The "66666" Gaming Machine

Looking at the title of the feature, I am sure most of our readers would assume that Tech2 writers are beginning to lose their tenuous hold on reality. Well I don’t think I have any sanity left in the first place but let me explain. During a recent dungeon raid in the MMORPG game WoW, a guild mate of mine who was the party leader suddenly got disconnected. His absence caused us to fail the 'instance', rendering hours of careful planning to zero. This naturally led to a lot of grumbling from party members, as we waited patiently for him to re-appear... which he never did. Now this really p----sed off a lot of people. The particular dungeon we were running resets itself every week. If you don’t complete it within that time frame... well you have to restart from the beginning. Well to continue my story, we kept waiting. The guy never showed up that night and the dungeon went and reset itself.

At this point I began to wonder, what exactly had led to my friend disappearing like that. It was only a week later I learnt, that his PC hardware had failed him and that he was looking to buy a new PC so we could get back to our beloved addiction. As we were sitting and discussing the ideal configuration, WoW reared its ugly head again. We had discussed and initially had decided to go assemble the 25K dual-core that I had spoken about earlier that week, along with a dedicated graphics card. Our budget at that point had been a modest Rs. 35,000. On the day we were supposed to go and actually get the machine... I see a headline “Next WoW expansion pack announced – The Wrath Of The Lich King”. An excited call later and my friend was awake and scouring the net for further details. As it turns out in the next expansion, WoW players would be facing the Lich King Arthas himself. Now for those who don’t really follow WoW or know about it, the Lich King is the closest thing that one can get to the devil in the series.

It was at this point my friend decided that since we would be facing the proverbial devil himself in a few short months, his earlier PC plans would just have to be scrapped. He would now need a “Devil of a PC”. It was this comment that gave me the idea for this feature. While a “Devil PC” can be assembled on an unlimited budget only, I decided to play it strictly by the numbers. Here is my take on a Devil PC – assembled on a Rs. 66,666 budget.



CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750

Our initial processor choice had been the Intel E6600. However with the recent launch of the new range of processors sporting a 1333 FSB and quite a few readers pointing out that the product is now available, we have decided to take the Intel Core 2 Duo E6750.

The Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 which was introduced recently is a second generation product which has had its FSB bumped to 1333 MHz from the previous FSB of 1066. Like the E6600, it offers 4 MB of L2 cache and initial tests reveal that it overclocks as well as the 6600 did in its time. Priced at Rs. 9000, this is the best VFM processor available right now.




Motherboard: XFX 650i Ultra

XFX over the last couple of years has developed a very good reputation for its graphic cards and its exceptional after sales service. They recently branched off into motherboards with the introduction of Nvidia's 680 and 650 chipsets. The board we have chosen here is as its title suggests based on the 650i Ultra chipset which has native support for the 1333 MHz FSB. The board though lacking in onboard graphics, does offer a single PCIe 16x slot , 1 PCIe x1 slot , 8 USB slots 3 PCI slots and 4 Sata 2 ( 3.0 GB) slots.

The board is easily available at a cost of Rs. 5,400.

RAM: Kingston DDR2 667 RAM 2 GB


RAM prices have recently been going south and it's time take advantage of this. 1 GB of system memory is absolutely vital for system operations nowadays with the increased size and requirements of software. Kingston really needs no introduction. They have been making quality RAM sticks for a long time. Now available at a price of Rs. 4,250 with a 5 yr warranty, it’s the perfect product for our machine.