Our 2008 Dream Machine rises from the, well,
not quite ashes
Length of time: 2 hours
Level of difficulty: intermediate
HP's
prebuilt Blackbird
The Mission Our
2008 Dream Machine was a thing of beauty. We took the case from one of HP's
ambitious-but-doomed Blackbird 002s, slathered it in chrome (because we could),
and built a water-cooled monster, with two Core 2 Quad QX9775 CPUs, two ATI
Radeon HD 4870 X2GPUs,andawhopping8GBofDDR2.To power it all we had PC Power &
Cooling whip us up a custom 1.200W PSU. It was quite a machine in its day.
That was four years ago, though, and the
parts we used are not only out of date, but out of sight. The only remnants of
our once-great Dream Machine that we could excavate from the Lab were the case
and the PSU. Not wanting such a beautiful case to go to waste, I decided to
rehabilitate it as a companion piece to this year's Dream Machine. Aside from
the chassis and PSU, I'm using all-new components, but they're much more modest
in price and performance than the ones in this year's Dream Machine. In fact,
if it weren't for the fact that the case (and chroming) once cost us a cool
$6,000, this refurb would be just a hair above our Baseline configuration
The case was only available in one of HP's
prebuilt Blackbird rigs, but the company did end up selling a few bare cases
to anyone who could pony up $1,000. Unless you're one of the few who bought
one, the case-centric parts of this build might not be directly relevant to
you, so this is more of a build log than a how-to. The Blackbird wasn't an
easy-to-use case when it came out, and users (like me) who are spoiled by
modernity will have quite the ride trying to bring it up to date.
Choosing the hardware
Spec’ing out this rig was harder than I thought it would be. Not only did I have
to make a rig worthy of the over-the-top chassis (which I've dubbed the
Chromebird), but I had to do so in a way that would complement, not distract
from, this month's Dream Machine. Not easy to do in a chromed-out monster of a
case.
Instead
of building yet another Ivy Bridge or Sandy Bridge-E machine, I'm going with
AMD's top chip, the FX-8150 Bulldozer
Instead of building yet another Ivy Bridge
or Sandy Bridge-E machine, I'm going with AMD's top chip, the FX-8150
Bulldozer. With eight cores, it's roughly comparable to an Intel Core
i5-2500Kon most highly threaded apps. Not the fastest chip out there, but
perfectly capable of running a gaming and productivity workhorse. I'll run the
Bulldozer CPU on an Asus Crossfire V Formula board, for both its brawn and its
red-and- black color scheme. Prolimatech's Goliath cooler and two 14cm Vortex
fans (red, of course) keep both the CPU and the motherboard cool, and the
downward-facing right fan helps draw in air through the mesh side of the case.
2008's finest didn't have a lot of intake fans. For RAM, I'm using 16GB of
Corsair Vengeance. With red heat spreaders, of course.
For
RAM, I'm using 16GB of Corsair Vengeance. With red heat spreaders, of course.
Keeping things in the AMD family, I'm
opting for an XFX Radeon HD 7970 Black Edition. It's a fine, top-of-the-line
graphics card with an attractive brushed-aluminum-and-red heatsink.
I’m keeping my standard 120GB boot SSD and
3TB storage drive combo, but in deference to the color scheme I’m opting for a
Corsair Force GT. It’s a fast SandForce-based 6Gb/s SATA drive, and yep, it's
red.
Keeping
things in the AMD family, I'm opting for an XFX Radeon HD 7970 Black Edition.
The total bill for the retrofit (not
counting the case or PSU) comes to just over $1,500. And that's with an
eight-core CPU, speedy SSD, top- of-the-line GPU, scads of RAM, and plenty of
storage. It's not a Dream Machine, but it's everything you need in a modern
gaming PC. And it looks stellar.
Ingredients
|
|
Part
|
URL
|
Price
|
|
Case
|
Custom HP Blackbird 002
|
bit.ly/mpcdm08
|
$6,000 (in 2008)
|
|
PSU
|
Custom PC Power & Cooling 1,200W
|
www.pcpower.com
|
$530 (in 2008)
|
|
Mobo
|
Asus Crosshair V Formula
|
www.asus.com
|
$220
|
|
CPU
|
AMD FX-8150
|
www.amd.com
|
$200
|
|
Cooler
|
Prolimatech Genesis, 14cm Vortex fans
(x2)
|
www.prolimatech.com
|
$105
|
|
GPU
|
XFX Radeon HD 7970 Black Edition
|
www.xfxforce.com
|
$500
|
|
RAM
|
16GB Corsair Vengeance
|
www.corsair.com
|
$85
|
|
Optical Drive
|
Samsung SH-222AB CD/DVD burner
|
www.samsung.com
|
$20
|
|
SSD
|
1200GB Corsair Force GT
|
www.corsair.com
|
$130
|
|
Hard Drive
|
3TB Seagate Barracuda
|
www.seagate.com
|
$160
|
|
OS
|
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit (OEM)
|
www.microsoft.com
|
$139
|
|
Total
|
|
|
$1,559
|
