WHAT'S HOT: Considering the Titanium Gamer Force Pro's bargain-basement $1299 price, CyberPower did a great job of equipping it for the rigors of playing computer games. The Gamer Force Pro is a big box with a see-through plastic side that allows you to view the machine's inner workings. A neon tube and flashing blue, red, and yellow lights on the fans light up the interior. A top-of-the-line ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 Pro graphics card with 128MB of memory fills the AGP slot. In addition to having a standard VGA monitor connector, this card sports a digital interface (DVI) and an S-Video port that can hook up to a digital monitor and a TV, respectively. Cards occupy five of the six PCI slots; one of these is an ethernet interface for squaring off in games across a network, and another is a Creative Audigy 5.1 sound card. Upgrading the Gamer Force Pro is easy because the left side comes off to make plenty of room for your elbows, and there's plenty of expansion room inside, too. The system is packed with 512MB of RAM and has two empty memory slots should you need more. The front accommodates a floppy drive, a CD-RW drive, and a DVD-ROM drive, along with bays for three more removable-media drives. A locking faceplate covers all the installed drives, and swings out of the way when open.

We also liked the wedge-shaped mouse, which is designed to let you hold your wrist at a natural angle. The keyboard includes several programmable keys; we especially appreciated a key that opens My Computer. The Creative Technologies Inspire 5300 speaker set, with a head-banging subwoofer and five satellites, sounds like a movie theater setup--though getting the many wires hooked up correctly took longer than it should have, because the color coding of the connectors for the speakers and sound card didn't match. Games and DVD movies look great on the 19-inch CRT, showing good detail and rich colors.

WHAT'S NOT: For the price, the Gamer Force Pro delivers good performance, but compared with other systems using a 1.8-GHz Athlon XP 2200+ processor, it's a bit slow. Its PC WorldBench 4 score of 118 is 6 points below that of the only other similarly configured PC we've tested. For a serious gamer who wants to wring every bit of performance from a system, that could be a detectable difference.

If you prefer your peripherals and headphones attached to the front of the PC, you'll be frustrated that the system's USB and audio ports are on the back. Our test unit's case was painted an attractive dark blue, but some components--including the monitor--had been sloppily spray-painted to match. CyberPower provides no documentation beyond the component vendors' manuals.

WHAT ELSE: CyberPower backs the system with a three-year warranty and lifetime toll-free tech support, and it provides a copy of WordPerfect Office.

UPSHOT: Don't be deceived by the Gamer Force Pro's low price. It's appropriately configured and powerful enough to handle both gaming and office tasks.

SUMMARY

CyberPower Titanium Gamer Force Pro PC WorldBench 4 score of 118, 1.8-GHz Athlon XP 2200+ processor, 512MB of DDR SDRAM, Windows XP Professional, 120GB hard drive, 16X DVD-ROM drive, 40X/12X/40X CD-RW drive, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro graphics card with 128MB of DDR SDRAM, 19-inch ViewSonic E90f monitor, Creative Labs SoundBlaster Audigy sound card, Creative Labs Inspire 5300 5.1 speakers, network adapter, V.92 modem, tower case; Corel WordPerfect Office 2002, Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2002. Three-year warranty on parts, lifetime warranty on labor, 10-hour weekday toll-free tech support. $1299 800/707-0393 www.cyberpowersystem.com