Dream PCs

There's more to building a great PC than simply assembling a load of components and hoping for the best. To build a truly great PC, you need to choose carefully which components will work most efficiently together, and then decide on the best way to cool them.

This is why, once a year, we ask the UK's leading professional PC manufacturers to build the most desirable PCs possible. These Dream PCs need to be more than fast, however, although a massive overclock certainly doesn't hurt. A Dream PC also has to be quiet, 100 per cent stable, distinctive-looking and possess that all-important 'wow' factor. It should also have a comprehensive warranty so that should anything go wrong with the PC, you don't have to call half-a-dozen different retailers for the various components.

The rules of the annual Dream PC competition are simple: build the best PC you can, money no object. This year, we imposed only two requirements on the four invited manufacturers: the systems had to be supplied with a monitor capable of displaying a 1,920 x 1,200 image; and they must have some form of Windows Vista installed (although Windows XP could be included too), so that we could try out the latest DirectX 10 games, including the DirectX 10 version of the forthcoming RTS World in Conflict.

As each manufacturer was free to chose its components, this year's Dream PCs are not only some of the fastest PCs in the world, but they're also some of the most innovative machines, boasting unique features such as custom-designed waterblocks, solid-state disk drives and hand-picked graphics cards. Even if you can't afford to buy one of these systems, or prefer to build your own, you'll find plenty of good ideas to incorporate in your next PC.