The folks over at Tom’s Hardware’s Forums apparently know their stuff, having come up with a configuration that supposedly provides great gaming for the first year, “decent” gaming for the second—working with a $1000 budget. Here what they have so far:

• Casing: Antec Three Hundred Black Computer Case ($60)
• Power Supply: CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply ($100)
• Motherboard: MSI X58 Pro ATX Intel Motherboard ($200)
• CPU: Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor ($289)
• Memory: Kingston 3GB (3 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Triple Channel Kit Desktop Memory ($52)
• Video Card: EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512-P3-N873-AR Video Card ($135)
• Hard Disk: Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB 3.5″ SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive ($75)
• Optical Drive: LG 22X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA Model GH22NS30 ($25)

Take note though! This setup obviously does not include a display or a pair of speakers. There’s nothing wrong with using your current ones though.

Looks like software makers have their own sort of catching up to do, reminiscent of consumers constantly upgrading their hardware to run the latest applications. Ironically, according to IT research firm Gartner, users will be hard-pressed to maximize their hardware, thanks to software that has consistently failed to catch up to multi-core functionality. Read more

Open hardware specs seem to be catching on. After the OpenMoko released CAD design files for all of its handsets, Via’s gone and done the same thing with their new OpenBook. It’s only the outside that’s being released as an open design, but that’s not a bad start.

The OpenBook site spells it out like this:

The external panel CAD files for the VIA OpenBook Reference Design are being released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 license giving customers the flexibility to bring their own innovative style and brand value propositions to the Mini-Note market segment. This also helps customers reduce product development costs and speed time-to-market.

This is really cool, however I suspect that once you give people a taste of what’s possible, they’re going to demand the whole enchilada, not just the external design, but the internal boards, the BIOS, everything.

I’m convinced that we’re now seeing changes in the way hardware is created and marketed that emulate the way open source software has been produced, not just in the sense of making things available for other people to re-use, but in the sense of how that changes where the real innovation will be taking place.

There’s always going to be room for people like Apple, whose designs are patented (i.e., closed) but typically groundbreaking but there also ought to be a place for folks like Asus, where the design is just a place to start.