Enthusiast computing

Enthusiast computing refers to a sub-culture of personal computer users who focus on extremely high-end computers. Manufacturers of performance-oriented parts typically include an enthusiast model in their offerings. Enthusiast computers (often referred to as a "box", "build", or "rig" by their owners) commonly feature extravagant cases and high-end components, and are sometimes liquid cooled.

Although high-end computers may be bought retail in the same manner as the common computer, they are frequently assembled by their owners. Enthusiasts assemble their systems in order to produce a computer that will out-perform an opponent's computer, thereby "winning" in a contest; to simply enjoy the best images and effects a new PC game has to offer; to design an aesthetically pleasing PC; or even simply to obtain the best possible performance at a variety of tasks.

Games have historically been the driving force behind the rapid pace of consumer hardware development. For example, The 7th Guest and Myst helped drive the adoption of CD-ROMs. Intel and AMD both incorporated instruction sets such as MMX, 3DNow!, and Streaming SIMD Extensions into their processors to support the PC's growing role as a home entertainment device.

More recently, however, other types of applications have piqued the interest of computing enthusiasts. Scientific distributed computing tools such as Folding@home, GIMPS and SETI@home or other computationally intensive chores may also push CPUs and GPUs to their limits, and may also serve as a means of competition, such as tracking how many data sets a user has completed.

An enthusiast PC implies the early adoption of new hardware, which is sold at a premium price. As an example, the video card ATI Radeon 9700 Pro was released at US$399 in 2002. Many gaming PCs support the use of multiple video cards in SLI or CrossFire, making it possible to spend thousands of dollars in graphics cards alone.

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