(FORTUNE Magazine) – With all the GameCube/Xbox hype, you might think civilization has reached the zenith of 3-D gaming. But to a fanatic, the consoles can't touch a fire-breathing, tail-kicking, supermodified PC. So, with a $2,000 budget, I assembled the ultimate game box. Putting together a PC from the screws up is not for the faint of heart, but neither is it beyond the grasp of a patient, careful tinkerer.

Building a computer from parts won't necessarily save you money, unless you shop hard for bargains or use second-tier components. (Major PC makers like Compaq and Dell buy their components at discounts.) The fact that it's also a top-end multimedia PC makes it easier to justify the cost.

Microprocessor: Advanced Micro Devices' Athlon Pro 1800+ won my vote not only because it delivers screamingly fast performance with instruction-set enhancements ideal for gaming, but also because it cost just $299, a little more than half the price of Intel's 2,000MHz Pentium 4. Some hard-core gamers are shifting to Pentiums, but bang for buck, AMD still rules.

Case: I picked a WaveSonic FS-710BB ten-bay ATX server tower with integrated 351-watt power supply ($149). This is a huge, heavy, purple-and-black beast with three cooling fans. Air circulation is critical in order to avoid overheating when running high-performance chips and components. While choosing a case, make sure you have a power supply of at least 300 watts and easy access to drive bays and expansion slots.

Motherboard: Make sure your mobo--the main printed circuitboard into which all other major components are plugged--is an ATX board and that it can handle the microprocessor and memory you need. To house my Athlon Pro, I picked an Asus A7M266 with an AMD 761 chipset ($177).

Memory: The Rambus memory popular among fanatics is so expensive that 512 megabytes of it would have blown my budget. I ended up buying a stick of Mushkin 512MB DDR chips with built-in heatsinks, for $129.

Hard drive: My heart was set on an IBM DeskStar, but my local electronics store was having a heck of a sale on a Western Digital 80GB Ultra DMA-100 hard drive, with 7,200rpm spin rate and 8.9-millisecond seek time. It cost me $129 (after rebate), a savings of more than $100 over comparable drives.

Floppy drive: Why not, it's only $20, and I have more expansion bays than I'll ever use. The 3.5-inch Teac is the brand to get.

Optical drive: What I wanted: the new Pioneer DVD-R/RW combo superdrive that reads and writes DVD and CD disks. But even with a recent price cut to $600, it was still too much. What I got: A Hewlett-Packard CD24RI internal EIDE CD-RW drive, which doesn't have DVD support but does a great job of reading and writing audio CDs. It cost $200, and with the money I saved I can buy a great DVD player.

Graphics and sound cards: What transforms a powerful PC into an ultimate game machine? Graphics and sound. For graphics, I broke the bank and spent $350 for the Visiontek Xtasy 6964 GeForce3 Titanium with 64 MB of video memory and a 240MHz core clock. Yes, we bad. Nothing else touches it. The game machine standard for sound is the Creative SoundBlaster Live!, but there's a new, better alternative: the Creative Audigy Platinum with Dolby 5.1 support ($200). I'm a bit nervous about compatibility, but in terms of performance, it's the best for making games come alive.

Speakers: If you can find them, the Klipsch Pro Media 5.1 speakers (four satellites and a subwoofer) will blow you away. So will the $399 price, but there aren't any other desktop speakers that deliver the combination of power and subtlety that Klipsch is known for.

Network card: Because I have a cable modem, I need a network card. D-Link's 10/100 NIC was handy, and it cost $15.

Mouse: Some hard-core gamers are starting to embrace the new optical mice from Microsoft or Logitech, but in my system the only choice is the Karna Razer Boomslang 2000 balled mouse (about $100 if you can find one on eBay). It has 6,000dpi precision and it just looks mean. After a brief hiatus Karna is making them again, so they'll be easier to find.

Mousepad: I'm still looking in kitchen-supply stores for a plastic Everglide cutting board. In the meantime, 3M makes a high-tech mousing pad that's very thin and, unfortunately, very expensive ($15) and fragile.

OS: Windows XP Home Edition ($199). I'm not sure yet that it's compatible with all my favorite gaming peripherals, but I am sure it's the best operating system for my new box.

Monitor: Because the game consoles attach to a television set, I figured I could attach my screaming machine to a 19-inch Sony Trinitron tube monitor I've had for five years. If I were buying the ultimate game display, however, I'd skip the fancy flat panels and get the 24-inch wide-screen Sony Trinitron GDM-FW900 for a mere $2,000. It has four USB ports out front and the best image quality and refresh rate around.

--P.L.