Computer Heaven launched in 1997 as a community of PC hardware enthusiasts sharing real benchmark data, overclocking guides and component reviews. This archive preserves the best content from that era — a snapshot of computing when MHz wars raged and 3D acceleration was just beginning.
Why preserve a late-1990s hardware site?
Most websites from the original PC enthusiast era — Computer Heaven among them — went offline years ago. The hardware they covered has been collected, the techniques they taught have been refined, and the predictions they made about the future of computing can finally be graded. The articles below are adaptations, not direct reproductions: they synthesise material that was once on the live site, viewable today through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, into a form that reads naturally on a modern site.
If you want to understand why a 2026 builder cares about IPC versus clock speed, why VRAM matters, or why we still take cooling seriously, the answers are in this archive. The questions started here.
Featured archive pieces
Looking for current recommendations?
Our archive pieces are paired with modern 2026 buyer's guides covering the same component class. The most-read links from each classics page go to our current CPU guide, the 2026 graphics card picks, the modern PC build guide and the overclocking guide for 2026 platforms.
Sources & methodology
All archive adaptations are based on snapshots of the original Computer Heaven domain (and contemporaneous hardware coverage from 1997-1999) captured by the Internet Archive. Direct quotations are presented in distinct heritage blockquotes; surrounding editorial and modern commentary is written by the 2026 Computer Heaven editorial team. Where original authors are known (Jeff for the overclocking FAQ, Brian Neal for the editorial predictions), we credit them by name.