Introduction

The story so far

We’re at the last event in our first biennial Eternal Battle. We’ve tried to do something that’s never been done before by writing the ultimate system building guide and we’ve taken the traditional video game cliché of having to fight the final enemy several times. You see, when you reach the final enemy boss of the game, you face the battle of all battles. So FiringSquad published back-to-back system building guides on Monday and Tuesday, showing you what goes into an ultimate gaming system and what goes into an ultimate workstation. That’s already two times more ambitious than anything FS has done in the past.

Eternal Battle Day 1: Ultimate Gaming Desktop
Eternal Battle Day 2: The Ultimate Workstation
Eternal Battle Day 3: Stretching Your Dollar
Eternal Battle Day 4: Ultimate Gaming PC vs Ultimate Workstation Benchmarks


But in all videogames, just as you think you’ve defeated the final boss and finished the game, you’ll face the “second form” of the boss in an even more outrageous battle. So, just as everyone was expecting the system building articles to wind down with the benchmarks on Wednesday, we took the systems from the “no-budget” design down into the real-world with “best-bang-for-the-buck products” and explained the conditions when we might in fact have gone with different components and Thursday saw the systems in a super benchmark battle with the Athlon64 X2 4200+ entering the fray.



Videogame tradition has it that after defeating this second form of the final boss, you are you are finally shown the “true form.” Only instead of the difficulty level increasing even higher, you finally get some respite and provide you with an easy battle in which you can deliver a coup de grace and complete the game.

So for day 5, we’re leaving you this weekend with our guide to Building a High-Definition HTPC. A lot of people think about HTPCs as something to do with “spare parts,” but in this article, we’re going to help you see how you can building a high-end HTPC with quality components can result in a device that lets you do things that you normally cannot do. This probably represents the pinnacle of the system building art as the goal must be 100% reliability and 100% transparency. Enjoy, it’s a light article. This one was co-authored with Alexis.