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xeon processors and quadro video might make an awesome workstation if you run 3D studio max, but for high end gaming, you can shave off a few grand by omitting these parts from your own "god box", and get generally better FPS in shooters to boot. Granted they never specify these are explicitly gaming machines, but still, some of the picks at the very high end are, to say the least, confusing.

This is a great resource. The last Ars System Guide helped me out quite a bit after I had been out of the PC market for awhile. They provided a good "catch up" on what to look for in hardware and prices, which was something I really needed. Once again Ars Technica proves to be a valuable source of information. Thanks Ars!

Best way to build a great pc, www.newegg.com , the key is to get an affordable processor and overclock, memory is cheap now you can get 2gb of crucial ballastix 1066 for about 90 dollars or less. Overclocking gets you more for your money.

how bout three ways to build a good gaming pc?

call me a noob but the budget box was looking good. even without the monitor .and all i play is hl2dm and the orange box.

The God Box is more of a 3D development box... The QuadroFX cards are not designed for gaming performance, they are designed for 3D modeling/animation.

I bet the Godbox couldn't run Crysis.

I don't play games so if a PC is capable of dual-booting PClinuxOS and XP and can empower my PVR card to encode XviD and handle the GNU toolchains for AVR and ARM controllers then I'm happy.

I just took an old PC that a neighbor was throwing out and set it up as a backup PC. It does all the above and cost 0$.

I do like a big LCD monitor though...but even the 24" models are really cheap now...just check at Newegg.com

No need to shell out serious cash unless you are into games.

Sorry but.. Ars just sucks at building computers...

I checked that website last month before purchasing my own machine. I was on a budget (total $500 bucks max) and I was on a debate between building my own machine or buying it from Dell. The real purpose of my machine is to run VMWare on it so that I can run 2-3 VMs on it at the same time for my labs and projects. Running a VM server means I need a) more processor speed and b) more RAM.

The Budget Box's price was like 800 bucks which included a 20 inch LCD monitor for above $250 bucks. Seeing that, I was honestly discouraged to build a machine (in addition to go through all the hassle in choosing the right hardware and stuff). In the end I settled down for Dell's Refurbished machine. The PC I chose was a 2.4 GHz Intel Dual Core Processor with 1 GB RAM, 80 GB Hard-drive and CD-DVD RW. This cost me 280 bucks total and I added a 20 inch refurbished LCD monitor for another 200 bucks. In the end the total cost was less than $500. After getting the machine, I maxed its memory with a total of 4 GB RAM (total about 80 bucks including shipping). So in other words, For less than 600 bucks I got the "ideal" machine for my needs with a good processor, lots of RAM and a nice monitor. If you want to add the 500 GB external hard drive, then the total I spent on my machine was 700 bucks (external hard drive cost me 100 bucks with rebate). It came with Vista Home, but that wasn't a big deal since I had the choice to format it and load RHEL 4 or Ubuntu or Centos 5 or even Vista Business (from my college MSDNAA account) on it.

So now I feel really good about buying a refurbished machine which runs perfectly fine without any issues than going through all the hassle in building a machine and eventually ending up spending more.

I can build that same budget pc for half the cost

Buildin your own computer is easy, I did it and I'm 15, you just got to know what your looking for and a bit of experince with opening and messing with the computer parts inside your unit and your good to go, really. I built my system on a "very" low budget, $600, obviously because I have no source of income and I just sponged of my moms extra bucks

Specs:
nforce 680i LT SLI motherboard
Intel Pentium D 3.00 Ghz
2GB RAM OCZ nforce SLI EPP
Nvidia 8600 GT XXX
DVD-R/RW
250 GB HDD 16MB Cache
Windows XP Professional

Not that good but it can still run games smooth (not crysis of course, DX10 and all that) and I just build system's for fun, I'm not that hardcore of a gamer, so i cut back on the graphics to afford to build this thing.

I have always liked the sharky extreme system guides which are written in a very similar manner.
(High-end Gaming System) http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/MHGSBG/index.p ...
(Value Gaming System) http://www.sharkyextreme.com/guides/MVGSBG/index.p ...

I think I pretty strongly disagree with them on the god box ... twenty years ago it was pretty definite that the workstation class was primarily a processor-based spec. (Still, love these guys.)

Nowadays you have a new way to gain performance: solid state storage. Especially given that it is far more likely that you will be running data-intensive work on your God Box than trying for higher compression rates or some other almost purely computational problem (than it was 20 years ago), you probably see more bang for your buck by going for a motherboard with more ram slots and using SSD instead of adding an extra four cores and opting for a dual-die voltage hog.

The price breakdown gets similar too...
128 GB 150mbs SSD — +$3300
-sans 1 top-end xeon processor — - $1500
-sans the rack of high end drives — - $1000
-replace one dual-die mobo for one with more ram slots .. and probably still save a few hundred quid

I hate how these kinds of article assume that you have no legacy products, like monitors or spare hard drives, that can be used. The whole idea of "budget" usually means saving as much of what you have as possible. If we're all here, we already have PCs with monitors and hard drives that can be used with any "replacement" PCs.

Going under that assumption, for about $300 I built a barebones PC with dual-core Athlon 4000+, 2 GB of RAM, and an 80 GB hard drive for my nephew using a barebones PC + CPU + RAM + hard drive from NewEgg. He transferred his GeForce 6800GT from his old box, and he can play "Call of Duty 4" quite well. No, it won't be able to play "Crysis" in high graphics mode, but he can still play just about every other game out there very well.

Okay, fine, so take the system above and add $120 or so for a decent video card, but there's no reason to make it a 9600GT. If you're not a gamer, this extra expense isn't even an issue. If you're a non-hardcore gamer, you can easily get away with a high-7000 or high-800 series, mid-range card, shave off another $20-40, and still get very good video performance.

So, For about $450 (which includes shipping), you can build your own more-than-capable gaming system that will play just about any game out there -- and play it well -- if you bring your own monitor. If you need the monitor for the PC that this new box would likely be replacing, get a Belkin 2-PC KVM switch at Best Buy for $40.

Yes, I have the speakers from the GodBox, just none of the rest of it.

Their "god" PC is hardly ideal for gaming, Quadro FX cards are optimized for OpenGL, not DX10.

I guess no one reads Maximum PC anymore. They used to have an article once a year on building the ultimate gaming PC, and budget PC's.. I stopped reading it a couple years ago when half the magazine was used for ads and all the articles were the same.

Step 1 - Take a day off work...

This is a more useful resource IMO:
http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid= ...

here's my quick and to the point, points.

1. Dirt cheep overclockable cpu
2. non stock cpu cooler with good thermal paste
3. generic motherboard (most have the overclocking features) and ram just match the fsb, match your ram in dual ddr pairs.
4. 2 sata hard drives on raid 0
5. 80 dollar video card such as an hd2900 from ati.

There was a time when I thought it was cool to build my own server. So I bought a big case, a fancy motherboard, lots of memory, a fine SCSI controller, a handful of SCSI drives and some rather expensive cables to get the drives talk to the controller.
The entire box cost me around $2500. Not bad - but: An old IBM eServer xSeries on ebay was $300 then and came with 2 CPUs instead of one and the same amount of memory. It had no drives but came with a RAID controller.
Today, you can get an xSeries 345 with 2 x 3 GHz XEON and 2 GB of RAM for $200 - no drives most probably. Soon, the 346 will be available for maybe around $400 - it will have dual core 2.8 - 3.6 GHz XEON CPUs, two of them, and you can run 16 GB of RAM (up to 64 GB I think). Try that on your fancy motherboard machine.
And this will be a server class machine, extremely robust, never crash (except when running Windows). I will never build another server again.

It's too bad that in five years the God Box will be new budget box.

always go to a small AZN shop and pick the processor motherboard, ram, hd you can get a quad core with 4 gigs of ram with sata for under 600. They build it in a day. pick it up the next day then go to frys and get a bad ass gfx card. and u got a top notch system that kills dell or hp or wotever u get at best buys that cost twice the price.

If you are overclocking, AMD is silly for the budget box.

"Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R", I had that board and the BIOS rejected every damn overclock, sent it back for RMA and got an eVGA.

If you just take Vista out, you can build a real budget box on second hand components: 1 GHz Athlon, Radeon 7000 or Gforce2MX, 512M RAM...
WinXP and most Linux distributions will run very well and allow for good multitasking.

Why does the 'God Box' come with a pair of displays recommended - I was under the impression that SLI couldn't handle dual-head setups, or have things changed recently?

I have to give a huge recommendation to the XFX nForce 680i SLI mobo! (intel processor) Not the newest model, so cheaper, but rockin performance with over 1000mb fsb. Great barebone kits on that site with the acronym TD which I won't mention!!

I never paid so much money as what they listed as budget PC. Is it just me or do others also understand as budget PC one for less than $300 ($400 with monitor).
Last PC that I build was about $250 (AMD X2 3800+), the one before that was bought for $150 (AMD Geode; low power usage) and put some extra RAM into it that was sitting around and I still use a AMD 64 3000+ which is enough for most games I play. I don't really know why people need so fast computers if they don't game or use any CPU intensive programs. I prefer for those PCs a low power CPU and a good amount of RAM.

I'm surprised that I haven't see this comment yet

1:) This is not a guide
2:)This is just some douche's list of 3 computer's he slapped together

usually a guide is Something, such as a instruction, that offers basic information

The Hotrod setup is pretty spot-on with what I would buy right now...
The God box is simply ridiculous.
The budget box seems useless. I could probably build something better for the same price.

me no brains no times no geek no , no , nooooooow

this article is horrible...
"We aim to keep the Hot Rod beneath $1,600, but performance is sometimes worth a few bucks extra."
so 1600 is the fine line between 'great' and 'OMG RIDICULOUS'? no. a 1600 machine is solid, but if the article is somehow implying 1600+ is 'z0mg god box' territory, that needs to be changed; i could spend that much on GPUs :)

This is the kind of article that gives me headaches... Too many times these lead to someone taking the plunge (which I do support) and trying to build their own PC, but they don't have the technical know-how to provide their own support. One thing articles like this often gloss over is the fact that plugging the parts together is the easy part, but when stuff doesn't go right it's all on the builder to figure it out. I can't count how many times I've had customers who were too cheap to pay for the diagnostic / repair of their old computer, then run out after reading something like this, build their own system and expect every computer store to spend 2+hours explaining why there are these settings called "Master" and "Slave" or why they can't just use their brother's copy of XP that came with his Dell, etc etc etc.... no doubt if you know what you're doing or want to learn, building your own rig is the way to go, but if you're wary make sure you have some support help ready for when you make the plunge (and if you feed them, they may try to explain the why's also)... just sayin...

I don't want to sound like a Debbie Downer.... but the use of the term "God" might offend some people. To me it is an issue worth commenting on. I understand your line of thinking, yet I'm offende. By the simple use of the term and it's "higher than the others" position, you are taking a stance on religion. I don't think that belongs in a tech article. I'll probably get modded down and the article writers will never see this, but at least I tried

Blah fed up with upgrading, the moment you spend $2000 or more on the latest high performance parts, 3 months later they all became obsolete and price drops by %50.

Just build the system to your own requirement and for gaming get a console, its the graphics card and its cooling systems that gets you. Also don't forget the huge amount of wattage these high end graphics card require, always include these in your budget.

Why would they ever recommend getting a 8800gts. Get a 8800gt instead. They are cheaper and out perform the 8800gts. Here is a link to a 8800gt OC w/ an aftermarket cooler. This is the best deal right now for a graphics card. I got one and it can be further OC'ed to 8800GTX levels.
(only $185 after $30 rebate)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8 ...

somehow, i think this author doesn't actually know what a quadro fx is like... trying to game on it would be futile, as its drivers are not the least bit optimized for 3d gaming. really, the god box is just a high end workstation, and a fine one at that, just that they didn't really specify a purpose for the machine, and the rest of the guide lists gaming machines...

How sad that grown men will happily debate wasting thousands of pounds in order to build a computer to play first person shooters on.
Grow up.

I would consider it a 'guide' more if it actually talked about how to build the computer :P I'm one of those programmers afraid of opening the box and screwing something up that wipes out tons of my code. I've always wanted to design and build my own system, and I got the impression from the title that might be what this was about - I was wrong. Some price guides and 'what you need' are important, but 'how to' is vital.

I wonder if this could be turned into a Hackintosh? Not much use with a crappy Os....

I've always built my own PC's, but my next one will almost definitely be an HP or a Dell. You can get really amazing deals through Dell - especially if you pay attention and grab the machine you want when it comes up on their perpetual rotating sale. I get 5% off (woooo) through work so the machine I bought for friends last week cost all of 290$ + tax (with free shipping).

For 290$ the machine had 1 GB RAM (I'll put more in but I'll purchase it off the interwebs at 16$ a GB instead of Dell's 50$), 160 GB HDD (small but the cost to upgrade it to 500 GB is more than buying a new 500 GB drive online), Dual core intel 2180 and the usual built in video, network etc. The box itself is good quality, has 4 DIMM slots and includes a PCI-E x16 slot if they ever want to throw in a good video card (they won't - email doesn't generally need an 8800GT).

There's no way I could have built a machine for 290$ with a legal copy of XP (it came with XP home). And after buying a cheapo Dell at Christmas for the girl's mom I know there's no way I could have come close to the overall quality of the Dell.

In conclusion to this ramble, my opinion is buy a Dell/HP/whatever for a good price, then upgrade it as you require. My next machine will almost certainly be a 300$ Dell where I will proceed to replace the CPU, upgrade the RAM, put in a good video card and then re-install the OS. And it will still end up being the same or cheaper than what I could have built myself.

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You guys with the experience in creating a PC system, I'd say you're right about using old PC parts to save money.
The setups given by the article leave me wanting to correct them 'coz there are many ways to extend your money's value or buy better options, but the article was still able to give out sound product endorsements.