Top 15 Desktop PCs

Fiercely competing for the number one power spot, the Millennia 910a from MPC (formerly MicronPC) falls short of a Best Buy distinction by a fraction of a point--the long-standing chart topper, Dell's Dimension 8250, retains its lead position with a beefier configuration, a better chassis design, and a higher reliability score.

Just missing the chart is the other new MPC we reviewed, the 910i Xtreme. The system comes loaded with a 3.06-GHz Pentium 4 CPU and 1GB of 333-MHz DDR SDRAM, but it finishes out of the Top 15 because of its high $3323 price.

The 910i is also the first system we've tested for the Top 15 Desktop PCs chart to contain a hard drive using Serial ATA, a technology with several advantages over the parallel ATA interface, which has been standard for years. SATA drives use less voltage (cutting power consumption); and they have thin, round cables instead of wide, flat ribbon cables, making SATA cables easier to connect and less likely to restrict ventilation inside your PC. The bad news: At this point, SATA drives can't reach their full performance potential because today's motherboards do not have the chip sets to support SATA's higher transfer rates. With that in mind, there is currently no compelling need to buy a system just for SATA. For more information on SATA hard drives, see "The Whole Drive Guide".

An updated Dell Dimension 4550 earns a spot on our value systems list. It has components and performance similar to those of the previous version we reviewed, but it comes with a 17-inch LCD rather than a 19-inch CRT monitor.

Another value newcomer is the good-looking, black-and-silver CyberPower XP 800 Dream Special, which carries a respectable set of components--including an ATI Radeon 9000 Pro graphics board--at a sub-$1000 price. But its PC WorldBench 4 score of 110 is relatively sluggish--about 8 points below the average mark of PCs with similar configurations.

Bundled with a roomy 18-inch LCD monitor--not a display you'll find typically accompanying a value system--Gateway's 500X turned in excellent scores on our monitor tests. The system offers little room to add components, however, and its GeForce4 MX 420--based graphics card contributed to low frame rates in our gaming graphics evaluation.

ABS's new Excellant 4450 just misses the power roster. Loaded with a 3.06-GHz Pentium 4 CPU, 512MB of 1.066-GHz RDRAM, and an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro graphics card, it earned a PC WorldBench 4 score of 124--identical to that of the older ABS Awesome 3330 power system at number four--but it costs $500 more.

Failing to rank, Polywell's Poly 845 PE2400 had mediocre performance in our benchmark tests, and it provides no office suite or business software. In addition, we were unimpressed with the sound quality that its bundled Cambridge SoundWorks SW320 speaker set produced.

Tech Trend: Your PC Has the Right to Remain Silent

If the PC at your desk sounds less like a distant breeze and more like a jet fighter rocketing off a carrier deck, your hard drive, case, and cooling fans are likely to blame.

If you're sensitive to PC noise, you may have to compromise on power and expandability when looking for a new system. For instance, the Compaq Evo D510 Ultra-slim Desktop has a 50-watt power supply and one fan, but no PCI slots. "It generates just 24 decibels," says Kent Biggs, a senior member of HP's Personal System Group technical staff, "the equivalent of a whisper."

Opting for a system with integrated graphics can help, too, because graphics cards'especially high-end gaming boards'usually have noisy cooling fans.

Noise reduction can also mean more-expensive components. Dell, like other vendors that focus on carefully engineering quieter PCs, installs ball-bearing fans; they're far less noisy, and stay much quieter over time than do less-expensive sleeve fans. Using larger fans cuts down on noise as well because they don't have to spin as fast to provide the needed airflow for cooling.

In Gateway's quietest all-in-one Profile 4 systems, the company installs hard drives in "abatement enclosures" to keep the clatter down. (The drawback is that these systems offer no room for upgrading or adding components.) The power supplies have variable fan speeds that speed up only when the system needs extra cooling.

These adjustments may sound minor, but the Dell and Gateway systems we saw were considerably quieter than the others buzzing around in the PC World Test Center.

Visit "20 Things You Didn't Know Your PC Could Do" for information on hushing your own system.