Maximum PC - USA (2022-02)

SEPTEMBER 1999

You’ve got to hand it to the boys back in
the 90s, they knew how to have fun with
the cover. Our 13th issue goes all-in on
the Build It theme with a literal exposition
of DIY prowess, courtesy of then-editor
Brad Dosland. We also had our first look
at the mighty Matrox G400 graphics card
with two pixel pipelines and AMD’s new
K7 CPU, and wondered whether attempts
to control MP3 piracy by the recording
industry threatened to ruin the internet.

MAY 2000

PC performance was once all about the

hertz, as in mega then giga. Our May

2000 issue splashed a 1GHz coverline,

declaring AMD’s K7 CPU a “freaking

supercomputer on a single chip”. The

gigahertz war culminated in Intel’s

Pentium 4, a chip designed for frequency

at all costs, that was a flop. Max PC’s own

Tom Halfhill foresaw this in 2000, noting

that clockspeed said nothing about how

much work a CPU was doing each cycle.

FEBRUARY 2002

Heal my PC? Yes, ma’am! 2002 feels

like a long time ago and this cover looks

like something from a simpler, less

contentious age. Times change and we

change with the times, so cover girls

are a thing of the past. Something in this

issue that isn’t a thing of the past was 3D

graphics with pixel and vertex shader

accelerated effects. We experienced

them for the first time, courtesy of the

Nvidia GeForce 3 and ATI Radeon 8500.

OCTOBER 2012

Maximum PC’s remit has never been
limited to cutting-edge rigs. In fact, it’s
not all about buying new hardware either.
That is captured by October 2012’s cover
story, the “Cheapskate’s Guide”, with
the pink piggy bank being a regular down
the years. Something for nothing has
been a core value of the mag, with many
issues majoring on free software or tips
for speeding up your existing PC rather
than forking out for a new one.

JULY 2015

This is surely the essence of Maximum

PC. No pretense. No target price. Just

a simple call to arms. Build it! A classic

tower rig and a screwdriver illustrate

the idea that has driven this magazine for

over 20 years, namely building your own

PC. As we noted in July 2015, the price

gap between home builds and ready-

made rigs has narrowed. But doing it

yourself enables a laser-like focus on the

spec s that isn’t possible any other way.

OCTOBER 2020

Finally , we present Maximum PC from

October 2020. The central theme is bang

on message—in this case, push ing your

PC to the max. It cover s everything from

overclocking basics to record-breaking

tweaks courtesy of liquid nitrogen. It

features one of the best-looking builds

ever, based on the open-air Hydra Mini

case, a clever bit of kit made from a single

sheet of stainless steel. Like the mag, it’s

both easy access and high performance.

FEB 2022 MAXIMU MPC 53