

MS-DOS 6.22
for pure DOS gaming:



THAT is configure a PC.

 

[kuwanger]

@alexander1970

My not-quite-dream-machine 2 is a little similar. A K6-2 500Mhz, P5A-B motherboard, 128MB RAM, 30GB HDD (IIRC), TNT2 16MB, some generic Aztech 2316R based sound card/modem (I38-mmsn842), and Windows 98SE. I'd have more RAM but there's a cache bug on the P5A-B board that really hurts performance if you have more than 128MB. I've contemplated trying to overclock the system, but that's more to be silly than any sane purpose. I actually got both systems for free originally but ended up upgrading both, so I spent probably $100-$200 total on them. On a side note, Philscomputerlab is a pretty awesome resource to get some good reviews of retro hardware.

 

[ThoD]

Meh, you plebs, dream PC and you go with low-end stuff? /s

Besides poking fun, since it's "dream" PC, I'd only go with actually some very strong components since there's no need to hold back! My dream PC would probably be one with a high end (if not highest-end) Hewlett-Packard CPU, at least 256GBs or RAM, Liquid Cooling (because duh, good luck cooling an 28-core CPU without liquid cooler), four highest-end AMD CPUs with Crossfire, at least 30TBs of storage (trust me, I have a LOT of files), a triple-setup/dozen-setup of huge monitors for complete immersion (like 72", because screw VR) and a surround 15.1 sound system! Total cost last time I checked went to something like 95000€ but end result is totally worth it Too bad at full load it would draw ~3250W so goodbye electrical bill...

 

[AkikoKumagara]

Meh, you plebs, dream PC and you go with low-end stuff? /s

Besides poking fun, since it's "dream" PC, I'd only go with actually some very strong components since there's no need to hold back! My dream PC would probably be one with a high end (if not highest-end) Hewlett-Packard CPU, at least 256GBs or RAM, Liquid Cooling (because duh, good luck cooling an 28-core CPU without liquid cooler), four highest-end AMD CPUs with Crossfire, at least 30TBs of storage (trust me, I have a LOT of files), a triple-setup/dozen-setup of huge monitors for complete immersion (like 72", because screw VR) and a surround 15.1 sound system! Total cost last time I checked went to something like 95000€ but end result is totally worth it Too bad at full load it would draw ~3250W so goodbye electrical bill...

... HP CPU????

 

[leon315]

All those shiny and overestimated HW will eventually become obsolete one day! Behold! Google Stadia is all you guys need!

Stadia is the future, NO MORE TRADE UR KIDNEY for a GPU! just let google's NASA COMPUTERS handle games for you!

 

[Ryccardo]

The Thinkcentre M73 Tiny I already have, but:

- thicker and with two SATA ports to fit two 3.5 SATA disks (or one of each size) instead of the single 2.5 one [the price difference between sizes at larger capacities is still shocking]
- with proper analog audio sockets on the back [instead of the HDMI audio/video splitter I had to buy]
- more usb ports [5 on a desktop aren't that much]
- and since the premise is unlimited budget, with a proper trackpont keyboard that's ridiculously expensive compared to the 170 € I spent on the computer* (even the new chinovo models are 60 € plus)


* 150 for the PC and power brick (the guy threw in a free Hell keyboard and mouse), 20 for a proper aspect ratio monitor (Fujitsu E19-5), the 2x4GB SO-DDR3 memory upgrade was free from my previous main computer

 

[Bappay]

NO MORE TRADE UR KIDNEY for a GPU! just let google's NASA COMPUTERS handle games for you!

A good idea.

 

[Taleweaver]

*sigh*

There was a time where I could recite from memory all bits and parts I'd need to make the (then) ultimate gaming PC that I would once own, if only I had the cash. Right now, I've got a PC that's at least three times as powerful as that dream build and I've used it more for browsing web pages than for actual gaming (let alone high-end gaming). Nowadays, I just want my PC to "just work".


Honestly: my ideal build would be in the range of the upcoming GPD win 2 or the upcoming GPD win max: comfortable to game on the go, and with a decent docking station you can make it into a desktop environment just by plugging in a single USB-C adapter. I'd put linux on it, though (probably mint, but if I'm getting a new PC anyway I might as well check out some other popular and interesting distros first).

After a nice read and write with @Originality I decided to make it:

PC for "classic" Gaming:

...

Windows MILLENIUM Edition

View attachment 173005


That is MY dream PC.

Damn right.

With a PC running that operating system, you can certainly dream of ever getting to gaming.

*drops microphone*

 

[Alexander1970]

Right now, I've got a PC that's at least three times as powerful as that dream build and I've used it more for browsing web pages than for actual gaming

The feeling is also very familiar to me.Maybe I am too old-fashioned/dated.
Today's games do not really appeal to me anymore...
But that's just because I still play Monkey Island ...
and that is for what my 2.Dream PC stands for.

 

[ThoD]

The feeling is also very familiar to me.Maybe I am too old-fashioned/dated.
Today's games do not really appeal to me anymore...
But that's just because I still play Monkey Island ...
and that is for what my 2.Dream PC stands for.

Well, think of it this way, if you are only playing retro stuff, you WANT a weaker system since many don't actually have a built-in speed/FPS limiter so you can run into some hilarious issues such as Batman Vengeance running at 5000 the normal speed or Lucas Arts Outlaws getting all glitchy with weirdly-coloured graphics and so on

*sigh*

There was a time where I could recite from memory all bits and parts I'd need to make the (then) ultimate gaming PC that I would once own, if only I had the cash. Right now, I've got a PC that's at least three times as powerful as that dream build and I've used it more for browsing web pages than for actual gaming (let alone high-end gaming). Nowadays, I just want my PC to "just work".


Honestly: my ideal build would be in the range of the upcoming GPD win 2 or the upcoming GPD win max: comfortable to game on the go, and with a decent docking station you can make it into a desktop environment just by plugging in a single USB-C adapter. I'd put linux on it, though (probably mint, but if I'm getting a new PC anyway I might as well check out some other popular and interesting distros first).






Damn right.

With a PC running that operating system, you can certainly dream of ever getting to gaming.

*drops microphone*

I'm actually the same, not really interested in actual high-end since I'll almost definitely not even use 10% of it's capabilities 99% of the time, I literally only ever play one demanding game and that's MHWorld which runs just fine on medium or higher on my 6-7-year-old formerly almost-high-end PC! Basically as long as it works properly and can do what I need it to do, I don't care about excess performance as I won't use it. Almost all new performance-demanding games are pretty shit anyways nowadays as they only come out from AAA companies and there's no quality in the game, it's just pretty graphics with nothing to show for it so couldn't care less about them...

 

[Taleweaver]

Okay... I really have to bump this thread with this link :

https://amp.tweaktown.com/?url=http...4-xbox-one-switch-water-cooled-box/index.html

Now THAT is a pc I'd get (okay : have custom built) if I had won the lottery.

 

[Plstic]

I pretty much have my dream pc minus the 5700 XT since that's not out yet.

 

[Originality]

@Taleweaver I saw the vid yesterday and was just about to post it until I saw you beat me to it

 

[bruhmomentanium]

This is the thread where you describe the PC you would get if you had a ridiculous budget
What types of games would you play with it?
Would you use it to watch very high quality videos?
Would you be looking for something more productive?
Would you choose quiet fans, or loud fans? (Some people would actually choose louder fans. Most likely for comfort/white noise or something)
And tell us the grand total of your dream computer

Alright, here we go!


Samsung 240Hz Curved Gaming Monitor C27RG5
CyberPowerPC Gamer Master Desktop Computer
Intel Core i9-7900X X-Series 3.3 GHz Ten-Core LGA 2066 Processor
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Graphics Card
Razer Blackwidow Chroma V2 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard
Runmus K8 Gaming Headset
Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit

 

[IC]

Anything that doesn't run Windows
My old and cheap pc is already my dream pc