SIMPLY THE BEST
With nearly 300 issues to choose from, here’s our pick of the best Maximum PC covers from over the years
IT ALL STARTED WITH “Dream Machine”, on both the cover of the first issue of MaximumPC and its progenitor, Boot magazine. Over the years, megabucks Dream Machines have been just one of several signature cover features. Other regulars include “Gear of the Year’, “Tech Preview” and “Speed up Your PC”. Head-to-heads pitching Intel against its rival AMD have been popular down the years, as have features celebrating or denigrating the arrival of a new version of the 800lb gorilla of operating systems, Microsoft Windows. We’ve enjoyed giving Microsoft a kicking now and then.
Of course, “Build It” covers of all flavors represent the beating heart of the magazine, covering a huge array
JUNE 2006
As Windows 11 rolls out, June 2006 offers a reminder of the pitfalls of new builds of Microsoft’s ubiquitous OS. We sampled a beta version of Vista and found it lacking. Vista was arguably the first modern Windows, complete with 3D accelerated GUI, advanced power management, new networking subsystem, and more. But after testing, editor Will Smith was underwhelmed. Hardly a first for a new version of Windows and far from the last. of remits, from sub $300 budget rigs to special-purpose PCs for everything from rendering to gaming and music production. It’s fun to see how the magazine’s look has evolved over the years. The early days were high impact but, let’s face it, low production values.
What’s intriguing is just how quickly MaximumPC settled on a look that really worked. Following the late 1998 rebrand from Boot to MaximumPC, by 2001 the magazine had settled on the italicized masthead and cover layout that still survives today. Just a few years after that, the internal design of the magazine and details such as fonts had been honed into pretty much the same, polished, slick printed product you see today.
HOLIDAY 2010
No PC-related compendium is complete without a reference to the game that dare not speak its name, Duke Nukem Forever. This issue appeared over 10 years ago when the game was already 13 years in the making. It eventually appeared in summer 2011 and is still listed on the Guinness World Records website as the longest development for a video game (14 years and 43 days). As it turned out, Duke Nukem Forever wasn’t worth the wait.
SEPTEMBER 1998
It ain’t exactly pretty, but it is the very first issue of Maximum PC. Issue 001 showcases a “Dream Machine” up front and center and also touches on Windows 98 as the OS du jour. Our coverage of the “first benchmarks” of recordable DVD drives is a reminder of just how cheap and convenient external storage has now become. Imagine having to burn data to disc, now that thumb drives with 10s of gigabytes of capacity are almost free!
SEPTEMBER 2011
Don’t judge a magazine by its cover? We are giving this issue the nod on looks alone. The killer bee vibe was courtesy of a then-prototype Coolermaster case that packed no fewer than three Nvidia GeForce GTX 580 graphics cards and an Intel Core i7-2600K chip running overclocked at 4.8GHz. Throw in a pair of 240GB SSDs, 16GB of RAM and you have a pretty beefymachine for $12,888, with three 30-inch monitors at $2,300 each.
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.
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.
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.
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 readymade rigs has narrowed. But doing it yourself enables a laser-like focus on the specs that isn’t possible any other way.
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 2020
Finally, we present Maximum PC from October 2020. The central theme is bang on message—in this case, pushing your PC to the max. It covers 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.