The Iceman Cometh: P4 at 4.1 GHz

No, your eyes are not playing tricks, these guys actually put a compressor's cooling to work, yeilding a CPU running almost over it's full limits, oh my..

Tom's Hardware breaks records once again, this time by building a 4100 MHz+ system. It's a PC of superlatives, including dual DDR400 and 700 MHz FSB - one of the world's fastest PCs. Plus, we bring you the highlights of the test in the sixth THG video.

At the start of this ambitious project, our engineers asked themselves the question: how fast is fast? Or, how fast does a PC fitted with the most powerful hardware have to be in order to show a clean pair of heels to the world's best PC systems? Isn't the nondescript box of tricks on display in your local superstore fast enough already? Well, for most people the answer would be 'yes.'

However, nothing can stem the tide of progress, and when a PC is used for work, having a really fast machine is a necessity rather than an option. There are other things to consider, too. We have a never-ending fascination with the creation of ultimate machines offering us ever more power. Also, it is human nature to push physical boundaries to their limits.

When we check out the current state of the art in processors, we have Intel with its Pentium 4 running at 3.06 GHz and the AMD Athlon XP 2800+ running at 2250 MHz. Now, we all know that processor speed on its own tells us very little and that the overall design of the CPU is critical. But what if recognized benchmarks are involved?

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